ALA
Paper Abstracts for the Miller Panel at 2003 ALA
From: Vol. 7 June 2003 p. 2-3
Panel Title: ìRadio Drama, Short Stories and Plays: Connective Relationships in the Works of Arthur Millerî
"The Nature of the Beast: An examination of The Pussycat and
the Expert Plumber Who Was a Man, by Arthur Miller"
Presented by Richard K. Tharp, University of Maryland at College Park
At 10:30 PM Eastern Standard Time on Sunday 29 September 1940, the CBS radio network aired The Columbia Workshop, an experimental radio series specializing in original radio plays. On that evening, the broadcast was entitled "The Pussycat and the Expert Plumber Who Was a Man," written by twenty-five-year-old Arthur Miller. Although the bulk of his early radio work evaded publication, as had most radio plays by other writers, "The Pussycat and the Expert Plumber Who Was a Man" found its way into a 1941 collection of radio plays. For the next six decades, scholars dissected this printed script and used quotations from it to illustrate Millerís literary themes and development as a dramatist. However, Arthur Miller did not intend to radio scripts for reading audiences. He did intend these creations to serve as the impetus for productions of broadcasts directed toward listening audiences. An examination of the radio career of Arthur Miller uncovers important questions for scholars concerning evidence and the nature of objects under investigation. The primary question is: in regards to a radio play, what should be the nature of the object under examination? Is it the published script, a recording of the audio broadcast, or a combination of both? This paper addresses this question by comparing the published script of Miller's radio play to its original incarnation as a radio broadcast in 1940. The analysis reveals differences that point to not only what Miller could do as a dramatist, but also what he was precluded from doing.
"'Family Romances' and the Struggle to Form Desire as depicted in Arthur
Miller's Short Story 'I Don't Need You Anymore'"
Presented by Lew Livesay, St.Peterís College, NJ.
This paper examines the oedipal struggles that make "I Don't Need You Anymore" an intertext drawing upon Freud's "The Uncanny," "A Child Is Being Beaten," and "Family Romances." The main character's rivalry with his brother and the libido-anguish projected on each parent in this 1959 story underlie the attempt to establish one's own desire as the basis of identity. That five-year old Martin is not yet a self-sufficient individual is clear by his inability to maintain borders and separations. Constant references to boundaries such as skin, clothes, the blanket, or bedroom doors cast the struggle in figurative terms. In its effort to establish temporal narrative within the individual conscience of a five-year old boy, this story defines desire and individuality in a way that gives new resonance to how the uncanny haunts the psychic trap of recurring primal scenes. An inability to establish one's own desire, free of familial expectation, plagues many of Miller's mature protagonists in the plays. In "I Don't Need You Anymore," we can see the psychic dilemma dramatized in the earliest stage of human development.
"Materialism, Socialism and Paternal Conflict in Arthur Miller's All
My Sons"
Presented by Susan C.W. Abbotson, Rhode Island College
The 1940s began amidst the throes of destructive international conflict,
but saw the development of an even more destructive, domestic conflict,
within the family itself. Many fathers and sons had been dislocated from
their homes by the draft, some never returning. Those who did return, either
found that the world had changed in their absence, or felt a need to change
it in the light of the experiences they had gone through. Both change,
and efforts for further change, met with angered resistance.
Tension runs high between the family characters
in Arthur Miller's All My Sons. Their "anger" is alternatively repressed
and released in a series of explosive conflicts. This article attempts
to uncover the historical and sociological roots beneath such outbursts;
not only in terms of the characters themselves, but also by comparing them
to Miller's own family members. The role of "father," and how that has
been affected by the times is central to a conflict which appears to lead
to the complete breakdown of the traditional Western family unit. The Kellers
are finally torn apart by the underlying, and inherently conflicting, ideologies
of materialism and socialism.
Paper Abstracts for the Miller Panel at 2005 ALA
From: Vol. 11 June 2005 p. 16-18
Panel Title: "Teaching Miller in Multiple Contexts"
"Music, Miller and Making the Classroom Sing"
Presented by Carlos Campo, Community College of Southern Nevada
In this lecture/recital, I hoped to reveal the complex thematic unity
reflected in the choices Miller makes for music in his plays. For
the purpose of illustration, I focused on two examples, one well-known,
and the other new to most instructors and scholars. The role of "Paper
Doll" in A View From The Bridge has been commented on by several
critics, who have pointed to the "robber motif" reflected in the song.
I covered other aspects of the song, including the gender conflict and
the inherent perversity of the lyrical content. "Shenandoah," a river shanty
from the 1820s is featured in "Clara," yet has not yet received critical
attention. Miller uses the folk song to jog the memory of Jack Kroll, the
play's protagonist. Kroll cannot remember the name of his daughter Clara's
murderer, until he hears himself sing "Shenandoah" on an old record that
Clara had. Like "Paper Doll," "Shenandoah" sets the tone for several important
themes in the play, including racism and idealism.
By performing both songs, I hoped to illustrate
that music is an effective tool for teaching Miller. I wrote that "because
a musical piece reflects its cultural milieu, it provides educators with
a gateway to a myriad of discussions, including class, gender, historical
and social elements, and many others." Performance aspects of both songs
are further revealed when an instructor plays a recording or performs the
music with the class collaboratively. Exposing students to the intricate
connection between music and Miller's drama may give them a new appreciation
for the works, while the music itself can help transform the predictability
of many classrooms.
