The Oxford Companion to English Literature | Miller, Arthur
Miller, Arthur
(
1915
–
2005
),
American
playwright, born in New York and educated at the University of Michigan, where he began to write plays. He made his name with All My Sons (
1947
), an Ibsenesque drama about a manufacturer of defective aeroplane parts, and established himself as a leading dramatist with Death of a Salesman (
1949
), in which a travelling salesman,
Willie
Loman
, is brought to disaster by accepting the false values of contemporary society. This was followed by The Crucible (
1952
), in which the Salem witchcraft trials of
1692
are used as a parable for McCarthyism in America in the 1950s. A View from the Bridge (
1955
) is a tragedy of family honour and revenge, sparked by the presence in longshoreman Eddie's apartment of two illegal Italian immigrants; the lawyer Alfieri comments as chorus on the inevitability of the action. The Misfits (
1961
) is a screenplay...
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