Miller's Play example essay topic

Arthur Miller is one of the most brilliant American play writes of the twentieth century and a celebrity of many people throughout the world. Miller has lived a very peculiar life. Besides living through a rough early life, he luckily found his way to write some of the best novels. His most commonly known novels are The Death of a Salesman and The Crucible. He was born in October of 1915 in New York City.

He is the middle child, having an older brother and a younger sister. He is the son of a ladies-wear manufacturer who was ruined during the economic collapse of the 1930's. This brought an end to his families income, so they were surrounded by poverty. As a young man during the Great Depression, Miller was shaped by the poverty that surrounded him, which demonstrated to him the insecurity of modern existence. After graduation from high school he worked in a warehouse so that he could earn enough money to attend the University of Michigan, where he began to write plays. He became affiliated with the Federal Theatre Project (Goldstein 3).

On of his earliest novels was The Death of a Salesman, written in 1949. Miller's purpose of the play was to convey man's incapability to except change within himself and society, and to address the main character's loss of individuality. Arthur Miller's play has been widely recognized as a milestone in the history of American theater. Showing the relationships between characters and in turn the impact they make on the outcome of the play was one main objective that the author accomplishes. In Arthur Miller's, The Death of a Salesman, the other characters in the play influence the main character's emotions and destiny. It was with Death of a Salesman that Miller secured his reputation as one of the nation's foremost playwright (Webster 4).

Death of a Salesman mixes the tradition of social realism that informs most of Miller's work with a more experimental structure that includes fluid leaps in time. Miller won a Tony Award for Death of a Salesman as well as a Pulitzer Prize. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1952. The play has been frequently revived in film, television, and stage versions that have included such diverse actors as Dustin Hoffman, George C. Scott and, most recently, Brian Dennehy as Willy Loan. Miller followed Death of a Salesman with his most politically significant work (Addison 1) Due to a back injury, Arthur was unable to serve in World War II. However, he still did what he could by using his talent to attempt to write a film called, "The Story of G.I. Joe", but it did not succeed as a film.

Instead it gave Miller information for a book he wrote called Situation Normal. The book was based on U.S. soldiers thoughts and feelings towards war (Jon-Mil 6) Arthur Miller's play, The Crucible, develops characters that portray problems with their identities. This inner struggle is clearly seen in the main character John Proctor. He is the man Miller was chose to struggle with "the dilemma of men, fallible, subject to pride, but forced to choose between the "negative good" of truth of morality, and the "positive good" of human life". (Internet, Arthur Miller Home Page) In order for this character to develop, Miller had to create Proctors wife, Elizabeth. She would be the catalyst in making John Proctor deal with his inherent identity dilemma.

With out her, Proctor would not be central character, and would have never needed to deal with the inner morality of himself. Elizabeth Proctor makes her husband John the main character in The Crucible. The Crucible details the tale of the Salem witch trials that contains information leading to the McCarthy anti-Communist hearings of Miller's contemporary society. Three years later, in 1956, Miller found himself part of these hearings when he was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Miller refused to name people he allegedly saw at a Communist writers' meeting a decade before and was convicted of contempt. However, he appealed this verdict and later won.

That same year Miller married actress Marilyn Monroe. The two divorced in 1961, the year of her death. That year Monroe appeared in her last film, The Misfits, which is based on an original screenplay by Miller. (Encyclopedia Americana, 5) After divorcing Monroe, Miller wed Inge borg Mora th, to whom he is still married.

The two have a son and a daughter. Miller also wrote the plays A Memory of Two Mondays and the short A View from the Bridge, which were both staged in 1955. His other works include After the Fall (1964), a thinly veiled account of his marriage to Monroe, as well as the Price (1967), The Archbishop's Ceiling (1977) and the American Clock (1980). His most recent works include the plays The Ride Down Mt. Morgan (1991), The Last Yankee (19993) and Broken Glass (1993), which won the Olivier Award for Best Play. Although Miller has not written significantly for film, he did pen an adaptation for the 1995 film version of The Crucible starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Winona Ryder, which garnered him an Academy Award nominations.

Miller's daughter Rebecca married Day-Lewis in 1996 (Burns 2). Inspirations is only one word to describe the writer Arthur Miller. He was an inspiration to many through his play writing. Throughout his life he has had success that many dream of but can not achieve. One never expects success to happen so quickly like it happened to Arthur Miller.