"Towards a Humanistic Democracy: The Balancing Acts of Arthur Miller
and August Wilson"
Presented by Susan C. W. Abbotson, Rhode Island College
Though a number of critics have pointed to a surface similarity between August Wilson's eighties play Fences and Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, the comparisons have mostly been disengenuous for they fail to show the more pervasive thematic similarities and authorial intents which exist between the works of these two major American playwrights. The 35 year time difference between the productions partly accounts for this, as any comparison between these playwrights works better by paying attention to the plays they were writing concurrently during the1980s and 1990s. Setting these two writers side by side helps draw out their surprisingly similar philosophic goals, and artistic means of achieving these, and to teach them together could only benefit a student's understanding of each. Given time constraints, I cannot possibly do any comparison full justice here, but I can at least make a case for a subject worthy of further study, and offer suggestions as to why it would be a valuable classroom pursuit
"Arthur Millerís New York"
Presented by Stephen Marino, St. Francis College
Literary critics have long focused on how certain novelists create geographical
locations which function as central settings throughout many of the works
in their canons. Of note are Thomas Hardy's Wessex, James Joyce's Dublin,
Saul Bellow's Chicago, and William Faulkner's American South. For
these novelists, the cultural, political, social, and religious histories
of the geographical regions in which they were born and/ or lived became
the subject of their work: the raw material of real places transformed
into fictional landscapes.
In the same way, the playwright Arthur Miller used
his native New York City and its surrounding environs as the central focus
of many of his major dramas and fiction. Throughout his career, Miller
transformed the defining experiences of his youth and early adulthood formed
primarily on the streets and neighborhoods of the New York boroughs of
Manhattan and Brooklyn and created a dramatic landscape where his characters
encounter the cultures, ethnic, religious, and economic issues indigenous
in twentieth century New York City.
The amount of work in which Miller used New York
locations is staggering. Miller placed nine of his major plays in New York.
Death
of a Salesman, A Memory of Two Mondays, A View From the Bridge, After the
Fall, The Price, The American Clock, The Ride Down Mt. Morgan, Broken Glass,
Mr. Peter's Connections all have settings in which the characters'
interactions with the cityscape significantly determine the events of the
plays. Much of the action of Millerís only novel, Focus, occurs
in the borough of Queens, and boldly confronts for the first time in American
literature the issue of anti-Semitism. In addition, most of Miller's short
fiction, especially the recent pieces in the New Yorker, Esquire, The
Atlantic Monthly, and Harper's depict New York settings which
are catalysts in the main characters' conflicts. In particular, his novella,
Homely Girl, A Life creates a sweeping landscape of time and emotion
in Manhattan.
AMS Conferences
Paper Abstracts from the Eighth International Arthur Miller Conference, Nicloet College, Wisconsin. "Miller and Middle America"
From: Vol. 8 December 2003 p. 1-9
Keynote Address: "Listening to America"
Presented by Chrsitopher Bigsby, University of East Anglia
Playing audio tapes from Miller's voice recordings made in Wilmington, NC for a 1940 project to capture the accents of America, parts of a recording of Millerís reactions listening to these tapes 62 years on, and extracts from recordings of some of Miller's early radio plays, the importance of Miller's early experiences, including his radio work as a training ground for his later work is usefully emphasized.
"'Physician Heal Thyself': Arthur Miller's Portrayal of Doctors"
Presented by Stephen Marino, St. Francis College, Brooklyn
In his new work, The Temptation of Innocence in the Dramas of Arthur
Miller, Terry Otten points out how any reader of Miller knows how his
work is filled with references to jail, crime, and the law. Consequently,
many of his plays contain lawyers as both major and minor characters.
Of course, the most notable examples are George Deever in All My Sons,
Bernard in Salesman, Alfieri in A View From the Bridge, Quentin
in After the Fall, and Tom Wilson in The Ride Down Mt. Morgan.
These attorneys have been the subject of significant critical scrutiny
which focuses on their action as conduits to the moral truth that the particular
play illustrates.
However, Miller also has filled his plays with a
substantial number of doctors as both major and minor characters.
And unlike the somewhat consistent depiction of lawyers as moral arbiters,
Millerís physicians often have personal conflicts which impinge upon their
professional lives. Some are trusted by their patients; others doubted;
one approaches a violation of his Hippocratic Oath. Most have difficulty,
certainly much more than Miller's lawyers, in discerning the relevance
of truth to themselves. They seem most conflicted by their personal
and public roles, and their debt to the self and society, struggles which
Miller himself consistently has pointed out are at the center of all the
great plays.
This paper examines the significant role that doctors
have played in Arthur Miller's dramatic canon. It surveys the large
number of physicians who appear in Miller's plays, first making distinctions
between major and minor characters, and between medical doctors and psychiatrists.
The discussion then focuses on Peter Stockmann in An Enemy of the People,
Walter in The Price, Leduc in Incident at Vichy, and Harry
Hyman in Broken Glass. It concludes with a brief discussion
of the significance of absent doctors in the plays. Leduc's self-analysis
at the end of Incident at Vichy, ìIn my profession one gets the
habit of looking at oneself quite impersonally (65)î is the touchstone
for the discussion.
"Miller, Marriage, and Middle America: An Uneasy Embrace"
Presented by Carlos Campo, Community College of South Nevada, Las Vegas
The American Heritage Dictionary defines "Middle America"
as: "1. That part of the U.S. middle class thought of as being average
in income and education and moderately conservative in values and attitudes."
This paper will trace Millerís attitude toward marriage and "Middle America"
in several works, including his plays, essays and autobiography. The paper
will generally assert that failure in marriage reflects an underlying failure
of American values. Furthermore, I hope to reveal an inherent tension in
Miller's work between success and failure in marriage and middle American
attitudes and values which parallels the underlying duality of the success
myth and others in America.
