Animal Farm

The Stage Manager delivers this passage during his long monologue at the beginning of Act III. This quotation prefaces the opinions of the dead, who believe that human beings “don’t understand” the true significance of existence. While living, they say, human beings tend to get so caught up in day-to-day details and responsibilities, feeling so obligated to the mundane chores of daily life that they often miss the meaningful nature of human existence. The Stage Manager echoes this sentiment here, implying that human beings possess the gut knowledge that something is eternal but lack an understanding of what constitutes the eternal. Like the dead in Act III, the Stage Manager insists that the “eternal” exists within each and every human being, and that people can share this eternal nature through their daily interactions with one another.

The Stage Manager’s words thus highlight Wilder’s interest in finding the eternal among the details of daily life. Humans possess individual eternal souls that may live on after physical death,