Despite the three Pulitzer prizes awarded him, Thornton Wilder may very well [have turned]
out to be one of the few enduring writers of our time...There have been countless other
authors who in his day have been far more "discussed." That was inevitable for a man who
has neither hastened to follow nor troubled to oppose the current mode, who has gone his
own way, and who has clearly never sought the popularity which has periodically been his
(Unger 355).
The key to his significance is his extraordinary ability to combine his philosophy and
ethics with his personal experiences in perhaps one of the greatest paradoxical plays
ever written.
Thornton Niven Wilder was born in Madison, Wisconsin on the twenty-seventh of April in
1897. His father, Amos Parker Wilder, was a strict Calvinist who combined strong economic
interests with politics (Block and Shedd 959) in his work as the editor, owner, and
publisher of a newspaper. Isabella Thornton Niven, his mother, was the daughter of a
Presbyterian minister. They were to influence their son's works greatly. Wilder also had
a sister, Isabel, who was to become a distinguished novelist in her own right.
Wilder's early education began in Hong Kong, where his father was serving as American
consul general in Shanghai (Goldstone 11). He was then schooled at Berkeley, California;
Chefoo, China; and Ojai, California before completing high school back at Berkeley in
1915. He studied the classics at Oberlin College and Yale University, where he received
his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1919 (Unger 356). Wilder spent a year as a resident of the
American Academy at Rome, where he began writing The Cabala. Back in the United States he
taught French at Lawrenceville High School in New Jersey from 1921-1928 and began doing
graduate work at Princeton, where he took his Master of Arts degree in 1926. The Cabala
was issued as a novel that year, but was largely ignored by the critics.
"Although over-age when America entered World War II, Wilder sought military
assignment...and served in Air Force Intelligence in the United States, North Africa and
Italy" (Block and Shedd 959). America's involvement in World War II changed Wilder's
perspective. "He had too clear an idea of man's limited possibilities..." (Papajewski
109). Wilder wrote, "When you're at war you think about a better life; when you're at
peace you think about a more comfortable one" (Papajewski 109). Wilder wrote his best
works with this very theme while in the service.
A mere glance at the titles of Thornton Wilder's writings is enough to establish the
wide variety of his accomplishment. Variety there is- "...unlike the work of such
contemporaries of his who were content to write the same book over and over under a
series of new titles..." (Unger 357) -yet throughout his entire career there can be
distinguished the mind and temperament of the author. Whether Wilder takes the reader to
ancient Rome, to New Hampshire in modern times, or on a dizzying whirl through the
centuries, his hand is everywhere evident.
The Skin of Our Teeth was the center of a great controversy in Wilder's career when
Joseph Campbell accused its author of plagiarizing Finnegans Wake, by James Joyce (Unger
370). Joyce's influence appears clearly in The Skin Of Our Teeth, and Wilder has since
acknowledged this (Papajewski 110).
"[The Skin Of Our Teeth] was written," its author states, "on the eve of our entrance
into the war and under strong emotion" (Wilder 164). He might have added: and with
inspired imagination (Unger 370). The work is vast in both dimension and scope; its lines
bounce with energy, sparkle with wit, and exult in the joy of living. Here at length,
Wilder's military experiences and background is capitalized upon in a marvelous and
complicated unity (Goldstone 174). His religious knowledge and training are explicitly
displayed. These influences are dramatically presented in the dilemma of normal humanity
faced with the recurrent brutalities of fascism, nazism and communism (Unger 370). Henry,
the voice of such systems, cries, "I'm going to be free even if I have to kill half the
world for it" (Wilder 196). At the sight of him, normal humanity exclaims: "War's a
pleasure compared to what faces us now: trying to build up a peacetime with you in the
middle of it" (Wilder 197). These words were first written in 1942 at the onset of World
War II, and they are even more desperately true in 1994. It is made perfectly lucid that
the great world catastrophe in Act III of The Skin of Our Teeth represents World War II.
Wilder's ability to combine his military affairs with his convictions and propagate the
outcome into his works is what makes them so timeless.
"The theme of this brilliantly conceived play [-and of some of Wilder's other works,
though not as obvious-] is the ability of the human race, despite Nature's impersonally
destructive powers and man's own catastrophic folly, ignorance, cruelty, indifference,
and cowardice, somehow manage to survive - and somehow, for all its readiness, to forfeit
all it has gained, to inch ahead of where it formerly stood" (Unger 370-371). "We've come
a long ways," sums up Antrobus. "We've learned. We're learning" (Wilder 231).
The situations and complications posed in The Skin of Our Teeth emerge from the
repercussions of Thornton Wilder's own religious and philosophical tenets. His optimism
and hope for the future are exposed through church-devoted, family man Antrobus as he
gives reason to hope so, as is Mrs. Antrobus' steadfastness to the virtues of the hearth,
and their daughter's instinctive goodness and gentleness (Unger 372). The qualities
exhibited through Antrobus are employed directly from Wilder's own father. Wilder also
chose to discuss his beliefs in the "impediments to be reckoned with" (Unger 372): that
is, the natural evil and cruelty of Henry.
"The dramatist's brilliant success in this play is due not only to a remarkable mingling
of the serious and the comic,...but also to his requiring the actors to step out of their
roles to discuss with the audience their own views on the play...and to debate and
confess to one another their own personal dilemmas" (Unger 372). In this way, Wilder
achieves other dimensions for the work; he also is able to drive home one of his favorite
convictions: that the artistic validity of a play depends to a degree upon the
acknowledgement that its pursuit of truth is through make-believe.
Although there are few but principal associations between The Skin of Our Teeth and
Wilder's own life, there are many lesser connections in his other works. The year he
spent in Rome, for example, and the love he shows for its architecture and classic
literature is written about with great admiration in The Cabala and The Bridge of San
Luis Rey (Papajewski 206). He creates characters similar to himself and to those around
him. Aescylus in The Angel That Troubled the Waters, for example, is religious in the
same sense that Wilder is, disclaiming any intent to instruct or train (Goldstone 331).
Wilder's father set the example for Mr. Webb in Our Town, the editor and owner of the
local newspaper. It has also been said that a fellow teacher at Lawrenceville High School
was the model for Professor Willard of the same play (Papajewski 169).
To say the least, Thornton Wilder is most conclusively a person who efficiently combined
life affairs and milestones with his professional workmanship. Suffice to add that his
hobbies never stray far from the business of writing: the study of early records of the
theater, exotic languages, and the mores of distant peoples (Unger 374). He has always
seen his occupation as a profession (Wilder 4), and surely no playwright or author seems
more surely to have been born to the vocation of writer.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
American Writers: A Collection of Literary Biographies. Ed. Leonard Unger. New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1974.
Goldstone, Richard H. Thornton Wilder: An Intimate Portrait. New York: E.P
Dutton & Co., Inc., 1975.
Masters of Modern Drama. Ed. Haskell M. Block and Robert G. Shedd. New York:
Random House, 1962.
Papajewski, Helmut. Thornton Wilder. New York: Frederick Ungar Pub. Co., 1965.
Wilder, Thornton. "The Skin of Our Teeth." Three Plays. New York: Harper &
Row, 1957.
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