Analysis of The bridge of san luis rey. by Thornton Wilder
People who thinks of Thornton Wilder primarily in terms of his classic novella "Our Town," The Bridge of San Luis Rey will seem like quite a switch. For one thing, he has switched countries; instead of middle America, he deals here with Peru. He has switched eras, moving from the twentieth century back to the eighteenth. He has also dealt with a much broader society than he did in "Our Town," representing the lower classes and the aristocracy with equal ease. But despite these differences, his theme is much the same; life is short, our expectations can be snuffed out with the snap of a finger, and in the end all that remains of us is those we have loved.The novella begins by describing the quest of a Franciscan monk, Brother Juniper, to figure out why some people's lives are cut short while others, apparently less deserving of life, live well into their eighties and nineties. He has happened to witness a terrible accident (the sudden collapse of a national landmark, the Bridge of San Luis Rey) which five people were crossing at the time of the disaster. All five were killed instantly: a little boy, a young girl, a wealthy old woman, an old man, and a youth. Brother Juniper is shocked into a metaphysical thought: "If there were
In conclusion, The Bridge of San Luis Rey is not a book to read once and then throw away; The focus returns briefly to Brother Juniper, who, we are told, completes his book on the metaphysics behind the tragedy at San Luis Rey. We are not told what the book said, but only that both it and its author were burned for heresy. However, we can pretty well guess what the book concluded by looking at Brother Juniper's observation when he first began it: "Either we live by accident and die by accident, or we live by plan and die by plan" (Wilder, 5). Juniper's heretical conclusion must have been the existentialist one: we live by accident and die the same way. There is no plan. This is the wonderful premise behind Wilder's examination of the connected lives of these five people. Several of them never actually meet, any more than we "meet" people with whom we happen to ride an elevator but, each of them knows someone who knows one of the other victims. Wilder goes on to clear up the stories of their lives, devoting a chapter to each of the major characters: The old woman, The Marquesa; The young man, Esteban; and the old man, Uncle Pio. (The other two victims, the young maid Pepita and the child Jaime, are not really explored, because they are seen primarily in relationship to the adults they accompany.) Peruvian life, under the misguided assumption that the girl must be homesick for news of her native city. These letters are in stark contrast to Wilder's description of what the Marquesa's life is really like; she is old and ugly and eccentric, and the butt of all Lima's jokes. She, however, lives in blissful ignorance of this fact, because her attention is so completely focused on her daughter. She does not even see the fact that in her own household her faithful little teenage maid is miserable from the lack of being loved. When she accidentally learns this from reading one of Pepita's letters (coincidentally on the same day that the Marquesa receives a criticizes letter from her own daughter) she goes in and touches the hair of the sleeping Pepita and says, "Let me begin again" (Wilder, 39). Wilder concludes the chapter with, "Two days later they started back to Lima, and while crossing the bridge of San Luis Rey the accident
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Approximate Word count = 1529
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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