While reading Thornton Wilder’s play By the Skin of Our Teeth one has to question the heavily used irrationality. At first I did not understand anything, but looking at it more than once gave me an idea. I believe that the play should not be taken at face value; that it simply has a deeper meaning. I think Wilder is trying to portray his belief that reality is not rational; that people's perceptions of the world around them are all different making nothing makes sense at all.
In the beginning of the play, the maid Sabina says that the play is supposed to be about all the troubles the world has gone through. As the play goes on, the audience can see that it does in fact show all the problems the world has faces. From Biblical references to Cane and Able (the story of the first murder), to the extinction of the wooly mammoth and the dinosaurs from the ice age, the play conquers every part of history that is recorded and references it in a hyperbolized manner to get it’s point across. But the question then comes down to: Why make a play about all of this? Why would you show this happening all at once? The answer is simple, perception.
The reason Wilder goes about writing his play in such a manner with every problem the world has faced since the dawn of time, is to show the dramatization of history by people. In the first act, Wilder shows that all his characters speak in contradictions. This is strange at first, but when later looked at can be perceived as an attempt to show the back and forth thoughts people have toward historical events. People’s views constantly change of the world and no one person has the same view of it causing conflict, such as the contradicting thoughts in the play, throughout history. Wilder therefore hyperbolizes these events in the play to get his point across that in reality people are not rational. There is proof throughout history that people act in irrational ways for no apparent reason.
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