Emily’s return to life is a structural device which unites the action of the play. The fact that the audience witnesses the same setting that opened Act I gives the play continuity and familiarity. The comments and actions of people mirror the commonplace actions of the first scenes. This repetition forces the audience to see through Emily’s eyes the replay of her past. Therefore, it is easier to comprehend her disillusionment as she hurriedly returns to her place on the hill.
The final scene expresses most clearly Wilder’s focus. The earth is a place where everything happens and everything is important. The playwright impels the audience toward an understanding and appreciation of life’s brevity. A subtle reminder of how quickly life can end is contained in the constable’s rescue of a man from death by freezing. Returned to girlhood, Emily concludes that her mother is so busy with housewifely details that she takes no time to appreciate the wonder of her family. Emily’s impassioned cry to her mother that they should look at each other underscores the human inability to absorb the essence of living while it is going on.
Wistfully, Emily, who is only twenty-six at the time of her death, realizes that she is out of place in the familiar scene. She bids farewell to ticking clocks, sunflowers, food and coffee, newironed dresses, hot baths, sleeping and waking. Still, with all that she has experienced since the beginning of Act I, she seems to have aged very little from her first appearance onstage, even though she has progressed from schoolgirl to wife and mother. Overall, the scene focuses on human frailty, which keeps people from enjoying all the good that life has to offer. Overcome with dismay at earthly wastefulness, Emily comprehends that the living are blind to everyday wonders. Perhaps, as Wilder states, saints and poets do realize some of every moment of life, but the average person allows these precious trifles to pass by without recognizing their worth.
Simon sums up human faults more harshly than Emily. To him the living move in a “cloud of ignorance . at the mercy of one self-centered passion, or another ” Perhaps he is bitter because he wasted his own life on alcohol. He recognizes that he “trampled on the feelings” of others. Consequently, he feels that life was a terrible experience. The other spirits acknowledge that Simon’s summation contains a kernel of truth, but they insist that life had good points.
At the end of the scene, George comes to mourn Emily’s death. Apparently he is immobilized by deep grief. Still, as much as Emily loved her husband in life, she has changed since her death. Dispassionately, she looks at him without sharing his grief and comments: “They don’t understand ” Emily comprehends fully a fact that George has yet to learn—that death frees the living from their earthly troubles and conflicts.
The final appearance of the Stage Manager reminds the audience that the cycle is complete. In passing, he mentions how the residents of this little star that is the world strain to achieve their potential. Pointedly, he winds his watch, thereby breaking the spell and realigning the audience with the normal passage of time. Yet his final remark again allies the viewers with the citizens of Grover’s Corners, each of whom needs a “good rest ” The simplicity of his departure is in keeping with his overall purpose—to guide the audience through an unassuming but profoundly moving consideration of what it means to be alive.
