George and Maggie Antrobus live a seemingly perfect life in suburban Excelsior, New Jersey, along with their children, Henry and Gladys, and their maid, Sabina. Little do they know that the Ice Age is upon them, the Floods are coming, and War is on the horizon. The story of the Antrobus’ journey through time is the story of mankind: surviving disaster by the skin of their teeth. The Antrobus’ weather heat waves and deep freezes, pestilence, plague, dozens of wars and even more depressions, and -- through it all -- they keep moving forward. An allegory for the inspiring journey of the “Ancient and Honorable Order of Mammals, Subdivision Humans,” Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Skin of Our Teeth is a moving, hilarious, absurd tribute to the “indestructibility of humanity.”
The Skin of Our Teeth guide sections