Theater Appreciation ARTHUR MILLER Of the list of American playwrights the one I thought I would find most interesting is Arthur Miller. Being relatively familiar with some of his work I wanted to learn more about him. Through the research I have done I have been able to find some very interesting information about Miller's work as well as his personal life. Arthur Miller was born in New York on October 17, 1915. His father, Isidore Miller, was a ladies-wear manufacturer and shopkeeper whose business was ruined in the Great Depression. This obviously had a huge impact on the family's financial situation which in turn had a strong influence on Miller. The family was forced to move to a small frame house in Brooklyn, which is said to have been a model for the Brooklyn home in Death of a Salesman. Throughout his childhood Arthur's time was spent playing football, baseball, and reading adventure stories. After graduating from high school in 1932, Miller began working in an automobile parts warehouse in hopes of earning enough money to attend college. It was after reading Dostoevsky's novel The Brothers Karamazov that Arthur Miller decided he wanted to become a writer. In the fall of 1934 Miller entered the University of Michigan where he began his study of journalism. During his years there he won several awards for his playwriting. In 1938, after earning a degree in English, Miller returned to New York. There, he joined the Federal Theatre Project, and wrote scripts for such radio programs as Columbia Workshop (CBS) and Cavalcade of America (NBC). Arthur's personal life also progressed in 1940 when he married Mary Slattery with whom he later had two children. Because of a football injury, Arthur was exempt from the d... ... middle of paper ... ...the movies even more than that. If you're young, you'll probably be writing about young people, and that's easier -- you can find young actors -- but you can't readily find mature actors". The Arthur Miller Society must continue to teach people what millions of us already know. Through exposure to his unique style of writing which seems so simple people will continue to relate to and love his work for many years to come. Works Cited Arthur Miller Society, New York, NY. The Arthur Miller Society Official Website>> www.Ibiblio.org/miller Bloom, Harold. Arthur Miller. Chelsea House, Philadelphia, PA. 1987/2000 Griffin, Alice. Understanding Arthur Miller, University of South Carolina Press, Columbia, SC. 1996 Public Broadcasting Service, "American Masters: Arthur Miller". 2000. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/miller_a.html
Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible as a protest paper to the brutality of the Red Scare .The Red Scare was the inoperable fear of Communism within the United States. This scare was caused as a result of the Cold War in the 1950’s. During the Cold War the US was scared of an attack of the Soviets, and the Soviets were equally as scared of an attack upon them by us. Joseph McCarthy, a Senator from Wisconsin, saw this fear as an opportunity to rise to power. McCarthy had many supporters that were primarily Republicans, Catholics, Conservative Protestants, and Blue-collar workers. McCarthy ruthlessly utilized scare tactics to get people to believe and follow him blindly into his accusations as to innocent citizens supporting Communism and either having them jailed or killed by providing phony evidence. Arthur Miller was not intimidated by this he wrote the Crucible as “an act of desperation” (Miller). This desperation was to counteract the lack of speaking out about personal beliefs during the Red Scare for the fear of breaking the law. In The Crucible, Miller wrote about a character named John Proctor who is very similar to Miller himself. Both the author and the character had to overturn the same personal paralyzing guilt, not speaking out soon enough. Nonetheless, their eventual overcoming of this guilt leads them to becoming the most forthright voice against the madness around them.
Context: This part of the text is included at the beginning of the drama, telling the audience about Salem and its people. The author explains how a theocracy would lead to a tragedy like the Salem witch-hunts. This is the initial setting and is based on the principle that some people should be included and some excluded from society, according to their religious beliefs and their actions. This is basically the idea that religious passion, taken to extremes, results in tragedy. Miller is saying that even today extremes end up bad- communism, like strict puritans, was restrictive and extreme. It only made people suffer.
Thou sable, luminous, hair which falls right below the arches in her broad shoulders. The shoulders toned by hard work to hold the town together. The deep black circles that cast deathly shadows under her eyes from lack of rest. The woman who turns all the heads of the people in this small town of Salem Massachusetts. I must come to encounter this woman who cast the beat to my heart.
John and Elizabeth continue to argue. John Hale appears at their doorway. He is traveling to each house, talking to those who were mentioned in court, trying to find out more information about them. John says that he knows that Abigail and the other girls are not telling the truth. Two Salem citizens that have had wives arrested show up and a short time passes before a party comes to arrest Elizabeth.
