Thornton Niven Wilder

Thornton Niven Wilder

English classes in today’s society have started to get away from its roots. Great American Authors are being overlooked for mediocre foreign authors more and more each day. This is a huge problem in classes today, and is truly a major reason for lack-luster efforts in reading and the decline in interest in today’s students. One of these said overlooked authors is Thornton Niven Wilder. Wilder is an amazing author who should be taught in schools because of his wonderful teaching skills, his award-winning works, and his thoughtful insights in which he presents throughout all his works.

To start, Thornton Niven Wilder was born on April 17th, 1897 in Madison, Wisconsin. He lived in Madison for nine years before moving to China. Thornton traveled all over the world as a child because his father, Amos Wilder, was the U.S. Consul-General. Thornton had a love of writing and teaching at a young age. Amos was the main reason for Thornton’s interests, as he was a journalist himself. In 1912 Thornton returned to the U.S. to peruse a collage education. He studied at Yale, and then joined the Coast Artillery Corp. After his tour of duty, he returned to Yale to receive his degree. Thornton went on to New Jersey where he taught at the Lawrenceville School while earning his master at Princeton. He then went on to teach at the University of Chicago for six years and the

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University of Hawaii after that. Thornton then took some time to write more plays before going back and teaching at Harvard in the early 50s. Even with all his writings, he had interest and sought after lecturing, teaching, and publishing (Wilder, Thornton (1897-1975)” 10). Not only did he teach at schools but he taught every person who read a book of his or saw one of his plays.

Thornton wanted people to learn though everything he wrote (“Wilder, Thornton (1897-1975)” 12). A good example of his love to teach in plays, would be the play Our Town, in which he writes his “love letter to humanity” (Radavich 5). Thornton wanted people who see Our Town to know “There is something way down deep that’s eternal about every human being” (“Wilder, Thornton (1897-1975)” 8). He was very good at capturing this in his show, especially in the dialogue of the Stage Manager who often points out many things about life. One of the greatest quotes the Stage Manager uses is “You got to love life to have life, and you got to have life to love life, it’s what we call a vicious circle” (Wilder 39). This is a great example of how Thornton loved to teach his audience about life more than anything else he taught. The entire play of Our Town is laced with teachings such as this. That is one reason why it won many awards.

Secondly, does Our Town, The Skin of Our Teeth, and The Bridge of San Luis Ray; sound familiar? Well since all of the aforementioned won the Pulitzer Prize they should sound familiar. Thornton Wilder is a highly respected and awarded author. His first Pulitzer Prize came in the form of a novel, not a play. This is surprising since Thornton is known nation-wide as an accomplished

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playwright, not author. This novel was The Bridge of San Luis Ray, which won the Pulitzer in 1928. He then went on to write Our Town, which won its Pulitzer in 1939, and then he won his final Pulitzer with The Skin of Our Teeth in 1943. To add to the three Pulitzer Prizes, Thornton also was awarded, Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Metal in 1952, The Presidential Metal of Freedom in 1963, The National Book Committee’s Natural Metal, and more than six honorary degrees from collages all around the U.S. Thornton is considered one of America’s most respected contemporary authors (“Works of Thornton Wilder” 1). He often attempted to avoid the styles of American writers because he did not want to be considered an American writer, but a universal writer (Radavich 1). The depressing thing was, the more he tried to avoid