Arthur Miller Influences

Arthur Miller was a prominent American playwright that consistently produced popular plays throughout the later half of the twentieth century. He commonly related the current topics of the era to the themes of his plays. During the pinnacle of his career, the 50’s, when he wrote each of the four plays, Death of a Salesman, All My Sons, The Crucible, and A View from the Bridge, the issues of the society he experienced strongly influenced his writing. Living in an immigrant neighborhood near New York City, he had a first-hand experience of the life of an American immigrant and the hardships that they encountered. In A View from the Bridge, Eddie Carbone’s wife, Beatrice, allows her cousins to come into America from Italy illegally and stay with

His parents were Jewish immigrants from Poland who had recently settled down in Harlem. Miller grew up a skilled athlete on his high school’s football team. Throughout his teenage years, his father’s successful garment business began to decline due to the Great Depression. As a young boy, “Miller resented his father's withdrawal, which was caused by his business failure. The figure of the failed father would later play a significant role in Miller's writing” (Rosefeldt 8). This failure tore the family apart, and Miller looked toward college. On his second try, he was admitted into the University of Michigan. Upon his sister’s becoming an actress as well as reading and attending plays, Miller abandoned athletics to pursue a love for literature. He worked a number of small jobs before writing his first few plays, including a year at an auto parts store, similar to Keller’s machine shop that made airplane parts for World War II. After leaving the University of Michigan, he began writing his own plays. He wrote two plays in the few years immediately after moving back to New York, one of which studied anti-semitism in the United States. The other described two brothers struggling with their father, something that he would repeat in his most famous later plays. Gaining more popularity with each play he wrote, it was with All My Sons and Death of a Salesman in 1947 and 1949, respectively, that he finally gained national household

Most evidently is the portrayal of the failing father in Miller’s plays. After Isidore Miller’s store began to fail as a result of the Great Depression, Arthur held a feeling of ambivalence toward him. While still feeling an unconditional love for his father, he still resented the failure. In comparing Isidore to Willy Loman from Death of a Salesman, Ann Keene writes, “The playwright's father had slid into permanent despair upon losing his business, whereas Willy only intensifies his pathetic grasping for success in the face of unrelenting failure—the gloom of the Miller household is surely reflected onstage” (4). Both Isidore and Willy were businessmen led to failure by their society. However, the rest of Miller’s family was also used as a template for his plays. Augusta, Miller’s mother, was a strong woman and schoolteacher who tried to sustain the morale of the family throughout their adversities. Similarly, Linda Loman, Beatrice Carbone, and Kate Keller each represent a strong mother who attempts to console the family after the father can no longer support them. Miller even portrays himself in his plays as the son in denial of his father. In both Death of a Salesman and All My Sons, a pair of brothers are fighting for their father’s acceptance, although skeptical of his success themselves. Biff, son of Willy in Death of a Salesman, is an