Play: The Skin of Our Teeth

Overview
Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth (1942) is a comic, apocalyptic allegory that follows the Antrobus family, George, his wife Maggie, their children Henry and Gladys, and their maid Sabina, across three acts that telescope all of human history into a single, recurring household drama. The Antrobuses are both an ordinary New Jersey family and archetypes: their surname evokes anthropos, or humankind; Henry carries the mark of Cain; Sabina doubles as both housemaid and temptress. By leaping from an Ice Age to a Deluge to a modern war, the play stages civilization’s near-destructions and miraculous recoveries, showing humanity repeatedly saved by the skin of its teeth. Wilder’s wit and metatheatricality, characters interrupt, break character, and address the audience, turn catastrophe into farcical pageant while probing endurance, memory, and moral choice.

Act I: Ice Age
Set in the Antrobus home in Excelsior, New Jersey, the first act unfolds as glaciers press toward the doorstep. George, a genial titan of invention, credited with the wheel, the alphabet, and arithmetic, struggles to keep hearth and family intact while refugees pour in seeking warmth. Mrs. Antrobus insists on charity despite scarcity, admitting strangers and even the family’s pet dinosaur and mammoth. Sabina, both participant and commentator, keeps breaking the fourth wall to mock the play’s events and complain about the cold. As the ice advances, the household’s bonfire becomes a ritual of survival and a beacon of community. The act closes on the fragile triumph of warmth and willpower holding back extinction for one more night, with the suggestion that dawn, and another beginning, will come.

Act II: The Flood
The second act shifts to the Atlantic City boardwalk on the eve of a great flood. Amid a beauty pageant and carnival frivolity, Sabina reappears as a temptress and pageant winner, luring George into flirtation and escape from the burdens of family and civilization. A Fortune Teller warns of the impending deluge, and Mrs. Antrobus steels herself to shepherd not only her family but also culture’s essentials to safety. While animals pair off and board a boat, Maggie collects books, scripture, epics, philosophy, Shakespeare, as a portable memory of humanity. George wavers, tempted by Sabina’s promise of carefree pleasure, but ultimately returns to his duty. As the waters rise, the Antrobuses and a remnant of creatures and texts embark, bearing the tools for another beginning.

Act III: After War
The final act returns to the ruined Antrobus home after a cataclysmic war. The set is blasted; hope is exhausted. Henry, the family’s violent son, now a hard-bitten soldier, rages toward patricide and perpetual conflict. Father and son confront each other in a grim struggle over whether humanity will always relapse into violence. Sabina, practical and cynical, keeps the show stumbling forward, even as the production itself seems to break down, with actors dropping lines and a stage manager stepping in, Wilder’s way of dramatizing how culture limps on after disaster. Mrs. Antrobus demands reconciliation, work, and rebuilding. George, chastened, gathers words and plans for a new house as the family agrees to start over yet again.

Themes and Techniques
Wilder fuses myth and modernity to argue that history is cyclical: ice, flood, and war are interchangeable crucibles that test the same human capacities, ingenuity, charity, fidelity, and the temptation to selfishness or violence. The Antrobus home becomes a revolving stage on which civilization is built, broken, and rebuilt, with the family as the workshop of ethics and memory.

Metatheatrical interruptions, Sabina’s asides, onstage production crises, overt references to scripts and stage directions, expose theater as a communal act of survival. Laughter, pageantry, and direct address keep despair at bay, while the rescued books symbolize the fragile continuity of knowledge. The play’s closing motion toward rebuilding refuses a final victory or defeat, leaving humanity poised, once more, to begin again by the skin of its teeth.