ABSTRACT
In Thornton Wilder’s novel The Eighth Day, a typical Illinois town provides the setting for a turn-of-the-century celebration that reflects the anticipations of those Americans who identified change and hope with the coming of the year 1900. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, Americans who had witnessed the destructive effects of industrialization were subject to a naive yearning for a rebirth of native optimism and a resuscitation of the bright promises of science and technology. Wilder’s title is taken from the theme of a speech by a community leader who voices the concerns and expectations of those times in words of evolutionary religion. Wilder’s speaker envisions the new century as an “eighth day,” after Genesis, and men of this century as a new breed, free from the past and heir to the future.
