Analysis Of The Bridge Of San :: essays research papers

sight who thinks of Thornton Wilder primarily in terms of his classic novella Our Town, The duo of San Luis Rey will seem like quite a switch. For one thing, he has switched countries instead of middle America, he deals here with Peru. He has switched eras, moving from the 20th century back to the eighteenth. He has also dealt with a much broader parliamentary procedure than he did in Our Town, representing the lower classes and the aristocracy with equal ease. But contempt these differences, his theme is much the same life is short, our expectations can be snuffed bug out with the snap of a finger, and in the end all that remains of us is those we have loved.The novella begins by describing the quest of a Franciscan monk, buddy Juniper, to figure out why some throngs bes be cut short while opposites, apparently less deserving of life, stand well into their eighties and nineties. He has happened to witness a terrible misadventure(the sudden collapse of a national landma rk, the Bridge of San Luis Rey) which pentad quite a little were crossing at the time of the disaster. All five were killed instantly a little boy, a young girl, a wealthy grey woman, an old man, and a youth. pal Juniper is shocked into a metaphysical plan If there were all pattern in the universe at all, any plan in a human life, surely it could be sight mysteriously latent in those lives so suddenly cut off. either we live by accident and die by accident, or we live by plan and die by plan. And in that instant Brother Juniper made the resolve to inquire into the secret lives of those five persons, that effect falling through the air, and to surprise the reason of their taking off (Wilder, 5).This is the wonderful premise behind Wilders examination of the connected lives of these five people. Several of them never actually meet, any more than we meet people with whom we happen to ride an elevator but, each of them knows someone who knows one of the other victims. Wilder g oes on to clear up the stories of their lives, devoting a chapter to each of the major characters The old woman, The Marquesa The young man, Esteban and the old man, Uncle Pio. (The other two victims, the young maid Pepita and the child Jaime, are not really explored, because they are seen primarily in relationship to the adults they accompany.