"'Faith-in Life' in Three Arthur Miller Plays and in His Non-fiction
Prose"
Presented by Katherine L. Basham of University of Minnesota, Duluth
The paper considers the "faith-in-life" (a term pioneered in Depression
and the Body) issues of Miller's plays Broken Glass, Death of a
Salesman, and TheRide Down Mt. Morgan. In the first,
is a woman paralyzed by depression due to a bad marriage to a man fearing
that her fulfillment would cause his death, a victim of his refusals of
her fulfilment and nurture initiatives and of his violence, of his long
term sexual impotence, and his crisis as a Holocaust-era Jew is "healed"
as much by her therapist's romantic aggression and lovingkindness as by
her own desperate attempt to save her husbandís life, which brings her
beyond paralysis. She is a character with more than one external
life-force support at the point when she reverts to a personal competence
which she formerly enjoyed and takes the miraculous risk. This play is
closer to the research with blockages due to faith-in-life crises done
in the 60's by Alexander Lowen than the others. Because of the ethics of
Dr. Hyman, chosen for the healing task by the dead man, it is possible
that the play might be read as one of two playsóthis is true also in The
Last Yankeeóonly one of them about psychotherapy. Phillip Gelllburg
not only initiates his wife's therapy, he also ruins himself at his
job with various persistences connected to self esteem and the beginning
of Jewish group-consciousness. His wife has had a role in this in
her obsession with trans-Atlantic Holocaust reports of the degrading of
old Jews made to scrub the pavements with toothbrushes. Even though paralyzed,
she is still the voice of faith-in life as reflected in anaclitic love
and communal care and common decency.
In Death of a Salesman, one finds the death
of Ben, the focus of Willyís "compensatory grandeur" linked to his suicidal
financial woes and his "compulsion to evaluate himself justly" (Miller),
the return of his sons, the failure of loyalty due ("bask and blast" scenario
of Richman and Flaherty) and earlier betrayal. Both Broken Glass
and this play are provider plays which end with the deaths of providers.
The boys fantasize about being providers, but because they only part way
evaluate themselves justly, they do not live authentic lives. The
images of success in the play require active involvement, except for inheriting
the business. And because of Willy's life long predictable
merging of the languages of business and affection (see Lew Hydeís The
Gift) and his infecting of his sons with it the illusion-reality crisis
is an important part of the dramatic action. Their success options
are love and caring and loyalty. Linda is the chorus of Willy's demise
as an old man. All the people seen are in the group of mourners of Willy.
But only Willy is the mourner inheritor. If Happy lives maybe he
will be, too. When grief succeeds in mourning ritual it ends with
it. When it is lived as a "faith-in-life" part of the demise of the
protagonist it tries to save the person. As false teacher, Willy
is seen with pity by his criers: Linda, Charley, and Biff intervene.
They bring "faith-in-life" to bear upon Willy because they
care. As for his ending, Willy still cares pitifully if positively
for the plants and the woods. His caring for respect is tainted and violent.
I believe having the neighbors be successful in business and in school
and law is an affirmative model to offset against the model of image management
rejected by Biff and still espoused by Happy. I believe they are
Linda's community and they will take care of her. Only Luck will
save the boys. Or "a smile and a shoeshine." Charley has the
worldly knowledge and success to mediate their adulthood, if they do not
scatter to the winds.
The Ride Down Mt. Morgan is set in liminal
space due to the wreck of Lyman Felt's bigamy scheme. Here, the twist
on the "faith- in- life" crisis is that the maxi provider ends up in a
regression to a competence issue: will he be able to be alone. His
dependent double wives dump him for the right reasons without too much
trouble: they have the right responses, as non-sadists do. He is in a place
of transition. I think we view his resolve with irony rather than with
anger. Can a relationship addict go cold turkey except in enforced
solitude? He's even hit on his nurse already, to a certain extent.
It wold be likelier that he'd flee with cash to an unspecified Bahamas
of the mind after a period of remorse. Possibly it is Winnicott's
research on the linkage of the mother role to the later capacities of children
to be alone in play which reappears in Miller's Timebends
in comments about his own authorial situation. Also, the comments about
how the likes of Hollywood moguls have such sexual privilege. Maybe Lyman
Felt was meant to get someone with too many wivesósomeone in Hollywood.
Arthur Miller has linked, in these plays, "faith-in-life"
to selfishness and to sexuality and to liminality and to loyalty.
Selfishness ranging from degrees of interpersonal exploitativeness (see
Richman and Flaherty) or escape from relationship to whole persons and
narcissistic self-objects by providers, especially due to violence and
absence. This changes with changes of class or status. One sees unfaithfulness
as linked to being liked; one sees bigamy as the refusal to choose between
goods; one sees impotence as a refusal of performance of the life
bond by a provider; these are set in liminal states created by deaths
(see Letzler Cole) or by suicidal accidents or by overwhelming conditions
of extremity. Who is loyal to whom and how authentic this loyalty
is depends on what loyalty means.
"The Late Plays of Arthur Miller: Problematizing the Real"
Presented on behalf of Ashis Sengupta, Reader in English at the University
of North Bengal (INDIA).
Reality is more problematic in the plays of Arthur Miller than has been
generally conceded. In the early work, the real--clouded by personal delusions
and public myths--eventually shines out with one's acceptance of responsibility
for the consequence of one's action. But in the later plays beginning with
The
Archbishop's Ceiling (1977[1984]), it is beyond either simple definition
or full recovery. With his increasing probe into the complexities of the
postmodern condition. Miller has, on his own admission, "become more and
more fascinated by . . . the question of reality and . . . whether there
is any." If Ceiling shows the problem of authentic behavior
under the pressure of invisible power, Two-Way Mirror (1984)
presents the unreal as an agony to be accepted as life's condition. If
Danger: Memory! (1987) questions the ideal of representation and
with it the human capacity to generate systems to order experience, The
Ride Down Mount Morgan
(1991) dramatizes personal history as a narrative
constructed from the fragments of memeory and desire. And Broken Glass
(1994), the last of the plays under discussion here, deals with the mystery
of a sociopolitical dilemma that threatens one's sense of reality. In the
absence of stable realities, any certainties the characters seem to have
are at best positional since they are derived from what may be called complex
networks of local and contingent conditions. With the focus steadily
shifting on to the mulitiplicity of self and truth, meaning becomes provisional
and indeterminate in Miller. Yet the playwright is interested "in the balance
of forces". Even when the real cannot be ascertained, he believes in the
obligation of trying to do so, for, to give it up is to create "a kind
of anarchy of the senses." And the question of reality, for Miller,
is "a moral issue, finally." His late plays suggest that there are
still urgencies beneath all contingency, which provide the impetus to recuperate
value and meaning.
