Arthur Miller: Playwrite of the People
Over the past few decades, Arthur Miller has become a well known Americanplaywright. He has won numerous awards and is credited for doing amazing work. Miller was born in lower Manhattan in 1915. His family moved to Brooklyn during The Great Depression where his father worked as a ladies-wear manufacturer and his mother worked as a schoolteacher. His father’s company, however, was ruined because of the depression. Money was tight and this made it difficult to pay for schooling. Miller started working a variety of jobs to help pay his tuition to the University of Michigan. While studying there, he began his career in writing plays. After graduating in 1938, his first published play, The Man Who Had All the Luck, was released to the public. Unfortunately, it was not a big hit, closing after only four shows. Miller’s first major success came when he premiered his play All My Sons at the Coronet. His biggest hit, however, came in 1949 when he opened Death of a Salesman at the Morosco. This became the masterpiece to which all his other work was compared. There have been many remade versions of this outstanding play which won him a Tony Award and a Pulitzer Prize. One remake was as recent as 1998. His fame . . .
Also his wife, Ann Putnam, blames the deaths of her seven children on Rebecca Nurse, who was a “lady of immense goodness and respect who was later accused of being a witch” (Huntly, Phillips, 3). All three plays are very different, but all have important morals and situations that make them come alive. Because of his own lack of the sense of reality and self delusion, he saw himself as an imaginative person who is loved and favored by his father. This is believed to be the reason why Biff turned out to be such a failure. “Charlie is always being the voice of reason, but Willy is too stubborn to listen to him” (Garrison, 4). Willy’s sales ability is by far greater in his imagination then in real life (Garrison, 1). The common theme throughout these three plays is imaginative thinking and unrealism. While the two brothers bicker back and forth, Solomon provides the comic relief for the play by talking about his four wives and his daughter’s suicide. Even though The Crucible is one of Miller’s more popular plays, it does not portray the theme of self-delusion as does The Price and Death of a Salesman. They decide to call a retired antiques dealer, Solomon, to help set “the price” for all their father’s furniture. He was actually more of a role model to Biff and Happy then Willy was. Three of Miller’s most famous works are Death of a Salesman, The Crucible and The Price. The theme of imaginative thinking and unrealism is portrayed in all three plays. His brother, Walter, only contributed by sending five dollars a month.
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