Though After the Fall represents a bold experiment in dramatic techniques, many critics have seen it as a failure. It includes some touching moments, as in the humorous language of Quentin’s Jewish mother in act 1, or the pathetic, psychotic change in Maggie in act 2. However, it lacks structural balance, for the two acts do not seem to cohere, nor is there an underlying force that might make Quentin’s case plausible.

Nevertheless, After the Fall is a major step in Miller’s development as a playwright. All My Sons (pr., pb. 1947), a well-crafted play, stresses collective moral responsibility: The sins of the capitalistic father are visited on the son who flies the airplanes his father builds. In the 1950’s, Miller began to experiment with expressionism in the vein of August Strindberg. In his most famous play, Death of a Salesman (pr., pb. 1949), Willy Loman’s dreams of success are undercut by his failure in reality. Still, Willy inspires a love in his son Biff that gives the play a sense of tragic joy. The Crucible (pr., pb. 1953), which includes expressionistic elements, elevates John Proctor’s individual honesty and integrity, in contrast to the hysterical thinking of the group.

After the Fall, which takes place totally in the mind, is far more existential in conception than its predecessors. Quentin decides to leave behind his past, those he helped to destroy, and go on as an individual, but unlike Willy in Death of a Salesman, he inspires a love that is problematic at best. Quentin lacks the strong character of John Proctor.

Miller’s plays postdating After the Fall use similar themes in far more conservative ways. Incident at Vichy (pr. 1964) features characters of great courage and integrity who make significant moral judgments despite the collective guilt that taints human actions. The Ride Down Mt. Morgan (pr. 1991) concerns a guilt-ridden bigamist dying in the presence of his two wives and a daughter. The Price (pr., pb. 1968), in which several brothers struggle over a piece of furniture, is important for its characterization and use of detail, elements Miller sacrificed to the development of general themes in After the Fall.

In commenting on After the Fall in his autobiography, Timebends: A Life (1987), Miller laments the fact that he underestimated the public’s determination to read Maggie as Marilyn Monroe. He contends that the public’s failure to “consider innocence lethal” was a kind of denial, the same kind that “brought about the play’s tragic ending.”