Biography of Person With Impact on Theater
Arthur Miller is one of America's best-known dramatists. His career spanning over six decades established him as one of the most important playwrights that America has ever produced. His most famous and performed dramas, Death of a Salesman and The Crucible, have delighted and inspired both audiences and fellow dramatists all over the world. His plays have succeeded in doing much more than providing mere entertainment; they have reached their audiences and confronted them with truths about their own lives, as well as those that represent the very core of American consciousness. Arthur Miller's main themes are failure, guilt, betrayal, and most importantly perhaps, love and responsibility (Abbotson: 3). Arthur Miller continued the realistic tradition inaugurated in America in the period between the two world wars. His plays dig deep into American consciousness by exploring social and moral issues that Miller himself identifies as common to the majority of his audience. Miller's artistic credo forever changed the dynamics of American playwriting. His vision incorporated tension as the very core of drama. This was, in fact, the main artistic device he used in order to recreate reality in his plays, in the sense that Miller belie
It was during this period that he developed and refined his writing skills even though only few of his plays were ever aired. "A close look at the vocabulary of any one of his plays reveals numerous cliches, colloquialisms, historical references, and symbols which all point toward a specific idea. This particular play also introduced America to a broader concept of tragedy, one whose characters have concerns that all audiences can understand and relate to. Arthur Miller had two siblings, an older brother, Kermit, and a younger sister, Joan. Despite the fact that Isidore Miller was unschooled, he had a strong sense of right and wrong, which he tried to instill into his children with his innate authority. Miller went on to write An Enemy of the people in 1950, a play that was based on the homonymous play by Ibsen; The Crucible in 1953 which was another immense success, A View from the Bridge (1955), A Memory of Two Mondays (1955), as well as the short story called The Misfits in 1957 which he would turn into a screenplay in 1961. At the same time, these people both exemplify and betray the values of society hence the tension (Bigsby: 70). Miller's realism is subtly blended with symbolism that strives to create the actual reality of Willy Loman, and to suggest something beyond the tangible world. Directed by Elia Kazan, not only was the play critically acclaimed and awarded a few prizes, but it brought Miller the professional recognition he wanted and needed as a playwright. His characters are manufacturers, salesmen, lawyers, policemen, writers, etc. However, the only clearly accurate influences are those whom Miller himself acknowledged during his life, namely classical Greek playwrights, nineteenth-century Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, nineteenth-century Russian novelists Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and contemporary American playwrights Tennessee Williams and Clifford Odets (Abbotson: 19). The play was performed throughout America and Europe and the published script became a best-seller worldwide. His characters are real people, confronted with real-life situations.
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