Short Summary

The play "Our Town" begins on a very normal day; they eat breakfast, the kids go to school, the men go to work, and the women talk outside in the garden. This first act is called the Daily Life and the Stage Manager introduces all the characters in this act. After this act it jumps forward six years, where two of the children from the first act are now getting married. The small town all attends the wedding and the Stage Manager goes through discussing what the people say about their wedding. After this act it jumps forward another nine years where the bride is now having her second child and dies during child birth. After this happens it shows everyone attending her funeral and shows her in the after life with other people from the town. The Stage Manager goes through explaining how all the people died and then the bride, Emily, decideds she wants to go back for just one day. She wasn't allowed to pick a normal day so she just picked her 12th birthday.
During her birthday, she had a normal morning with her parents and brother, but as the day goes on she realizes that the time is going by too fast. She decides to go back to the afterlife because it was too hard to sit there and know it was her last day with them. She began to realize that even the boring, daily life is important and should be appreciated. She decided that living people will never be able to appreciate life for what it is worth and will never understand how much they will miss it when it is gone. She explains this to her husband's mother and then realizes that her husband is walking towards her.