The Crucible, takes place in the small Puritan village called Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. The witchcraft trials grew out of the moral system of the Puritans. This split the town into two, those who were considered witches and those who wanted good.
Many years ago, the culture and atmosphere was amazingly different. The expectations of people and communities are extremely high. During the Puritan times, many laws and regulations existed pertaining to government, religion, and witchcraft. In the play, The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, the one word that best describes the Puritan beliefs and the community structure is strict.
The crucible, written by Arthur Miller, is about the Salem witch trials and how people react to hysteria created from the fear of witches. In the play, after hysteria breaks out, the Salem government starts persecute and hang people it believes are witches. This prompts people to start to accusing people of witchcraft. Some people who accuse others of committing witchcraft are Abigail Williams and Thomas Putnam. They do not accuse people of witchcraft to stop witchcraft, but for personal gain or to hurt others. Thomas Putnam, one of the many characters who takes advantage of the witch trials, is able to use the fear of witches to bend the court to his will. Hysteria causes people to believe claims that are clearly false. This allows Putnam to persecute his enemies. He and many other are able to get away with this because hysteria driven persecutions are not run like regular courts and the fact that witchcraft is an invisible crime allows evidence to be made up. The theme of The Crucible is when any persecution is driven by fear and people can and will manipulate the system so they can gain and hurt another.
Writers may use literature as a vehicle of social criticism. In which ways does Arthur Miller criticize society?
In The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, the madness of the Salem witch trials is explored in great detail. Arthur Miller was an American playwright, who was born in 1915. He grew up in a Jewish family in New York City. While attending the University of Michigan in the mid 1930’s, he began to characterize himself as a distinguished writer. His first plays were Honors at Dawn and No Villain. The Death of a Salesman, which he wrote in 1949, won him the Pulitzer Prize for literature.
Persecution has been a round for sometime and can be traced historically from the time of Jesus to the present time. Early Christians were persecuted for their faith in the hands of the Jews. Many Christians have been persecuted in history for their allegiance to Christ and forced to denounce Christ and others have been persecuted for failing to follow the laws of the land. The act of persecution is on the basis of religion, gender, race, differing beliefs and sex orientation. Persecution is a cruel and inhumane act that should not be supported since people are tortured to death. In the crucible, people were persecuted because of alleged witchcraft.
Author Miller was born October 17, 1915 in New York City. He was the second of three children. Miller’s father was once a wealthy man and made his fortunes off of a women’s clothing manufacturing business. After the Stock Market Crash in the nineteen thirty’s, Millers fathers manufacturing business failed and went out of business. They could no longer live their lavish life style. Their lives turned downward in a blink of an eye. They sold everything they had and moved to Brooklyn. As a teenager, Miller would have to deliver bread every morning before school to help out the family. Yet, despite living in poverty, Miller ...
113-117. Arthur Miller. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1982. ---. Eight Plays.
Arthur Miller is an interesting author in the sense that many of his plays reflect or are a product of events in his life. He was born in 1915 in New York City and was the son of a successful businessman, up until the Great Depression when his father lost most of his wealth. This greatly impacts Miller's life, and influences the themes for many of his future writings. To make ends meet at home, Miller worked as a truck driver, a warehouse clerk, and a cargo-mover; consequently, these odd jobs bring him close to the working-class type people that will later be the basis of many characters in his plays. It is while he is involving himself in these jobs that Miller forms his love for literature; he is greatly impressed by Fyodor Dostoevski's The Brothers Karamazov because it questions the unspoken rules of society, a concept he often wondered about, especially after the Great Depression. He believes that American society needed to be made over; for this reason, many of his earlier plays show sympathetic portrayals and compassionate characterizations of his characters. In 1956, Miller marries the eminent Marilyn Monroe. This event significantly affects his writing in that he focuses on female characters more than he had formerly. He also looked back at his prefigured themes in past stories and expanded or reconsidered them (Martin, 1336-7). Clearly, the roots of his works are the result of important events from his past experiences.
Miller, Arthur, and Gerald Weales. Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman: Text and Criticism. New York: Viking Press, 1971.
In class, recently we have been reading: "A View from the Bridge" by Arthur Miller. We have been exploring his magnificent techniques in being able to show the immense tensions between a family and his excellent ways of using this to grab the audience.