"The Dangers of Memory in Arthur Millerís 'I Canít Remember Anything'"
Presented by Susan Abbotson, Rhode Island College
There exist two printed versions of "I Canít Remember Anything," one
published by Grove in 1986, and another by the Dramatists Play Service
in 1987. While both versions deal with that perennial Miller concern, the
necessity for people to acknowledge their past as an active part of their
current existence, this reading is based on the later of the published
texts, which offers a substantially different ending.
Nothing can be more important to our placing of
the past in our lives than the concept of memory, but as Miller recognizes,
especially in the later version of the play, memory holds many dangers,
some of which he attempts to illustrate in "I Canít," which (ironically,
given its title), shows the dangers of overindulging in memories of the
past. In the play, Leo and Leonora are encouraged to remember everything
they have been in the past, to help them to define who they are in the
present. Leo and Leonora find a comfort in their routine companionship,
but this is suddenly destroyed when Leo chooses to change their relationship.
His motivation lies buried in his refusal to accept the real past and his
preference for a fake past he has created in his imagination; this selfish
decision hurts both himself and his old friend Leonora.
"A Lethal Legacy of Liberal Posturing in Arthur Millerís 'Clara'"
Presented by Paula Langteau, Nicolet College, Rhinelander, WI
In a contemporary America overwrought with racism, classism and homophobia,
and in the face of pressure to do what is right with regard to the ìOtherîógranting
full rights to all peopleóArthur Millerís 1986 short play, "Clara," suggests
a new kind of dangeróthe danger of adopting a politically correct posture
that on the surface seems liberal but which does not penetrate underlying
values. The play is about the aftermath of the brutal murder of Clara Kroll,
and the struggle of her father to come to terms with the part his own values
(which he instilled in Clara) played in bringing about her death. Many
scholars have suggested that Krollís liberalism, adopted by Clara, jeopardized
her safety, but this paper asserts that an interrogation of Krollís values
reveals that what proves dangerous in them is not that they are liberal
but that they are, and seem always to have been, superficial, based upon
assumptions and stereotypes of people rather than on behaviors of, and
experience with, distinct individuals. They donít penetrate beyond a surface
categorizing of people, a surface political correctness disguising underlying
prejudice and, in fact, an opportunity for self-aggrandizement.
This paper examines how Kroll confronts the ìOtherî
as representation rather than as individual. He neatly categorizes people
by the kind of people they are, and, by extension, by the way those kind
of people act and the way those kind of people think. This categorization,
or typing, of people distances him in a way that serves not only to make
the ìOtherî less human than he is but allows him to cast himself as heroic
in comparison. Emulation of that response to people is what ultimately
jeopardized Claraís life.
In the end, Kroll recognizes that his liberalism has been a facade,
that he has never truly embraced the idealism of his seemingly politically
correct values, and that his daughterís emulation of that liberal posturing
cost her her life. This recognition indicts him, at a subconscious level,
for her death. It also sends a message pertinent for all of us in modern
society, challenging us to ask: What are truly ìliberalî values? How do
we, as a country, get beyond our categorizing and typing of people? Can
we translate politically correct attitudes into action on an individual
level? How do we protect ourselves from danger without succumbing to prejudice
and paranoia? And, finally, what are the consequences of our failure to
open a discourse about who and what is really dangerous?
"Arthur Miller and the Language of Middle America"
Presented by George P. Castellitto, Felician College, NJ
Arthur Millerís plays invariably and consistently depict characters
moving, shifting, and repositioning themselves in particularly American
landscapes. As those characters involve themselves in the conflicts
that comprise the various plays and as their dialogue progresses, the reader
and the viewer/listener of Millerís drama is able to perceive the dialects
and the idioms of the American psyche. A number of Millerís plays
(Death of a Salesman, A View from the Bridge, The Price) depict
the particular idioms of urban and cosmopolitan America, but underlying
and underpinning those urban expressions are the psychological and sociological
tenets of Middle America resonating and resounding throughout and within
the various speeches of the characters.
Utilizing some of the parameters of the attributes
of language as outlined in the discourses of Mikhail Bakhtin and relying
on some of the assertions about semiotics delineated in the writings of
Jacques Derrida, this paper will discuss the language of middle America
as it appears intuitively in selected Miller plays by concentrating on
both the psychological and sociological aspects of that language.
"Figuring Our Past and Present in Wood: Wood Imagery in Arthur Millerís
The
Crucible and Death of a Salesman"
Presented by Will Smith, Drew University
Arthur Millerís plays repeatedly examine the human struggle against
a flawed, overly commercial society which denies the freedoms of its members.
In these examinations, Miller uses pastoral images to signify a lost, pure
world of our ancestors, rooted in the nature that surrounded them.
This application of pastoral imagery features innovative wood figurations
which represent the instinct to escape the machinations of a corrupt modern
society and return to our instinctual desire to work with our hands, immersed
in nature.
