What We See Too Late: The Terror of Beauty in Wilder’s Our Town and Tartt’s The Secret History

What We See Too Late: The Terror of Beauty in Wilder’s Our Town and Tartt’s The Secret History

Examining the idea of “beauty” in Thornton Wilder’s play Our Town and in Donna Tartt’s novel The Secret History, my essay argues that beauty can be seen as anything from quiet and fleeting to alluring and consuming — but in all its forms, is a powerful, terrifying force. In Wilder’s play, the late Emily learns that the simplest everyday moments are too beautiful to comprehend unless seen in retrospect. In Tartt’s novel, the characters’ obsession with beauty’s grandeur and mystery leads them to darkness, destruction, and death. I begin by contrasting what beauty means to the characters in Our Town vs. in The Secret History, and examining what results from the characters’ perceptions. I pay close attention to not only these perceptions but the characters’ overwhelming emotional states. By unveiling the essence of what beauty is and evokes, we come away with a new understanding of its breadth — and the pressure it puts on the human psyche.