Comparison between Thornton Wilder's 'Our Town' and John Osborne's 'Look Back in Anger.' Discuss how the characters 'spend and waste time as though they had a million years.'

"Now you know! That's what it was to be alive. To move about in a cloud of ignorance; to go up and down trampling on the feelings of those...of those about you. To spend and waste time as though you had a million years. To be always at the mercy of one self-centred passion, or another. Now you know - that's the happy existence you wanted to go back to. Ignorance and blindness." The …

…Our Town, when a woman asks Mr. Webb if there is any "culture or love of beauty" in the town, to which he replies "well, ma'am, there ain't much - not in the sense you mean." (Wilder: p36) This indicates that the townspeople are aware of their lack of culture and adopt an accepting attitude towards it. In this sense, the irony is that, in their ignorance, they are indeed living a 'happy existence.'