Arthur Miller s Drama

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1 Arthur Miller s Drama by Mark Leech English Association Bookmarks No. 44

2 Arthur Miller s Drama by Mark Leech Arthur Miller s Drama by Mark Leech Scope of Topic: The aim of this Bookmark is to examine the relationship between the tragic tradition and twentiwth-century attitudes to drama as shown in Miller s work. BOOKS TO READ: Arthur Miller, All My Sons (1947) Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman (1949) Arthur Miller, A View From The Bridge (1955) Arthur Miller, The Price (1965) Arthur Miller, The Last Yankee (1993) Arthur Miller, The Tragedy of the Common Man (Essay, 1958) NOTES The fish is in the water and the water is in the fish... Has Arthur Miller stripped tragedy of buskins and dressed it in jeans and sneakers? Or are his plays merely social dramas? I shall address these questions to a study of three of Miller s best known plays: All My Sons (1947), Death of a Salesman (1949) and A View From The Bridge (1955). They challenge the tradition of tragedy from its first description in Aristotle s Poetics through the conventions of Shakespearean tragedy to the present day. An important question concerns the dramatic protagonist; in tragedy his character is a central preoccupation, whereas in social drama it is secondary. The question that needs to be resolved is whether the protagonist s fall is a consequence of hamartia (originally fatal error and a key element in tragedy) or whether he is a victim of the values of his community (the theme of a social drama). The nature of the tragic protagonist has always been important. Aristotle in his Poetics states that he is not conspicuous for virtue and justice...(his) fall into misery is not due to vice and depravity, but rather to some error, a man who enjoys prosperity and a high reputation. In Shakespearean tragedy, the error is more often a vicious mole in nature: that is, a fatal flaw of character (for example, procrastination in Hamlet). In both cases Aristotelian and Shakespearean, the fall originates within, and here lies an important problem for Miller. If Joe Keller in All My Sons is conditioned by the external values of American Society into committing his error, then the play is in truth a critique of these values and therefore a social drama. In Sophocles Oedipus Rex, the protagonist is fated by the gods to murder his English Association and Mark Leech, 1999 and

3 father and marry his mother; there is nothing he can do about it. In Miller s plays society takes the place of the gods and ordains the fates of men in the same way. They are trapped into committing wrongful acts by forces beyond their control. Does Joe Keller ship out faulty cylinder-heads that he knows may kill young pilots because he has been indoctrinated into believing that his perception of the American Dream - that his sons should have a successful business - comes first? Miller asserts in his essay The Tragedy of the Common Man that the fish is in the water and the water is in the fish : that is, man is part of society and society is part of man. This intermingling of the two is evident in the speech of Willy Loman - he uses clichés constantly (e.g. the man who gets ahead knock em dead ). As a twentieth century dramatist, Miller is aware of the external pressures exerted upon a person even at the same time as they are part of that person: that is, that man is to some extent a product of his society and is therefore subject to its rules. In order to make the tragedy make sense to a modern audience (in a way that would not have been necessary for a Greek or Shakespearean audience), this element of social awareness has to be included. What is the fault of society is also the fault of the man. In these plays, the social aspect of the drama is represented by the reference to the American Dream as a form of motivation for each of the protagonists. In All My Sons, Joe Keller s motive for his crime is that he was creating a business for you his sons. This myopic goal is contrasted with his son Chris values which came from mutual dependence on others in wartime (he says that his men killed themselves for each other ). In A View From the Bridge, the basis for the development of Eddie Carbone s problems is that the wants his niece Catherine to be in a nice office : that is, to ascend one step on the social ladder to success. He believes that his success in America will be had by proxy through her. In Death of a Salesman, there is a conflict between two ways of achieving success, the route of ruthless individuality illustrated by Ben ( never fight fair with a stranger ) and the route of cooperation, of contacts and of being well-liked, of which the paragon is Dave Singleman: what could be more satisfying than to be remembered and loved and helped by so many different people? It is this conflict between two opposing ideals, neither of which is his true nature, which is in the main responsible for Willy Loman s fall. In him, as in the other characters, social influence and the weaknesses of the individual are so closely intertwined that they cannot be separated as distinct causes of a man s fall. As he is a product of the combination of both, he is therefore a victim of both The fish is in the water and the water is in the fish, and the fish never can be free of that element. For Miller, the social status of the protagonist is also problematic. In Shakespeare s four great tragedies are Othello, a general, Macbeth, a lord, Hamlet, a prince, and Lear, a king, all characters whose fall has repercussions far beyond personal anguish. Society is convulsed by the fall of Lear; there is no need to labour the point for him as for Willy Loman that attention must be paid. Everyone looks on. As Rosencrantz observes in Hamlet, never did the king sigh/ But with a general groan. The fall of Willy Loman, his status evident in his name ( low man ), excites no equivalent feeling in his world. Why didn t anybody come? asks Linda at his funeral. The audience may be able to sympathise more with a man whose name was never in the paper and whose life kept ringing up a zero, but is there any reason why they should care about his fate? This problem leads to the artifical elevation of the protagonist in the text (Willy Loman is described as a fine, troubled prince ) and to Miller s assertion, again in his essay The Tragedy of the Common Man, that a man s death is an essentially terrifying thing. He also claims: It matters not whether a modern play concerns itself with a grocer or a president if the hero s commitment ito his course is less than the maximum possible. Here is Miller s definitive statement about the nature of a tragic hero as he percieves him: he must be totally devoted to his course and admit of no compromise; he cannot walk away. However, he must be offered routes of escape, all of which of course he must reject: If the hero is offered alternatives of a magnitude to have materially changed the course of his life, then it seems to me... he cannot be debarred form the heroic role. English Association and Mark Leech, 1999 and

