Showing results by author "Thornton Wilder" in All Categories

Thornton Wilder is one of America's most important literary figures. He won the Pulitzer Prize three times - for his novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey and the plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth - and is the only person to be awarded the Pulitzer for both fiction and drama. Included here are four of his key works, set in different times and places, but sharing the same fundamental motifs - the universality of human experience and our search for life's meaning.

In eighteenth-century Peru, a rope bridge collapses, dropping five people to tragic deaths in the gorge below. In the aftermath, Brother Juniper, a Franciscan friar and a witness to the disaster, strives to comprehend why these five people were fated to die in this way. Was it, he wonders, some form of divine Providence, or was it arbitrary and unrelated to the manner in which these people had led their lives?

Five people are killed when a heavily traveled rope bridge in Peru collapses. Brother Juniper, a Franciscan friar, witnesses this event and this sets him on a quest: Who were each of these individuals? Why do unfortunate events happen to innocent or undeserving people? What led to these people being on the bridge at the fateful moment? While many view this novel as a serious reflection on life, death, and love, this narration highlights Wilder’s tongue-in-cheek stance, suggesting the author used humor, irony, and even sarcasm to examine faith, fate, and chance.

Exploring themes of love, goodness, and predestination, Wilder exposes the nature of his characters by examining their relationships. The bonds of parents and children, siblings, and surrogate parents are all examined with elegant skill, leading us to ask the hard questions that point to the inevitable river below.

Thornton Wilder's beautiful novel, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, tells the story of a bridge in Lima, Peru, where one day in the 18th century, five people lost their life. A friar devotes himself to investigating the accident and concludes that all the dead had fulfilled their destiny and it was inevitable that they would die that day.