In The Crucible, Miller identifies those characters who challenge
the corrupt Puritan fundamentalism of Salem and ties them most closely
to the wood that resides at the heart of colonial life. Those who
stand in support of the oppressive fundamentalism are depicted battling
against the wild, untamed forests which hold the devilís temptations.
Skillfully capitalizing upon the subtleties between the wild and the shaped,
the natural and the unnatural, the creative and the uniform, Miller captures
the essence of maintaining oneís freedoms against overwhelming pressures
to conform.
In Death of a Salesman, Miller ties wood
to Willy Lomanís pastoral longings and his desire to work with his hands.
The wood of the natural world meets the bricks and glass of modern society,
impersonal and without the natural elements necessary for the survival
of the common man. Willy and his son long for the freedom of a rural
lifestyle, each idealizing an environment where they can build, create
and shape the natural world around them. The variety of wood figurations
in the play combines to provide the framework for Millerís larger investigation
of the theme of the difficult search for community.
"Damn Yankee! Leroy Hamilton Crafts Wood With Passion and Honesty,
But Who in Modern America Cares?"
Presented by Will Smith, Drew University
Vigilant about exposing the flaws of our modern society which corrupts
the natural instincts of the individual and forces upon him a mechanical
and profit-driven culture to which he must adapt, Miller, in The Last
Yankee, encapsulates the economic development of the late 20th century
as it moved away from the manual labor market and into the high technology
and corporate arenas. The middle class worker, here Leroy Hamilton,
represents the last of an American breed, struggling to maintain his strong
moralistic view while simultaneously competing against and within the increasingly
immoral business culture which surrounds him. Leroyís incompatibility
with the dominant culture is clear. He is far too honest and passionate
about his work. As a carpenter, he has a direct link to the frontiersman
past which valued manual labor and creation from wood.
Leroy, trapped with one foot in the capitalistic
win- at- any- cost culture and his other foot firmly planted in the world
of his ancestorsófinding joy and self-satisfaction in manual workó captures
the essence of the modern condition. Not wholly successful in either
sphere, Leroy is bifurcated and reveals that the closer one can get to
a complete dissolution into the world of our ancestorsóthe world which
can sustain us and enrich our livesóthe less likely he will fall victim
to the pitfalls of modern social and economic structures. Sadly,
the organic connection which Miller suggests is essential to our well-being
(as apparently it is to his own) is increasingly denied to us.
"'Somewhere down deep where the sources are': Traces of the Snyder/Gray
Murder Trial of 1927 in Death of a Salesman?"
Presented by Frank Bergmann, Utica College, NY
Having just had the occasion to read about the notorious Snyder/Gray
case and not having come across any comment about it in Millerís writings
or the critical literature about them, I offer some thoughts on the case
as one possible source for the play.
On March 20, 1927 Ruth Snyder and her lover Judd Gray killed Ruthís
husband Albert in the Snydersí house in Queens. On January 12, 1928 the
murderers died in Sing-Singís electric chair (all pertinent information
is from Karl W. Schweizer, Seeds of Evil: The Gray/Snyder Murder Case,
2001). In Only Yesterday (1931), Frederick Lewis Allen mentions
the case among other unsavory ones in his chapter ìThe Ballyhoo Yearsî:
ì[T]he only excuses for putting the Snyder-Gray trial on the front page
were that it involved a sex triangle and that the Snyders were ordinary
people living in an ordinary New York suburbóthe sort of people with whom
the ordinary reader could easily identify himself.î
One might think that a boy turning twelve during
the time of the trial might have heard or read about the case, but Miller
makes no mention of it in Timebends. Yet he shares the story there
of how, when he had made ìpreliminary sketches of scenes and ideas for
a salesman play,î he went to seeóagainóFritz Langís The Testament of
Dr. Mabuse, ìwas drawn into the astounding tale, gradually recalling
it from the pastî and finally remembered that Willyís name had come to
him by way of the Parisian police chiefís name in the film, ìLohmannî (177-9).
Here is some Snyder/Gray material which might have
similarly buried itself in Millerís mind. Gray was a corset salesman
whose beat was New York State and Pennsylvania. Salesman never tells what
is in Willyís sample cases, but it might as well be stockings as not. Gray
charged the corset he gave Ruth in an intimate scene to stock; Happy tells
Miss Forsythe: ìI sell champagne, and Iíd like you to try my brand. . .
Itís all company moneyî (Collected Plays I, 194). Gray was oedipally
tied to his mother, as is Biff to Linda. Ruth once tried to kill Albert
by making him drunk as carbon monoxide collected in the garage where he
was working on his car, and another time by knocking the cap off the gas
heating tube in the room where Albert was taking a nap; Willy, of course,
has rigged the gas heater for his suicide. Finally, Ruth had fraudulently
taken out a huge double indemnity insurance policy on Albert; Willyís suicidal
and therefore fraudulent gift to Biff is his sizeable insurance policy.
Surely each one of these parallels is so ordinary
as to raise nobodyís eyebrow, but I submit that the cluster helps the ordinary
viewer or reader of Salesman identify with the Lomans as ordinary
people living in an ordinary neighborhood, just as ordinaryóso Miller might
have rememberedóas were the Snyders and the Grays.
"Discussing A View from the Bridge and Arthur Miller in a Post-9/11
World"
Presented by Kimberley Jenkins, Thomas A. Edison High School
As a firm believer in creating classrooms that combine the study of
literature and history, I have often pursued research interests that take
me into the life of the writer and his world. This has been the case in
my pursuit of knowledge concerning Arthur Miller and a grant I received
from the National Endowment for the Humanities. As I conducted research
and wrote materials, I focused on an academic study of A View from the
Bridge and a character study of Eddie Carbone, hoping to simply broaden
my studentsí understanding of an American playwright. The events
of September 11, 2001 changed that focus to a discussion of ethics and
diversity in addition to a re-examination of A View from the Bridge
and a study of Eddie as a ìregularî American man. As I taught the
play in both New Jersey and Virginia, with students who were geographically
close to the sites of the terror attacks, my curriculum project took on
different implications and evolved from a simple study of an additional
work to a study of broader issues and current events.