4 As long as the hero could have acted otherwise and not committed his error, then he can be called a tragic hero. Again, Miller states his belief that it is the protagonist s commitment to his course that makes him admirable and therefore worthy of pity. This is displayed in Death of a Salesman when Willy Loman could have taken a job from Charley, or in A View From The Bridge when Eddie Carbone could have gone to the wedding. The hero cannot settle for half and, even if he had the wrong dreams, we can identify with his constancy and feel fear and pity at his fall. One further element of tragedy, according to Aristotle, is that it should evoke fear and pity : i.e., that tragedy should arouse both these emotions. Pity is awakened by undeserved misfortune occurring to someone just like ourselves. The moral status of the an impinges upon the concept of fear and pity, because the character for whom we are to feel these emotions must be one with whom we can identify: other wise, his fall will arouse no fear in us that his fate may be our fate. We must also be able to sympathise with him or we shall feel no pity for him as a man whom we can understand. In A View from The Bridge, Eddie Carbone s perception of the American Dream (that is, improving the social status of his niece), however pure it may have been, is tainted by the jealous, and incestuous feelings within him. Can we feel pity for a man who, when he was himself, purely, was no better than an Animal! at least to Marco? Miller risks creating what Aristotle called an utterly worthless man by placing his hero at the very edges of acceptability. Similarly, Willy Loman is an adulterer, a boaster who indoctrinates his sons into false values, Joe Keller knowingly ships out the faulty cylinder-heads and betrays his friend. The audience could quite easily despise each one and fear and pity would not be evoked. However, Miller claims that it is his protagonists complete faithfulness to their chosen values which should arouse these emotions. The fact that Willy Loman cannot walk away and compromise like the rest of us makes him in Miller s eyes admirable and awesome, despite his wrongdoings. Even if this is unacceptable, in every case the protagonist is not an evil man but one, like Othello, who loved not wisely but too well. His love, be it for Catherine, Biff or Chris, was so complete that it blinded him to the consequences of his actions. A third essential element of Aristotelian tragedy is that anagnorisis or discovery, whereby the hero becomes in some way enlightened. Aristotle calls it a change from ignorance to knowledge. In Oedipus Rex, this leads to his fall. For Macbeth, it is an inherent contradiction in the suggestion that a man fanatically devoted to his course can learn and develop. If Eddie Carbone is utterly set upon the idea that Catherine must ascend a step on the social ladder - and Miller s point is that this is the reason we should admire him - there is no way that he can learn that his values are All, all wrong, for in doing, he would lose that very quality which Miller calls tragic-the fact that he cannot walk away it could be said that Joe Keller leans that they were all my sons, but it seems more likely that he kills himself because he has earned the contempt of Larry. Nevertheless, he, Eddie Carbone and Willy Loman do experience a form of anagnorisis. Keller, though he never admits that he did wrong confesses they were all my sons...i guess they were. Eddie is told, whether he accepts it or not (That s what you think of me...that I would have such thoughts? ), of the incestuous desire that is the real reason why he will not let Catherine marry Rodolpho. Willy learns that Biff always loved me. These discoveries do not affect the fate of the characters, but they are instances of anagnorisis as Miller sees it; that is, the exposure of a passion which has been consciously or subconsciously concealed, the return of the repressed. However, the protagonist is not diverted from his doom; it is other characters who learn from his fate. It can be argued that Miller has indeed redefined the nature of the tragic hero by transferring the experience of discovery to a younger character who learns and benefits morally by casting off the old restraints. In All My Sons, Joe Keller s son Chris learns the hollowness of the ideal of success: Keller: For you, a business for you! Chris: For me!...i was dying every day and you were killing my boys...you re not even an animal, no animal kills his own English Association and Mark Leech, 1999 and

