Arthur Miller
(1915-2005)
from
"Fields of Vision by D.Delaney”
Life
Early
years Arthur Miller was born in 1915 in New York City into a middle-class Jewish
family whose economic standing suffered during the economic crisis of the Great
Depression years. He studied journalism and then English at the University of Michigan, while producing a number of
plays which were awarded important university prizes. In 1938 he started
working as a freelance writer in New
York.
The years of success His
early plays were poorly received in New
York. However, in 1947 he wrote All My Sons, which met with critical and public success. In 1949
Miller wrote his most famous work, Death
of a Salesman. The play met with enthusiastic reviews and was a huge
success. It received, among many other prestigious awards, the Pulitzer Prize.
The period of the Cold War in the USA was marked
by the McCarthy investigations of citizens alleged to be involved with the
Communist Party. The tense political situation inspired Miller’s work, The
Crucible (1953), in which he used the seventeenth-century Salem witch hunts as an allegory for the
McCarthy trials. The play and Miller’s left-wing views made him a target of
McCarthy’s committee. He was called to testify on his political ideas and
allegiances, and because he refused to co-operate he was condemned for contempt
of Congress. The ruling was, however, later reversed.
Personal life The
mid-50s were also turbulent times in
Miller’s personal life. He divorced his first wife and married Hollywood actress Marilyn Monroe. The marriage ended in
divorce in 1961. The self-destructive central character of his highly
autobiographical play After the Fall (1964) was openly modeled on the actress,
who had just committed suicide.
Later works In the
1960s Miller produced two more plays: Incident
at Vichy (1964), which explored the anti-Semitic ideas which led to the
Holocaust, and The Price (1968), dealing
with the themes of individual responsibility and guilt on which success is
often based.
In the years 1970-1990 Miller did not
concentrate on producing for the theatre. His plays are still staged on and off
in theatres all over the world. A Hollywood version
of The Crucible starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Winona Ryder appeared in 1996.
Works
Arthur Miller is regarded as one of the great
American playwrights. In his works he skillfully presents strongly emotional
conflicts and keen social criticism. His characters are often victims of their
social or family background who are confronted with the consequences of their
actions.
All My Sons One
of Miller’s favorite themes is showing that many people attain the American
Dream through making moral compromises that end up destroying their lives. All
My Sons (1947), for example, is about a man who, during the Second
World War, produced defective parts for aeroplanes to save his business from
failing. The aircrafts crashed and the pilots died. Following this deceit the
man loses both his sons. When he comes to the realization that the dead pilots
were also "all his sons”, he accepts his responsibility for his crime and kills
himself.
Death
of a Salesman In Death
of a Salesman, his most admired work, Miller exposes the bleak condition of
a life blindly lived in pursuit of material success. Willy Loman is a
travelling salesman who is fired after a lifetime of loyal service to a
company. Unable to accept reality and to cope with his failure in life, he
withdraws from the present and its unbearable truth and retreats to the past in
his mind. The story is told through flashbacks that shift time backwards and
forwards.
The theme of integrity in the face of adversity
is central to The Crucible (1953). At the end of the play the protagonist is
given the chance to save his own life by confessing to witchcraft and naming
names, but he chooses not to betray his friends and is condemned to death.
Last works The
theme of guilt leading to a man’s downfall, which is dealt in All My Sons, reappears in another successful work, A View from the Bridge, produced in 1955. In the play the
social criticism which inspired Miller’s earlier plays is replaced by a strong
emphasis on individual conflicts and responsibilities. When critics attacked
this evolution, Miller returned, to his favorite theme of families and lives
destroyed by the attempt to achieve success at any rate in The Price (1968).
Reputation Although
Miller’s later plays have confirmed his reputation, it is the work that he produced
in the 1950s that has earned him his place among America’s greatest
playwrights.
External Links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Miller
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