Our+Town+Prompt+2+Isaac+Feldberg

A separate story that showcases a main idea in "Our Town" is //A Christmas Carol// by Charles Dickens and the film versions that have followed it. The main character in the book, Ebenezer Scrooge, is an old miser who has spent his life being a completely sour man with no sense of humor or outlet for enjoyment. Over the course of the story, which takes place on Christmas Eve seven years after the death of one of Scrooge's close associates, Scrooge is visited by several spirits that represent Scrooge's life and serve as a warning to Scrooge to change his stingy ways or suffer the consequences. The first ghost takes Scrooge to a time when he was a young, innocent boy satisfied with the world. This is similar to when the newly-deceased Emily is taken by the Stage Manager, an ethereal figure aloof from the human characters of "Our Town" similar to the ghosts in //A Christmas Carol//, to revisit her twelfth birthday. She realizes how much she missed out on her family while she was alive, as she sees how devoted her family was to her before circumstances beyond their control tore them apart. Everyone in the Webb family was preoccupied with unimportant events, not looking at the big picture of the beauty in front of them throughout their lives. Emily was worried about whether she was pretty or not and Mrs. Webb takes Emily for granted even on her birthday. As a ghost, Emily tries to get Mrs. Webb to actually see her, emphasizes her revelation that during life, people focus on unimportant things and don't pay enough attention to detail. Another example of this is when Mrs. Soames puts emphasis on the importance of ceremonial events, such as during George and Emily's wedding. She neglects to pay attention to more important things, like the looks on their faces or the atmosphere of the room. In //A Christmas Carol//, Scrooge doesn't realize that life is precious because it passes by so quickly. He squanders most of his life because he focuses on the wrong things in life, becoming miserable in his old age because of it. He kept moving steadily through life, much like the characters in "Our Town", so firmly set in his ways, never taking time to open his eyes, look around him and enjoy the view, so to speak. The main message of "Our Town" is that life is more precious than anything else on Earth, and this is reflected in //A Christmas Carol// because throughout that book, Scrooge attempts to reclaim his life and live it well after realizing that he has wasted most of it already. The living characters of "Our Town" never reach this conclusion; only the dead know the truth about life and why it is so important. The living characters get wrapped up in their own little adventures and never understand or appreciate the value and beauty of life. Both "Our Town" and //A Christmas Carol// relate to Emily's statement "Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? - every, every minute?" because the protagonists of both stories do not realize life while they live it, and only begin to understand the beauty of life by the end of the stories, as Emily dies in "Our Town", and Scrooge's encounter with all three ghosts comes to a close in //A Christmas Carol//.