Closing Address: "Arthur Miller: Guardian of the American Dream"
Presented by Steve Centola, Millersville University
This paper considers important connections between Arthur Millerís
political activism and his interest in social drama. While musing
unhappily about the lack of seriousness of the Broadway theater in an essay
published in the New York Times in February 2003, tellingly entitled ìLooking
for a Conscience,î Miller adeptly links his critique of the Broadway theater
to an indictment of officials in the United States Government who label
critics of the current administration as unpatriotic. At root in such commentary
by Miller, as well as in his plays exploring social issues and themes that
center on the cultural myths associated with the American experience, is
Millerís implicit definition of the central roleóthe crucial, inevitable,
and pivotal roleófor the literary artist in a free society. That
role, according to Miller, is to serve as the voice of the people who are
silenced by fear and intolerance; to ask the challenging and difficult
questions of a government, a society, a people that prefers self-congratulatory
praise to unflinching moral self-scrutiny; to be the conscience of a nation
that finds it uncomfortable to undergo the rigorous examination of the
dark recesses of the national psyche and individual soul that earnest and
honest self-evaluation necessitate. With his protest against the
War with Iraq, and through his continued effort to use literary art to
prick the conscience of a nation too easily cowed by the politics of intimidation
and blind obedience to corrupt authority, Miller provides firm testimony
to his persistent commitment to social justice and human decency and the
rights of all people to live with dignity and in peace. Art is deeply
connected to life, for Arthur Miller. Art not only derives from life
experience, but it must also respond to life and improve the conditions
of life and living for humanity. For this reason, Miller frequently
describes all great drama as inherently social in nature. The intertwined
moral and aesthetic imperatives that inspire and animate Millerís art result
in his creation of a body of work that speaks below the surface of the
overt drama with a resonance, a highly charged subtext and equally rich
cultural context, about the possibility and failure of AmericaóAmerica
as a concept, an ideal, a cluster of myths and cultural stereotypes, a
nation, a government and governance system, a people, a character, and
an impossible, forever elusive, but always inspiring, dream. Millerís
critique and celebration of America underlies and informs every facet of
his plays and places this great playwright in a long procession of significant
American writers who have responded similarly to the challenge and the
glory of this dream called America. Standing tall in the procession
of great American writers who have wrestled with the shifting and oftentimes
contradictory meaning and reality of the American experience, Miller has
repeatedly given audiences of his drama a vision of hope and possibility
that is the true legacy of the dream, the promise, the idea that is America.
That extraordinary achievement, more than anything else, is the lasting
legacy of Arthur Miller: guardian of the dream of America.
Paper Abstracts from the Ninth International Arthur Miller Conference at St. Francis College, Brooklyn, NY. April 23-24, 2004. "Arthur Miller: The Man Who Had All The Luck."
From: Vol. 9 June 2004 p. 3-7
"Keynote Address"
Presented by Christopher Bigsby, University of East Anglia
This address focused on the significance of Death of a Salesman
in
Arthur Millerís oeuvre. Bigsby first tackled the criticism of Miller
as being a Jewish writer who avoids writing about Jews. He then centered
the discussion on the many implications of death in the play. Bigsby
suggested that the death in the play is of a salesman, not so much Willy
Lomanís. Since the play is intimately connected to the idea of the
American dream, Bigsby asked, ìAre all Americans salesmen?î Do we
all, like Willy, have the false promise of a golden future? Bigsby
explained that for Willy and his sons, and by implication all Americans,
happiness is a destination, not a condition. The paper concluded
with a consideration of different productions of Salesman and the
type of actors who portrayed Willy.
"Arthur Miller from Crisis to Negotiation"
Presented by Jeffrey Mason, University of Oregon
Much of Millerís work focuses on a seldom-resolved conflict between
the individual and authority. For example, in The Crucible,
John Proctor denounces the oppressive regime that asks him to endorse hypocrisy
and compromise, and he rejects submission in favor of self-sacrifice as
the only available choice to preserve his integrity and sense of who he
is. Thirty years later, in The Archbishopís Ceiling, a small
group of writers explores the alternative of negotiation and struggles
to coexist with repression and threat. Miller draws a key distinction
using the figure of the writer: Proctor refuses to publish his false confession,
while Sigmund struggles to find a way to keep his voice alive. Ultimately,
Miller indicts the very concept of government and returns to the integriy
of the resisting individual.
"The Phenomenology of Neurotic Embodiment in Death of a Salesman
and The Archbishopís Ceiling"
Presented by Lew Livesay, St. Peterís College
Heideggerís phenomenology depends on the concept ìbeing-in-the-world,î
revealing how identity is always already entrenched in familial environment.
We are so deeply immersed in our world ó like Nemo in The Matrix ó
that we never fathom how milieu determines us. Familiar objects,
habits, and relationships, especially the family, incorporate lived experience.
In effect, embodiment precedes identity. But identity can be questioned;
for Heidegger, reflexive interrogation determines authentic responsibility.
ìBeing-in-the-worldî starts with identities submerged
in families like fish in water. Antigone is so deeply in her family
that she has, as Sartre would say, ìNo Exit.î The same proves true
for Michael Corleone who discovers, in The Godfather, that try as
he might, he has no way out of ìla cosa nostra.î The family thing
rules. The family for Antigone, Corleone, Hamlet, or Willy becomes
the world. That ineffable ìsomething [that] is happeningî throughout
Salesman
involves family. Each Loman inhabits ancient, repetitive, unconscious
routines and lies, which none has ever challenged authentically.
