The Life and Works of Arthur Miller - Coursework Example

Arthur Miller Arthur Miller is a famous American playwright who lived in the early half of the 20th century. He helped introduce a new approach to live theater after World War II. As part of the new Modern focus in artistic circles, theater had already begun to focus on realistic portrayals. However, Miller introduced a depth of reality that no one had yet attempted. His plays typically focus on everyday Americans who struggle to reach the American Dream and frequently fail. In his portrayals, Miller explores the various social issues involved in his character’s failures, such as the rapidly changing American landscape in the industrialized age and the new attitudes of women. He also reveals the very human personal weaknesses of his characters as they struggle to attain a quality of life still far from their reach or completely destructive to the family left behind. Miller’s plays also tend to have a broad-reaching appeal in his full development of several characters, allowing him to address political and social issues he witnessed as well as remain true to the original context of his play. With an understanding of the various types of work he has engaged in, it is possible to discuss the various aspects of Miller’s work that have made him famous. Miller is most widely known for his work as a playwright, but he produced some notable works in other areas as well. When he first began working in New York, just out of school and trying to make a name for himself in the Federal Theatre Project, Miller also supported himself by writing scripts for various radio programs like Columbia Workshop (CBS) and Cavalcade of America (NBC) (Liukkonen, 2003). His first novel was published in 1945 following a 1944 tour of Army camps and the subsequent writing of a screenplay entitled “The Story of GI Joe”, also published in 1945. While the screenplay project was never realized, the novel was written in Miller’s understated way, depicting the life of an average New York office worker who finds it necessary to start wearing glasses. From this single event, Miller is able to explore the various aspects of anti-semitism as it is felt but unrecognized, as it is experienced and as it is lived. Throughout his career, he worked as a reporter covering the Nazi trials in Germany and wrote several short stories and even some children’s stories. Following his marriage to Marilyn Monroe, he was able to break into film on a more secure footing, producing The Misfits, Playing for Time, and Everybody Wins based on the play “Some Kind.” He also wrote politically and socially motivated essays and theses based upon his experiences as a suspect during McCarthyism and as an American Jew. During his career, Miller won numerous awards acknowledging the tremendous critical acclaim and popular appeal of his work, including the coveted Pulitzer Prize when he was just 33 years old for “Death of a Salesman.” His critics recognized him as a “great writer, staunch humanitarian and vital human being” (Martin & Centola, 1996). However, this does not necessarily indicate what it was about his writing that enabled him to be recognized as a legendary playwright. His play “Death of a Salesman” examines the final two days in the life of an ordinary man named Willy Loman as he begins losing his sanity and finally commits suicide. Although the time period of the play spans only two days, because of Willy’s failing memory and the distracted way in which Arthur Miller chooses to portray this interaction of memory and the present, the reader, or the viewer, has the opportunity to get to know Willy and his perceptions regarding his relationships pretty well. “Willy Loman is clearly not the usual tragic hero; he is lower middle class and none too clever. The world he inhabits is that of amoral, capitalistic big business rather than one with any clear moral value” (Abbotson, 2000, p. 25), which prevents him from making a meaningful connection with his family in his time of crisis. Willy feels it is his duty, as the man in the family, to go to work regularly – whether it is on his lengthy business trips or a dad at the office from 9-7 or 8 every night really makes little difference – and sacrifice any personal time with the people he loves in order to provide them with monetary support. In this element of the play, Miller demonstrates the dehumanizing effects of this kind of worldview as relationships break down and children are raised without appropriate guidance. “Because material success seems so necessary to Willy, he believes that his sons cannot love him if he is not successful. Love becomes an item to be bought rather than something to be freely given” (Brockett, 1969). Here, Miller points out the natural consequences of such thinking. Critic Harold Bloom has written that Willy Loman “Has confused himself into the belief that without success he does not deserve to be loved... [that] Loman fails to see that familial love never can be deserved, or undeserved, but only is, or is not.” This tragic flaw prevents Willy from finding the comfort in family that family is supposed to provide, it creates a schism between Willy and his beloved oldest son Biff by whom Willy measures his success as a father and it creates a