Our Town as a Guiding Symbol in Tom Lake

An Enduring Touchstone

Thornton Wilder’s Our Town threads through Ann Patchett’s Tom Lake not merely as a theatrical backdrop but as a living symbol that shapes Lara Nelson’s identity, her relationships, and the novel’s deepest themes. First encountered in a high school gymnasium in New Hampshire, the play returns during a transformative summer at the Michigan summer stock theatre, and its echoes persist decades later as Lara tells her daughters the story of her acting career. The play’s three-act structure—daily life, love and marriage, death and the afterlife—becomes a lens through which Lara and the reader examine what matters most: the ordinary, fleeting moments that constitute a life.

From the opening chapter, Our Town is defined as a civic treasure in New Hampshire, something the community treats “like the Constitution or the ‘Star-Spangled Banner’” ( Tom Lake, Chapter 1). The play’s ubiquity in the novel grounds the narrative in a shared cultural touchstone, but Patchett quickly moves beyond nostalgia. By having Lara audition for the role of Emily Webb—first as a high school junior, then at university, and finally at Tom Lake—the play becomes a vehicle for her own self-discovery and growth.

Where and How the Play Works

High School Auditions: The Birth of a Dream

In Chapter 1, Lara registers auditions for a local community theater production. She watches adults falter and fail, and that spectacle teaches her “nothing less than how to present myself in the world” ( Chapter 1). Her decision to change her name from Laura to Lara and audition for Emily marks the beginning of her acting identity. At this stage, Our Town represents possibility and escape from a small-town future she finds limiting.

University and a Screen Test

In Chapter 2, Lara again auditions for Our Town at the University of New Hampshire, where director Bill Ripley spots her and offers a film screen test. The play acts as a stepping-stone, a credential that launches a brief film career. Here Our Town is less a personal symbol than a professional gateway.

Tom Lake: The Play as Mirror and Crucible

The summer at Tom Lake (Chapters 6-9, 16) is where the symbol deepens. Lara arrives to replace an Emily who has left, and she quickly becomes immersed in rehearsals. The play’s Stage Manager, originally played by the alcoholic Uncle Wallace, is eventually taken over by Joe Nelson—the man who will become Lara’s husband. Joe’s performance is described as trustworthy: “He might as well have raised a lantern because we knew we would follow him” (Chapter 16). This is the first moment where Our Town begins to reflect Lara’s real life, as Joe’s steady presence contrasts with Duke’s magnetic but unstable allure.

The turning point occurs when Lara’s understudy, Pallace Clarke, takes the role of Emily. Pallace is Black, and her casting sparks both audience discomfort and profound artistic revelation. Watching Pallace perform, Lara realizes she is no longer Emily. She recalls: “I would have sawed the cast off my leg right there” ( Chapter 16). The play becomes a lesson in letting go—of ego, of identity tied to a single role, of the past. Pallace’s Emily is not a copy; she “stamped her feet at times, found places to laugh I’d never seen” ( Chapter 16). For Lara, Our Town transforms from a personal possession into something shared and larger than herself.

Present-Day Narration: The Play as Memory Framework

Throughout the novel’s present-day scenes on the cherry farm during the pandemic, Lara recounts her past to her daughters, Emily, Maisie, and Nell. The act of storytelling mirrors the Stage Manager’s narration in Our Town: both frame ordinary life as worthy of attention. The play’s famous line about “the sun’s come up over a thousand times” echoes in the daughters’ questions and Lara’s reflections. Here Our Town functions as a mnemonic structure, helping Lara impose meaning on her past and pass that meaning to her children.

Character Connections

Theme Connections

Memory and Storytelling

The play’s third act—where Emily returns to relive a day and finds she cannot fully see it—parallels Lara’s act of remembering. Both the novel and the play ask: how do we hold onto the ordinary moments that matter? The Memory and Storytelling theme page explores this further.

Letting Go

Lara must release the role of Emily, first to Pallace and later in her memory. This releasing parallels her letting go of Duke and of her acting ambitions. The Letting Go theme is central to her growth.

