Act Three Commentary

After he death, Emily Gibbs discovers that the living really have time only for themselves. The insight seems a true one: certainly we remember the dead as the living persons they were and we find it difficult if not impossible to conceive of them any other way.

However, Wilder suggest that death, like birth, love, and marriage, is further participation in a kind of process. The Stage Manager tells us that "there's something way down deep that's eternal about every human being."

When George Gibbs throws himself on his wife's grave we see that he cannot grasp the eternal aspect of life.

The inability to see life beyond death seems ironic for a town whose central activities seem to focus on church.