The Skin of Our Teeth

Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1942

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Act Summaries & Analyses

Act I

Act II

Act III

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Themes

The Myth of American Exceptionalism in Times of Tribulation

American Exceptionalism is the belief that the United States and its citizens are fundamentally unique and special compared to every other country in the world. The notion is based on the glorification of the country’s founding documents and the idealism embedded in grand terms, such as liberty and freedom. In the years after World War I, the country was divided in terms of how this exceptionalism should play out in America’s foreign policy, and this was heightened with the start of World War II overseas in 1939. Isolationists believed that the country should stay out of foreign affairs and wars to focus on its own development and security. Interventionists believed that because America was exceptional, it had a duty to fight international enemies and spread American values around the globe. When the war began, Franklin D. Roosevelt gave a statement of neutrality. However, Japan’s surprise bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941 shook even the isolationists into supporting US intervention in Europe, and the country declared war the following day. Roosevelt couched his rhetoric about the war in American Exceptionalism, professing that fighting was necessary to stop evil, that even in using force, “Americans are not destroyers – we are builders” and winning the war would be a “victory for freedom.” This is the world in which The Skin of Our Teeth premiered, and the ideals of American Exceptionalism and by extension, the American Dream, are conspicuous in the construction of the Antrobus family as they persevere through fictional crises.

The Antrobuses, living in the fictional town of Excelsior, New Jersey, are simultaneously the archetypal family of mankind and the paradigm of the suburban American family. The reverberation between these identities establishes an essential primacy to the average American family; the family has the valued virtues of the World War II era, and they also diligently work through the innate flaws in human nature that repeatedly threaten to corrupt and destroy them. The American Dream promises that America is a place where anyone can achieve success through inventiveness and the willingness to work hard. George is not only innovative, but he is the sui generis of human ingenuity. He creates the wheel and the alphabet, although he acknowledges that an unnamed refugee came up with the initial idea for the alphabet. Beyond his capacity for innovation, George works tirelessly and persists through absurdly impossible conditions. Maggie complements him as the domestic innovator, fighting to keep the family together when George falters. Ever-present is Sabina, the temptation to give in to momentary indulgences and to give up when things become difficult. The Antrobus children, however, show that these qualities are not automatic or innate. They must be raised and taught. Gladys is picking up traits and habits from Sabina, but her parents push her continuously to take on both her father’s priority toward education and her mother’s domesticity. Henry’s angry nature leads him to the point that he nearly destroys humanity, but his parents finally reach him and elicit contriteness and self-awareness. Even Sabina has a moment of self-lessness when she gives George the bouillon cubes.

Over and over, the Antrobus family survives while the majority perish, suggesting that Americans are particularly resilient. Sabina reminds the audience, “Don’t forget that a few years ago we came through the depression by the skin of our teeth!” (10), suggesting that the country will survive the war too. The Antrobus family starts over each time from nothing, repeatedly fulfilling the American dream by building their lives on only their sweat and creativity. The human flaws that are embodied by their current and future children, as well as themselves, will undoubtedly arise again, but Wilder suggests that Americans will continue to persevere. Although its central commentary within its original context is about American Exceptionalism and resilience, the play became popular internationally after the war ended due to its message of the human race’s tenacity in insurmountable adversity. In 1946, The Skin of Our Teeth opened in Darmstadt, a German town that was devastated by bombing, in a partially destroyed theater. Wilder describes in his 1957 preface to Three Plays, that The Skin of Our Teeth “mostly comes alive under conditions of crisis.” The play urges all of humanity to take on what it frames as American qualities—to be prepared to make sacrifices and burn the furniture for the sake of survival but to also save the books and take in the starving refugees.

Preservation, History, and the Cyclical Nature of Human Existence

In the first act, Sabina/Miss Somerset complains that she hates the play. At the end of the play, however, the action resets to the beginning, and Sabina stops to explain to the audience that the play is cyclical. It has no ending because humanity has, thus far, always continued to eke through the threat of apocalypse. In part, this is a message about survival for audiences in an uncertain time, but it also comments on how humanity cycles through historical catastrophes while refusing to learn from its mistakes. The first two acts focus on natural disasters. An ice age is killing everything with a wall of ice, and the family survives by huddling around the fire while others presumably die on the road while attempting to escape. Both factions are fighting for their lives, but only one has been prudent and fortunate enough to take correct measures. Natural selection favors those who use community to stay warm instead of trying to run. In the second act, the people at the convention have warning about the approaching hurricane and apocalyptic flood. They mock George for bringing his family while they partake in carefree revelry. However, George’s wife’s suggestion and his daughter’s help are what save his life, once again offering the evolutionary advantage to those who choose family. In each instance, the family makes choices about who and what survives and what must be left in the past. In the third act, however, the catastrophe is caused by the history that George and Maggie have been ignoring for the sake of preserving their family: Henry’s repetitive violence.

The fortune teller claims that telling the future is easy, but no one can tell the past. She tells the audience that the future is written on people’s faces, much like the mark of Cain is etched on Henry’s. It’s impossible to tell the past, however, because the family has made it unspeakable. Their son’s initial act of violence, when he was Cain and killed his brother Abel, is not only devastating on a personal level for George and Maggie, as it would be for any parents, but it’s the crime that ripples symbolically through history and Judeo-Christian mythology as the first evil act. Cain’s punishment is banishment, but George and Maggie have decided instead to try and erase the event. They change Cain’s name to Henry, and they make the subject a forbidden topic. Both become inarticulate with emotion when any reference comes up, which it inevitably does. Sabina lets it slip to the audience before Henry appears onstage, although she immediately chides herself for saying it. Henry complains that his teachers keep using his old name, and Maggie, overcome at the mention of it, tells her that if he stops hitting people, then everyone will forget who he was. Moses mentions their two sons, causing Maggie to wail with grief. It’s impossible for Maggie, George, or the rest of humanity to forget, but by keeping up the façade of pretending to forget, they protect his continued violent acts, allowing Henry to grow into the enemy of the world. Henry’s cycle is predictable, but the evolutionary advantage of the family unit and instinct to protect one’s offspring becomes a disadvantage when they protect their child who is an active threat to humanity.