The Lomans never realize how not ìat-homeî they are in the family.
Salesman focuses on Willyís self-image as
a man who fathers sons so like Hercules or Adonis, as opposed to the notion
that these boys are lazy bums. The same fluctuations appear in Willyís
attitudes to objects in his world. With his car or refrigerator,
Willy cannot decide if it is great or garbage. All Willyís objects
and relationships are neurotic snares riven with division. Biff alone interrogates
this web of untruths. Happy turns out to be Willy incarnate ó totally
unreflective. Through Biff, the only freedom, Salesman implicitly
urges, comes from taking responsibility for how neurotically embodied we
are in each other. We must confront alienation, our not at-homeness,
and from within choice make authentic connections to each other.
The Archbishopís Ceiling depicts neurotic
entrapments akin to Salesman. There is a family of writers,
an embodied group immersed in incestuous intrigue, reinforcing their identity
as family, with these people stealing reputation, identity, and sexuality
from each other in an internecine world where no one knows for sure who
is listening to whom. Adrian no longer trusts his characters who
have turned on him, committing the ultimate neurotic sin, becoming melodramatic.
Adrian returns to this foreign country, but says, ìIt escapes me the minute
I cross the border.î He entirely misses the embodied existence of
our liminal worlds, immersed in quicksilver intersubjectivity. And
yet, within this shared realm, there are degrees of ethical awareness.
Marcus, like Hap, engenders what Heidegger calls the inauthentic ìthey
worldî of compromises. By contrast, Sigmund, like Biff, struggles
to assert a measure of authenticity. Sigmund alone accepts responsibility
for his familial crucible. As Marcus says of Sigmund, ìThis whole
country is inside his skin.î Like Socrates, Sigmund sees no exit
from embodiment. The only responsibility comes from honestly choosing
to live how not at-home we are inside our inherently neurotic existence.
"From Luck to Connections: The Evolution of the Subject in 2 Arthur
Miller Plays"
Presented by Paula Langteau, Nicolet College
The question of personal responsibility and the exercise of individual
choice in the making of a characterís identity and destinyóand thereby,
meaning in existenceóhave become almost a trademark of Millerís drama.
This paper, however, suggests that Miller uses a more subtle and nuanced
approach than the depiction of a direct appeal to identifying an ultimate
meaning or purpose for existence in his plays. In The Man Who
Had All the Luck (1944) and Mr. Peterís Connections, Miller
focuses not on the meaning of existence itself but on the locus of activity,
the arena of pursuit in which the characters immerse themselves in their
quests for meaning. That focus serves as a powerful link between the two
plays and demonstrates the depth and complexity of Millerís psychological
inquiry into manís pursuit of meaning.
In Mr. Petersí Connections, the ìsubjectî
that Harry Peterís so doggedly pursues represents a search for the arena
in which true meaning can be found. In fact, in Mr. Petersí Connections,
Miller identifies many of the most common (and misguided) arenas of pursuit
of meaning for individuals. And in The Man Who Had All the Luck,
David, believing that too much of his life has been made for him by luck
(i.e. fate), tries desperately to exert his will in his life, taking hold
of an arena of pursuitónamely the mink farmingóin an attempt to balance
the scales of luck before they are balanced for him. Of course, that
arenaóthe world of workódoes not provide fulfillment for him. Both plays,
ultimately, point to Millerís suggestion of the importance of connection,
as the one thing, ironically, that both main characters seem to have forfeited
in their arenas of pursuitóand the thing that, perhaps, could be the key
both to meaning and happiness in their lives.
"Chaikin and Miller"
Presented by Matthew Roudané, Georgia State University
This paper offered a uniquely comic, intellectual, and poignant perspective
of an Atlanta production of Broken Glass, a production in which
Roudane served as a first-time dramaturge and which turned out to be the
last show directed by Joe Chaikin who died shortly after the playís run.
In his talk, Matthew shared the demands of reconciling his academic perception
of the play with Chaikinís vision as a director. Matthew entertained
the conferees with the humorous story of how he skillfully negotiated with
Arthur Miller changes in the text suggested by Chaikin
"Music in Millerís Drama"
Presented by Jane Dominik, San Joaquin Delta College
All but one of Millerís twenty-four published and produced plays to
date include music, his prolific and varied use of it one of his distinctions
as a playwright. The resulting aural and visual motifs appear as
textual references to musical instruments symbolic of absent characters;
serve as leitmotifs; and are used to open and close scenes, acts, and the
plays themselves; establish time period, mood, tone, tempo, and rhythm;
cover scene changes; establish time changes; underscore scenes; and replace
sound effects. Songs used in plays operate as secondary texts.
As with their eclectric approach to scenic design, Miller and his collaborators
have drawn upon numerous stylistic movements. Just as Miller has
returned to specific themes and characters in his plays, so, too, has he
developed numerous musical motifs, including the use of specific instruments,
singing, records, laughter, and a propensity to incorporate jazz.
Finally, the paper suggests ways in which music for Millerís and othersí
dramas can be developed.
"The Crucible in Australia"
Presented by Anne Heintz, Victorian College of the Arts
This paper discussed a production of The Crucible done in 2003
in Melbourne, Australia that incorporated three time periods into the production:
Salem witchtrial-era, McCarthy-era, and Homeland Security-era. Because
the show commented on the various reincarnations of state and media-controlled
xenophobic trials for the ultimate gain of private capitalist interests,
the production experimented with linear time, but preserved a coherent
kairotic time. Each act showed that evil lives in best intentions,
in nice clothes, in thwarted dreams, in all the impulses that make heroes.
