The process of playwriting is given a peculiar wavelike rhythm in Miller's own story of his efforts to realize his intentions from one play to the other. Troughs of dejection on being exposed to unexpected critical and audience responses to a newly completed play are followed by swells of creativity informed by the dramatist's determination to make himself more clearly understood in the next one. This wavelike rhythm of challenge and response is the underlying structural principle of Miller&#x...

In many ways … The Price seems to mark a return to the world of Joe Keller and Willy Loman. Once again, it appears, we are invited to witness the struggles of a man who has "the wrong dreams" and who embraces too completely the ethics of a society intent on success at any price. But … since Death of a Salesman Miller has become aware of more fundamental influences than those exerted by Horatio Alger Jr. and while he continues to expose the vacuity of the American dream he is more...

An individual's assessment of Miller as a playwright will depend,… on his own biases and presuppositions. If he is primarily interested in theatrical experimentation and novelty, he will find little to interest him in the plays. Miller's explorations of form have never taken him far from the highroad of realism…. From the rich storehouse of theatrical trickery accumulated in this century by the expressionists, symbolists, surrealists or absurdists, Miller has borrowed practically...

[Incident at Vichy] is an explicit dramatic rendition of Sartre's treatise on Jews, as well as a clear structural example of Sartre's definition of the existential "theatre of situation." [The] affinity between Sartre and Miller is understandable when one considers the existential development of Miller's later plays. Beginning with The Misfits, Miller's works begin to shift the tragic perspective from man's remediable alienation from society to man's h...

[In a sense], Miller could be said to have paved the way for that revival of the American theatre which started in 1959, for like O'Neill before him he was a playwright prepared to confront seriously aspects of the human situation ignored by a theatre obsessed with psychology and sociology…. His achievement lies not in his sensitivity to contemporary issues but in his ability to penetrate to the metaphysical implications of those issues. Nevertheless Miller never entirely shakes himself free o...

Arthur Miller's short stories "Monte Sant' Angelo" and "I Don't Need You Any More" share a supplementary relationship to his essay on "The Family in Modern Drama." All develop themes that prove essential for an understanding of Miller's imagination, and all deal with man displaced from the enveloping context of the family. The meaning of this displacement includes the loss not only of mother, father or brother but also a psychological sta...

The original title Arthur Miller chose for his play of 1949 was The Inside of His Head. But before the drama finally was produced or published, it had been rechristened Death of a Salesman, becoming perhaps the most popular serious drama yet written by an American playwright. Miller's ultimate choice of title succeeds in capturing the central theme of that brilliant work. Yet the earlier title is suggesive of the dramaturgical stratagems Miller was considering. Overtly designated in the title The Ins...

It is hard for me to say whether I liked [Playing for Time] itself. Ice cream is something you like, vanilla or chocolate. The movie was a morbid, frequently horrifying drama—as sickening and shocking a television experience as I've had since Holocaust…. The situation was not helped by the German guards coming across as music lovers, making you think at times that Auschwitz was a perverted camp in the Berkshires. Especially disturbing was the incomplete portrait of Dr. Mengele, Herr Kom...

When the twentieth century is history and American drama viewed in perspective, the plays of Arthur Miller will undoubtedly be preserved in the annals of dramatic literature. Few will dispute that Miller's plays, along with those of O'Neill and Albee and Williams, constitute the "best" of American theater. This may, however, be more a comment on the state of American drama than on the excellence of Arthur Miller, for, in a larger perspective, there is little in Miller's dr...