situation in which Willy feels compelled to do the only thing he feels he has left for his family, which is to die. In “The Crucible,” Miller addresses another fundamental American belief – the belief that we are all entitled to a fair trial based upon legal rather than religious judgment. The play is somewhat historical in that it concerns a specific event in history, yet the way in which Miller wrote the play makes it quickly applicable to his modern day concerns of intrigue and accusation. As is demonstrated in the play, society was shifting from one focused on working for the benefit of the community to one in which one worked for the benefit of the self and the family unit. Putnam’s greed for more land is shown during a disagreement between Proctor and Putnam over some lumber that Proctor is hauling back to his house from woods that Putnam insists was willed to him by a grandfather. Proctor tells him, “Your grandfather had a habit of willing land that never belonged to him, if I may say it plain” (Act 1), which is promptly verified by Giles Corey who claims this same grandfather nearly willed away some of Corey’s land as well. The entire community is depicted as being full of these types of resentments ready to bubble to the surface and accusations of witchcraft – or communism – were convenient ways of removing roadblocks to individual success. For every family that occupied land desired by the father of an ‘afflicted’ girl, another woman or man was accused of witchcraft. For every woman who refused to follow the pre-set standards of behavior, another noose was made unless she repented and admitted the evil ways of her past. Although the actions of the play were superficially based upon religious fear of the devil, the actions and events were repeated throughout history including in Miller’s time as a number of artists and playwrights, Miller included, were brought forward on charges of communism, the witchcraft of the 20th century. During the 1950s when Miller wrote his play, several patriotic, freedom loving American citizens had their personal, public and professional lives ruined in much the same way demonstrated in the play by congressional hearings referred to as the McCarthy hearings. Like “The Crucible” and Abigail’s actions in the forest, the driving force of the McCarthy trials were based upon the real espionage activities of Alger Hiss and many other State Department members as they attempted to introduce communist policies into the democratic government. Amerasia, a small pro-Communist publication in the U.S., was found to have highly classified documents printed within its pages and the newspaper became the centerpiece of Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s case in justifying his tenacious pursuit of all those he presumed guilty while innocent (Evans, 1997). In writing his play, Miller was attempting to warn the public about the danger unleashed through such unquestioned hearings and practices that are only now beginning to be recognized as the country swings back toward the left. As these plays demonstrate, Miller was justifiably recognized not only for his ability to capture the spirit of the ‘little man’ in America in characters such as Willy Loman, but also for his ability to really examine the deep moral conscience of the country. His plays asked if various concepts in our society that seemed contradictory were really something we believe in. In asking these questions, Miller attempts to expose the fallacies of the American myth where they exist. His unyielding humanism enabled him to demonstrate the ridiculous situations his characters could face as a result of their own greed and pride, yet also present them in a sympathetic light, enabling others to view them this way as well. Rather than hating Willy, the audience instead finds itself rooting for him, hoping that something will happen for him. Even his more historical work, such as “The Crucible” has been shown to have been based on the real life contemporary experience of the McCarthy trials. This dedication to reality combined with his ability to evoke sympathy for his very personal characters enabled his work to appeal to critics and audiences alike. They were real, they were human, they captured the emotion and they related on not only an individual level but on a macro-social level as well. This is what he was recognized for and this is what he is remembered for. Works Cited Abbotson, Susan C. Student Companion to Arthur Miller. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000. Bloom, Harold. Bloom’s Notes: Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. Broomall, PA: Chelsea House Publications, 1996. Brockett, Oscar G. “An Introduction to Death of a Salesman.” The Theatre: An Introduction. 2nd Ed. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969. Evans, M. Stanton. “McCarthyism: Waging the Cold War in America.” Human Events. (May 30, 1997). May 12, 2009 Liukkonen, Petri. “Arthur Miller.” Books and Writers. Finland: Pegasos, 2003. Martin, Robert A. & Centola, Steven R. (Eds.). The Theatre Essays of Arthur Miller. New York: Viking Books, 1996. Miller, Arthur. The Crucible. New York: Penguin Classics, 2003. Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman. New York: Viking Press, 1949. Read More