Love and Marriage

Emily and George’s wedding in Our Town—interrogated by Pallace’s performance as fearful rather than romantic—echoes Lara’s own decisions about love. Her eventual marriage to Joe, not Duke, is a quieter, steadier choice. See the Love and Marriage theme.

Performance vs. Reality

Our Town is a play about the failure to see life while living it. Lara’s time at Tom Lake blurs acting and living, especially in her relationship with Duke. The novel suggests that authentic living requires stepping off the stage. The Performance vs. Reality theme examines this tension.

Family and Legacy

By telling her daughters the Our Town story, Lara passes down not just a personal history but a model for how to look at life. The family farm, saved by Duke’s secret purchase of a cemetery plot (Chapter 21), intertwines with the play’s meditation on what endures. The Family and Legacy theme deepens this connection.

How the Play’s Meaning Changes

Initially, Our Town is a nostalgic community ritual and a career ladder. At Tom Lake, it becomes a crucible for Lara’s artistic and romantic growth. After Pallace takes over, the play teaches Lara humility and the value of reinterpretation. In the present-day narrative, the play becomes a framework for understanding mortality and gratitude—especially after Duke’s death and his ashes are buried under a red oak near the lake (Chapter 21). The Author’s Note (Chapter 22) confirms Patchett’s intention: the novel aims to “turn the reader back to Our Town” as a source of comfort and guidance.

Study Questions and Answers

1. How does Lara’s interpretation of Emily change from high school to Tom Lake?

In high school, Lara sees Emily as a role she can perfect by watching others fail. She imitates an idealized version. At Tom Lake, her performance deepens through rigorous rehearsal and Nelson’s direction. But the real change comes when she watches Pallace play Emily: Lara realizes that her own version is just one possibility. She learns to release the role and let someone else inhabit it, a lesson that foreshadows her ability to let go of Duke and her acting career.

2. What is the significance of Pallace Clarke taking over the role of Emily?

Pallace is Black in a predominantly white community story, which initially unsettles some audience members (Chapter 16). Yet her performance proves powerful: she finds new emotional beats, playing Emily’s wedding day not for romance but for fear of childbirth. Pallace’s success forces Lara to confront her own attachment to the role and to see that art can be reinterpreted across identity lines. The play thus becomes a symbol of inclusion and the evolution of meaning.

3. How does the play Our Town relate to the novel’s theme of mortality?

Our Town’s third act, in which Emily visits the dead and realizes how little the living appreciate their moments, directly parallels the novel’s meditation on death. Duke’s death is handled offstage, but its impact—his ashes buried on the farm, the saving of the land—shows that death is integrally woven into life. Lara’s present-day storytelling is itself an act of remembrance, an attempt to see the ordinary before it passes. The play’s structure (daily life, marriage, death) mirrors the novel’s own movement through seasons, harvests, and family rituals.

4. How does Joe’s role as Stage Manager mirror his role in Lara’s life?

Joe begins as an understudy Stage Manager but takes over the role from Uncle Wallace. His performance is described as trustworthy and guiding: “he had seen the entire story and stitched it together for us” (Chapter 16). In Lara’s life, Joe likewise provides stability and a panoramic view—he knows her past, accepts her history with Duke, and helps hold the farm together. He does not act in the dramatic sense; instead, he narrates and supports. The Stage Manager’s function as a gentle overseer aligns perfectly with Joe’s patient, watchful love. By the novel’s end, when the family gathers in the cemetery talking about permanence, Joe is the quiet anchor of that scene, much like the Stage Manager who closes the play.

Conclusion

Our Town is not merely a play within a novel; it is the novel’s moral compass. Through Lara’s evolution from high school Emily to a woman who can watch someone else embody Emily with equal truth, Patchett dramatizes the shift from grasping at life to appreciating its flickering moments. The play’s themes—everyday beauty, the ache of awareness, the comfort of memory—become the reader’s own. As Patchett herself writes, Our Town is “a comfort, guide, and inspiration” (Chapter 22), and in Tom Lake, it becomes exactly that for Lara, her daughters, and everyone who encounters this layered story of love, loss, and the ordinary miracle of cherry blossoms.