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Thornton Wilder (1897-1975)
Thornton Wilder is known for his plays 
Our Town
(1938) and 
The 
Skin of Our Teeth
(1942), and for his novel 
The Bridge of San Luis Rey
(1927).
Our Town
conveys positive American values. It has all the elements of sentimentality and nostalgia 
-- the archetypal traditional small country town, the kindly parents and mischievous children, the 
young lovers. Still, the innovative elements such as ghosts, voices from the audience, and daring 

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time shifts keep the play engaging. It is, in effect, a play about life and death in which the dead are 
reborn, at least for the moment.
Clifford Odets (1906-1963)
Clifford Odets, a master of social drama, came from an Eastern 
European, Jewish immigrant background. Raised in New York City, he became one of the original 
acting members of the Group Theater directed by Harold Clurman, Lee Strasberg, and Cheryl 
Crawford, which was committed to producing only native American dramas.
Odets's best-known play was 
Waiting for Lefty
(1935), an experimental one-act drama that fervently 
advocated labor unionism. His 
Awake and Sing!
, a nostalgic family drama, became another popular 
success, followed by 
Golden Boy
, the story of an Italian immigrant youth who ruins his musical 
talent (he is a violinist) when he is seduced by the lure of money to become a boxer and injures his 
hands. Like Fitzgerald's 
The Great Gatsby
and Dreiser's 
An American Tragedy
, the play warns 
against excessive ambition and materialism.

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LESSON 18 
WOMEN WRITERS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE