A Study Guide for Thornton Wilder's "The Skin of Our Teeth"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Thornton Wilder's "The Skin of Our Teeth," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Drama For Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Drama For Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Jul 27, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535839570

Book preview

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The Skin of Our Teeth

Thornton Wilder

1942

Introduction

Thornton Wilder completed his sixth, and perhaps most ambitious, play, The Skin of Our Teeth, on January 1, 1942. After trial runs in New Haven, Connecticut, and Baltimore, Maryland, the play opened on Broadway at the Plymouth Theater on November 18, 1942. The production—directed by Elia Kazan and starring Tallulah Bankhead (Sabina), Frederic March (Mr. Antrobus), and Florence Eldridge (Mrs. Antrobus)—received positive reviews and ran for 355 performances. Audiences and critics applauded Wilder’s unconventional drama about the history of humankind. Most reviewers agreed that the playwright had produced a work that would revitalize American theater; as Brooks Atkinson wrote in the New York Times," The Skin of Our Teeth stands head and shoulders above the monotonous plane of our moribund theater—an original, gay-hearted play that is now and again profoundly moving, as a genuine comedy should be."

Disrupting traditional notions of linear time, Wilder’s play tells the story of the twentieth-century American Antrobus family in three acts which recount such epochal events as the onset of the Ice Age, the start of Great Flood, and the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Ending exactly as it began, the play illustrates the cyclical nature of existence, celebrating humanity’s resilience, inventiveness, and will to survive. Although the play offers an age-old message, it does so in an untraditional form, rejecting the conventions of naturalistic drama. Not only do the characters appear to be both middle-class Americans and allegorical figures, but they also repeatedly drop out of character and speak directly to the audience, breaking theatrical illusion and reminding viewers that they are watching a play. Combining modern theatrical experiments and timeless human themes, Wilder produced a work that would both challenge and entertain generations of Americans. Along with Our Town (1938), The Skin of Our Teeth is considered Wilder’s theatrical masterpiece and an invaluable cornerstone of modern American drama.

Author Biography

Thornton Niven Wilder was born on April 17, 1897, in Madison, Wisconsin, the survivor of twin sons born to Isabella Thornton and Amos Parker Wilder. At the time of Wilder’s birth, his father, a newspaperman with a Ph.D. in political science, was working as editor of the Wisconsin State Journal. A strict and religious man, Wilder’s father exerted a forceful influence over his second child. The young Thornton often felt the pull between his mother’s encouragement and his father’s