Arthur Miller's | Death Of A Salesman | Life And Work Of Arthur Miller

Arthur Miller's | Death Of A Salesman | Life And Work Of Arthur Miller

Arthur Miller ( 1915-2005 )

Life And Work Of Arthur Miller

Life Sketch:- Arthur Miller was born in New York on 17th October, 1915 and died in 2005. Miller's early school life left no significant impression on his mind. Years later when his teachers tried to recall him, none could do so Miller had almost been inconspicuous in his school and it is not surprisihg. He and his classmates were more interested in playing football than in poring over text books.

Miller's father was gifted with an enlivening sense of humour, like Joe Keller of 'All My Sons'. He had a shop and was a manufacturer of ladies' coats. In addition to Arthur, in his family he had an elder brother, Kermit and a sister Joan, who was six years younger and became an actress later.

Miller was essentially influenced by years of the Depression in America. It was the depression that gave him a passionate understanding of man's insecurity in modern industrial civilization. his deep rooted belief in social responsibility and his moral earnestness.

Before rising meteorically to the fame of a dramatist, which we are familiar with, Miller had led unknown life as a truck-driver, waiter, crewman one factor-he grew up during the on a tanker and so on. His plays show a sympathetic understanding of ordinary employments like the ones names above. Before writing these well-known plays, Miller had written eight one of which had been produced in the professional theatre.

In March 1954, the state department refused him a passport to attend the opening of 'The Crucible' in Brussels, on the ground that he was supporting the Communist movement -a denied. or nine desk-drawer plays, only charge which Miller categorically denied.

In 1940, Miller married a girl name Mary Slattery. She bore him a son and a daughter, But the unien ended in a divorce in June, 1956. On 29th June, 1956, Miller married the glamorous Hollywood actress, Marilyn Monroe. The Marriage of beauty and intellect created sensation. This marriage, however, lasted only four years. Miller now went abroad and met Miss Ingeborg Morath, an Austrian photographer whom he married in 1962.

Miller is not a prolific writer. He writes only when he feels he need for it. What he writes, is great. It is not lack of invention or dearth of ideas that limits him, but an excess of self-criticism coupled with a restless intellect Miller's works when seen in an order, exhibit a development in the direction of simplicity in construction and immediacy in language.
Principal Dramatic Works of Arthur Miller:

The major dramatic works of Arthur Miller are:

'The man who had all the Luck' (1944)

The theme ofthis drama is clearly rooted in the nineteen thirties. It belongs to an age of privation and disquiet, of economic insecurity, when wealth seems the product of luck rather than merit, and when guilt is the response proper to the decent minded possessor of money.

All My Sons (1947):- It's a drama about guilt and responsibility. The Security of Chris Keller's middle class existence is turned into a nightmare when he discovers that his much loved father Joe was responsible, through his part in supplying defective equipment to the Army Air Force, for the deaths of twenty- one pilots, an offence for which he deliberately allowed his business partner to become the scapegoat. Confronted with Chris revulsion and the revelation that his second son, Larry, a pilot long listed as missing in action, killed himselfto expiate his father's crime, Joe Keller commits suicide.

Death of a Salesman (1949): It is Miller's best known play. It is the story of Willy Loman, a little man with many dreams and delusions. He has completely accepted the American myth that promises a man and wealth if he has acquired a good personality and pleasant social manners. In the end, Willy has lost everything, including his own self- respect, and has nothing more to lose except his life. Willy Loman the pathetic. perennial failure, entangled in his own dreams of glory, his continuous self delusion, and his fanatical faith in his older son - is a typical Miller 'anti- hero'. He is perhaps Miller's greatest character creation.

The Crucible (1953):- It is a dramatic retelling of the historic Salem with trials of 1692-93 in New England during which hundreds of people popularity P were arrested and twenty persons were put to death. The ordeal begis when a group of hysterical young girls accuse first a Negro slave and then a number of prominent citizens, men and women, of witchcraft. During the general hysteria that follows, the judges a of the time and justice fails. The hero, John Proctor is accused by one of the young girls whose advances he had formerly rejected. Although he is given a chance to save himself by acknowledging his guilt, he chooses instead N caught up in the blind fanaticism are stand firmly by his principle and die.

A View from th Bridge (1955):- It's drama concerning the tragic consequences of Eddie Corbone's incestuous love for his eighteen years old niece Catherine, whom he adopted after her mother's death. Previously, 'A view from the Bridge' was a one act play and published and produced in New York in 1955. Later Miller revised and expanded the drama into two Acts, and its subsequent London production achieved considerable success.

A Memory of Two Mondays (1955):- One act play that examines a group of factory workers trapped without hope of relief in their mechanical jobs and dreary lives. It was published and produced in New York in 1955. The production of the play was not entirely happy and it closed after a moderate run of149 performances.

After the fall & Incident at Vichy (1964):- The first of these two plays is an excessively long self-analysis by a character whose biography closely resembles Miller's own. The second is a kind of round table discussion over a grave, an incident (as the title says) in which one man finds the power to act. Although these two plays are very different in superficial ways, they are alike in' theme and tone. In these two plays, the heroes are not in struggle; they are in analysis. The analysis is successful when they accept that they fit the love-hate stereotype of the psychological man.

The Price (1968):- Play in which two brothers meet many years afte their father's death to dispose of the family furniture. In it the dramatis explores his concern with, life's balance of payments. The play, while longe than 'Incident at Vichy' is written with the some tight simple form, and in Miller returns to the family as the locus of action. The plays considered above show Miller's concern for man and socie and are replete with power and proportion, substance and form. Th immediately place him as one of the great American dramatists of the twentie century.