Miller was born in New York in 1915. He grew up in a lower-middle class Jewish family in both Harlem and Brooklyn and later incorporated these urban settings into a number of his works, including Death of a Salesman. Some of his works also deal with the topic of anti-Semitism, for obvious reasons both personal and political/global. Miller once said, “I don’t see how you can write anything decent without using as your basis the question of right and wrong.” His explorations of the human psyche and the ways in which people make moral or immoral decisions earned him a lot of recognition, the pinnacle of which is his Pulitzer Prize awarded for Death of a Salesman.
After World War II, America had sealed its position as a dominant global superpower.