5 Chris sees that his father s values are false, and so he will not fall by the same means. He tries to communicate with Keller, but the older man tries to defend himself until the revelation of the letter ( Half the goddamn country has gotta go if I go! ). In Death of a Salesman, Biff learns the folly of going against one s own values in pursuit of a false dream and his selfassertion ( I know who I am, kid ) rather than Happy s continued self-deception is the proof that Willy Lowman did not die in vain. Both sons lose faith in their fathers and in doing avoid the same fate. If one accepts all the alterations that Miller has made in the tragic tradition, the question still remains whether his plays are tragedies or social dramas. His motive behind the use of society is the crucial factor. M.W. Steinberg claims that Willy Loman can never achieve heroic stature because of Miller s too strong concern with criticism of his society. Does Miller seek to alter society or merely to observe it? The accusation that he seeks to change it is easily levelled - in each play, the theme of the down side of the American Dream, the destructive drive to succeed, is constantly to the fore. Is Miller condemning the Dream or merely describing the fate of those whose blindness to all else destroys them? Representatives of success, particularly in Death of a Salesman, are not unsympathetic figures. Howard Wagner sacks Willy Loman, but he is no capitalist ogre. Charley, a successful businessman, helps to pay Willy s bills. Miller is not necessarily attacking them or their values; rather, he sees the fate of a man who tries to emulate them against his own nature. Willy Loman may be true to his ideals, but he did not heed Polonius advice to thine own self be true : as Biff says, there s more of him in that front stoop than in all the sales he ever made. Willy Loman is a practical outdoor man who tried to suppress this side of his character in order to live up to acquired ideals in the city. Miller is concerned with the fate of one man who makes his own evils out of the world around him. Willy Loman absorbs values form his environment that are alien to him because he has deceived himself about the true nature of that environment. His fall is neither wholly his fault nor society s. The fish is in the water and the water is in the fish once more. Miller s later plays confront the same issues, but they do not reach a tragic conclusion, The Price (1965) ends with Solomon the furniture dealer laughing with tears in his eyes, howling helplessly in the air, a stark contrast to the keening of the women that ends A View From the Bridge. And yet in the later play, all the hallmarks of a Miller tragedy are present. As in Death of a Salesman there are two sons heavily influenced by their father. The self-delusion of one son Victor (that he sacrificed his career in medicine to care for his ruined father) is coupled with his belief that success such as that achieved by his brother Walter is the sole real aim of life. This belief has coloured his existence and embittered him towards his brother, whose return, akin to that of George in All My Sons could set off a chain of events leading to tragedy. Other aspects of Miller s craft - the significance of family, the most vital part of life for Willy, Keller and Eddie, and in the use of music, which reached its highest pitch in Death of a Salesman, with Ben s theme - are also present, giving no indication that this play should be any different from the others. And yet, though Victor does not alter in his interpretation of the world ( you re not turning me into a walking fifty-year-old mistake! ) and he fulfils Miller s definition of a tragic hero - Miller does not make him die like Joe Keller or Eddie Carbone. It seems that Miller s view of the world has altered so that the same circumstances do not lead to death. The conflict between Victor and Walter is there by left unresolved, but there is hope at the end that Victor s continued existence could lead to some change within him. Perhaps Miller was influenced by the rise of absurdist plays in the 1950s and 1960s, particularly Beckett s Waiting For Godot. Situations that appeared beforehand to be tragic now appear to be absurd, hence the maniacal laughter that concludes The Price. Instead of the tragedy of a doomed man indirectly benefiting others, such as Biff, the later protagonists need no longer be doomed and perhaps will benefit himself from the play s revelations. There is hope after the reversals and realisation. For Miller now, the flaw is not necessarily fatal. English Association and Mark Leech, 1999 and

6 Similarly, The Last Yankee (1993) approaches the same issues as Death of a Salesman: the results of adherence to the wrong values. We are confronted again in Frick by a man who has pursued success at the expense of all else, and in Leroy the carpenter by one who has remained true to his natural outdoor self, even if he has not achieved material success. Rather than Frick s self-delusion leading to a death, however, we are shown his alienation from his wife; this is contrasted with the harmony that grows between Leroy and his wife Patricia. There is created a situation similar to that in the earlier plays, where success and failure (in terms of wealth) are contrasted, but, rather than a Requiem as a conclusion, the play ends with the image of Patricia s recovery from her mental breakdown and her claim that I ve certainly got a whole lot to look forward to. However the most important aspect of Miller s new apprehension of the issues he addresses, though we do not see it in Frick in the play (his wife remains in the mental hospital because of his refusal to change his views) is that the potential for tragedy has become the potential for recovery. Further Reading Aristotle, Poetics Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot (1955) Arthur Miller, The Crucible (1953) Timebends (1987) William Shakespeare, Hamlet Othello King Lear Macbeth Sophocles, Oedipus Rex M.W. Steinberg, Arthur Miller and the idea of Modern Tragedy (Essay, 1960) Mark Leech wrote this Bookmark whilst an A level student at Newcastle-under-Lyme in Staffordshire before going on to study at St Anne s College, Oxford. Arthur Miller s Drama by Mark Leech is Number 44 in the Bookmark series, published by The English Association University of Leicester University Road Leicester LE1 7RH UK Tel: Fax: engassoc@le.ac.uk Potential authors are invited to contact the following at the address above: Series Editor Victor Hext Shakespeare Bookmarks Primary Bookmarks Secondary Bookmarks Kerri English Corcoran-Martin Association and Mark Leech, 1999 and Louise 2007 Ellis-Barrett Ian Brinton 6

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