Although the story is always the same, the costumes change. This production
proved to me, as an assistant director, that love of oneís country must
be large enough to contain critique. Art should be at odds with hegemony,
and only those who force truth out into the open can truly feel as part
of the ever-shrinking world.
"A. R. Ammons and Arthur Miller: Unexpected Metaphysical Connections"
Presented by George P. Castellitto, Felician College
Many Arthur Miller scholars concentrate on the recurrent concern with
post-Depression and post-World War II cultural, sociological, and economic
issues that beset the protagonists of his dramas; the Willy Lomans and
Eddie Carbones of Millerís plays are archetypal American characters whose
psyches and souls encounter harsh patterns and components of the faltering
American Dream. Even some of Millerís later characters (Lyman Felt
and John Frick) wrestle with matters that initially appear to be personally,
socially, and culturally motivated, but, ultimately, those concerns force
the characters to confront metaphysical and sometimes even cosmological
questions: the nature of the universe in which the social and familial
individual is placed, the disposition that occurs as the isolated social
individual confronts the particulars of physical reality and nature, and
the connections between the sensible world and individual sensibility.
A. R. Ammons, in his book of poetry entitled Brink
Road: Poems, published in 1996 just five years before his death in
2001, considers in several of the included poems in the volume the same
metaphysical issues that appear so noticeably in Millerís works.
As Goldwin Smith Professor of Poetry at Cornell University for many years,
Ammons assuredly read and savored the works of Miller. Interestingly,
the personae and protagonists (sometimes antagonists) in Ammonís poems
in Brink Road are in the process of challenging the same metaphysical
forces that plague individuals in Millerís plays. This paper will
draw some noteworthy parallels between Ammons and Miller personae and discuss
the various similar ways in which these two contemporary authors depict
the enigma of the isolated modern individual confronting the elusive but
nevertheless tangible particulars of the natural world.
"Henrik Ibsen and Arthur Miller as Poetic Realists: A Comparison of
The
Master Builder and Rosmersholm with Death of a Salesman
and All My Sons"
Presented by Nicole DeSapio, George Mason University
This paper examines the playwrights Henrik Ibsen and Arthur Miller as
part of a single dramatic tradition. Ibsen is commonly known to be
the ìfatherî of modern dramatic realism. Arthur Miller is the contemporary
playwright whose work is frequently labeled ìIbsenesque.î This paper,
however, questions the claim that Millerís dramaturgy is based upon Ibsenesque
conventions. One critic who disagrees with the claim is Robert Brustein,
who states that the action in Millerís plays is more realistic and logical,
less expressionistic, than the action in Ibsenís plays. This paper
compares Ibsenís The Master Builder and Rosmersholm with
Millerís Death of a Salesman, then compares Rosmersholm to
Millerís All My Sons, and finds Brusteinís claim to be true.
But this paper also compares The Master Builder and All My Sons
and finds Miller inheriting something of the ìillogical qualityî and of
the ìmetaphysical impulseî that Brustein notes in Ibsenís plays.
"From Poplar to Plywood: Reading the Origins of Millerís Wood Trope
in All My Sons"
Presented by Will Smith, Drew University
This paper examines Arthur Millerís earliest application of a wood trope
that he develops significantly in later works like Death of a Salesman
and The Crucible. Millerís wood application represents his
romanticized sense of Americaís abandoned frontier past and his criticism
of its modern impersonal replacement. He perceives a disharmony between
the present material-driven world and manís natural instincts. All
My Sons exhibits Millerís earliest attempts to use figuration, language,
and setting to capture the disconnect between business ethics in the contemporary
world and the honorable manual labor and ethical living that characterize
his romanticized picture of Americaís first settlers.
Actions and images in this play reveal the distance
between Millerís idealized view of America and its present incarnation,
between communities that depended on wood for much of their day-to-day
life and those that have left that immediate connection to nature and manual
labor behind them. Millerís trope in All My Sons emerges throughout
the Kellerís home, from its landscaping to its occupants. The tree
the family plants in memory of its lost son, the row of poplars that temporarily
shields Joe and Kate Keller from acknowledging the tragic truth of Larryís
death, the struggles of Chris Keller (the progenitor of Willy and Biff
Loman and John Proctor), and even Joe Kellerís leaf burner reveal the seeds
of Millerís conviction to examine manís perpetual conflict with evolving,
artificial, and dominant social structures.
"Using Language to Take a Stand: Arthur Miller and the Literary Features
of His Journalism Prose"
Presented by Kimberley Jenkins, Thomas A. Edison High School
For more than 50 years, Arthur Miller has entertained audiences and
instructed countless students though his plays, short stories, and poetry.
In addition to Millerís literary endeavors, he is remembered because of
his political and personal choices. As a member of the human race, Miller
has used his gift with language to take a stand and make his points.
Scholar, Christopher Bigsby, told the 8th International
Arthur Miller Conference in October 2003, that Miller would like to be
remembered for his language rather than his politics. In spite of
this desire, Miller has also used his tremendous facility with language
to show and even highlight his politics.
Lesser known than the plays, Miller has occasionally
written pieces for other publications including The New York Times
and Harperís Magazine. These pieces, op-ed in nature, address issues
including the nature of drama, the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy,
and the Clinton-Lewinsky-Starr scandal. Miller uses rhetorical questioning,
contrasting diction, sarcasm, and various literary features to make his
points and further his arguments. This paper discusses some these
articles with attention to Millerís use of language. In addition,
the paper presents another avenue for teaching argumentative writing and
literary features.
"Closing Address"
Presented by Steve Centola, Millersville University
Pointing out that Miller finds order in chaos, this paper explained
how in Millerís life he was divided between wanting to fill roles in his
family and the conflicts which come along with fulfilling these roles.
From this Miller creates characters which we are forced to sympathize with
because we can see ourselves in them.