As a part of saving humanity from extinction, George prioritizes the preservation of human philosophy and ideals. In the first act, he allows the mammoth and dinosaur to go extinct for the sake of saving the refugees. He tells Maggie over and over to burn anything but his Shakespeare collection. Maggie claims that she would burn whatever needed burning to keep her family alive, but she still keeps the books safe, as George fervently asserts their necessity in rebuilding the world each time it ends. While focusing on the words that he deems to be the best of humanity while silencing the history of his son and the worst of humanity, George is enabling the repetition of a world in which his lofty expectations are continuously renewed and bashed. In the end, progress occurs when George understands that these philosophies are not trapped in the words of historical men but were articulated out of the common experiences of humanity. When George decides not to kill Henry, he finally acknowledges history by offering him another chance—indicating all the unacknowledged chances that came before. Sabina stops history from repeating by halting the strangulation scene between George and Henry and speaking up about the violence that occurred the night before. In turn, Henry realizes that his personal history might be a key in parsing his violent anger. Therefore, humanity can persist and survive extinction, but the cycle only acquires forward momentum if humans can learn from unpleasant histories rather than burying them.

The Persistence of Good, Evil, and Temptation

The title of the play references a biblical allusion to the Book of Job, in which Job describes becoming deathly ill, stating, “I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.” By using this allusion as the title, Wilder is employing Job’s trials and tribulations—God’s tests of his faith—as a metaphor for mankind’s struggle to survive. Within this framework, the virtuous action is to continue on and remain faithful, regardless of what undeserved misfortune and suffering arises. Despite the constant biblical illusions, the Judeo-Christian text is only one layer of the play’s allegory, and morality for the characters is not dictated by any evident deity, but by the needs of survival and, ironically, the established social propriety of a world that is perpetually ending and beginning again. They are the first family of the Bible, doubling as Adam and Eve (or Eva), and the first family of mankind, as George is elected the president of humans in the second act. Unlike Job, whose story in the Old Testament is written as a parable of stalwart and unwavering faith, the Antrobuses are pointedly flawed and corruptible. They aren’t a paragon of perfect goodness, but a universalized prototype of humanity. Maggie is driven primarily by her mammalian instinct to protect her children, and she therefore justifies Henry’s violence, enabling more killing. George has lofty goals for humanity, but he nearly allows them to be dashed due to animalistic lust for Sabina. Yet both willingly save Henry and Sabina in the apocalyptic events of the first and second acts. George and Maggie’s repeated choice to preserve the lives of Henry and Sabina seems in the first two acts like an allegorical representation of the notion that evil and temptation will always there for humanity to fight off and mitigate.

Sabina wants to take Maggie’s place as George’s wife, and she argues in Act I that she is the beauty that inspires his inventions, scheming to steal him in the second act. When she puts on a red bathing suit and tells the fortune teller that she plans to destroy George’s marriage and then destroy every man’s marriage, she becomes the embodiment of lustful temptation. Sabina is attractive and positions herself to tempt George to choose her for her beauty in the beauty contest. She feigns innocence and acts demure to win him over, but what breaks his entrancement is the fear that Sabina’s sexuality might be contagious and corrupting to his daughter. Sabina’s near-success is the result of George’s short-sighted direction to everyone to make it their watchword to enjoy themselves. When the storm approaches, George realizes that he must adopt Maggie’s motto and save the family, but they both give in to Sabina’s pleas to save her too. In the case of Henry, George and Maggie try to erase his violent crimes by changing his name and forbidding the household to talk about the murders he has committed, particularly the first one. However, Henry is still Cain, and his parents can’t stop him from killing. At the end of Act II, Henry will not come aboard the boat and save his own life until his mother calls his real name, confirming that the family wants him and not just Henry, the version of him that they have invented. In the third act, Henry has become a killer on a much more massive scale. When George confronts him, the stage directions note that Henry, in that moment, is the embodiment of pure evil. Yet again, Maggie insists on nurturing Henry, and George decides to give him another chance.

Although Sabina and Henry become the allegorical embodiments of temptation and evil for a few moments in the text, both characters demonstrate by the end of the third act that their personification of these qualities is an illusion. After returning from the war, Sabina tells Maggie and Gladys not to greet her with a kiss, implying that she has been kissed and touched too much by military men. She no longer wishes to tempt anyone, which means that she has returned to the house because the Antrobuses have become her family, and not because she has an ulterior motive to marry George. Sabina also offers to share her bouillon cubes with the family, which are rare and valuable after the war. When Maggie chides her for hoarding them instead of handing them in to be distributed to the community, at first Sabina defends her right to be selfish and take whatever she wants. She eventually gives them up, explaining that she is only a normal person who is tempted by the occasional pleasure. The confrontation between George and Henry appears to be a final showdown between good and evil. According to Sabina, George has resolved to kill his son who, as Sabina says, everyone knows is the enemy. In the end, Henry breaks down and admits that he is angry because he has been hurt and feels empty, and George confesses that he feels an emptiness too. Evil and temptation don’t persist because humanity keeps holding onto them, but because they are qualities that arise within flawed human beings who can still be worth saving. This was a significant message during wartime when abundant propaganda was demonizing even civilians on the other side.