Like Death of a Salesman, the Crucible, and a View from the Bridge Have Made an Indelible Impression

Home , Broken Glass (play), Focus (novel), Incident at Vichy

THE WRITER WHO WROTE MORE THAN HE MEANT TO WRITE ON ARTHUR MILLER'S BROKEN GLASS

Introduction

Arthur Miller, born in I9 I 5, is one of the leading playwrights of the last century. I His work has often been performed all over the world. Plays like Death of a Salesman, The Crucible, and A View from the Bridge have made an indelible impression. In I994 one of his last works, Broken Glass, was published.2 Miller wrote this playas a warning against the dangers of anti-Semitism, racism, and fascism. Broken Glass, too, has been staged throughout the world, but has drawn less attention than many of his other works. This is remarkable for two reasons. First, the fact that Miller addresses a Jewish theme so explicitly, and second, how he treats this theme in Broken Glass. Miller has never made a secret of his Jewish background. He has never avoided Jewish themes.3 However, Miller opts expressly for a universal- istic approach to the themes which he addresses in his plays. It is therefore striking - and innovative - that Miller broaches an explicit Jewish subject so emphatically in Broken Glass. As yet this innovation in his work has not received sufficient attention in Miller studies. It forms the subject of this article. The underexposure of Broken Glass is also shown by the initiative of the National Yiddish Book Centre to establish a Jewish canon.4 It

, Arthur Miller has written a highly readable autobiography: Timehends: A Life (New York 1987; reprinted several times). There are many discussions of Miller's work. I mention here specifically: A. Griffin, Understanding Arthur Miller (Columbia 1996); S. Centola, ed., The Achievement of Arthur Miller: New Essays (Contemporary Research Associates r 99 5); .1..1. Martine, Critical Essays on Arthur Miller (Hampshire 1979). For those who want to follow the most recent developments in Miller studies, the informative website of the Arthur Miller Society is an important source: www.ibiblio.org/miller/.

2 A. Miller, Broken Glass (New York 1994) .

.1 For instance: Focus (written in the mid-forties, published in Great Britain in 1949 and in the USA only in 1964), Incident at Vichy (1964), and Playing for Time (1980). 4 Pakn Treger 37 (2001) 25. s. /lerKel; M./lroche and I.Zwiep (eds), Zutot 2002, 209-21 (, 2°9 ZUTOT 2002 - MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY

includes Miller, and specifically his magnum opus: Death of a Salesman. 5 This choice is remarkable, because there is little that is Jewish in this work. Editor Kenneth Turan writes in his motivation: 'Miller's drama is arguably the greatest of twentieth-century American plays,' but he fails to make it clear, why precisely this play belongs in a Jewish canon. Perhaps there is another work by Miller which is a better candidate for inclusion in the Jewish canon, and possibly Broken Glass is such a work. So let us go into this play at more length. The fact that Miller presents Jewish themes in Broken Glass so promi- nently is not the only interesting aspect of this play. The question how he does this deserves attention too. At first sight Miller's play prompts an interpretation which seems at odds with his own intentions. The impression may arise that Broken Glass is a play about hysteria and not so much about Jewish identity and anti-Semitism. In the existing literature on the 6 play -limited as it is - this aspect has not been sufficiently illuminated in my view. How did Miller translate his intentions into text, how are text and intentions related? This requires a more detached, objective analysis of the literary devices which Miller uses to tell his story. This article offers some starting points.

Arthur Miller on Broken Glass

From one day to the next a woman ends up in a wheelchair without doctors being able to explain the paralysis. It happens to Sylvia Gellburg, one of the main characters in Arthur Miller's Broken Glass. This play dates from 1994 and is set in Brooklyn, in 1938. In Nazi Germany the Kristallnacht has just taken place. Sylvia has seen photos in the newspaper of Jews who are forced by Nazis to clean the street with tooth- brushes. This has made her so fearful that she has been overcome by paralysis. A story about a woman who becomes paralysed owing to events on the other side of the ocean is sensational. The fact that she is a beautiful, young woman makes it all the more tragic .

.\ A good introduction to the discussions which tbis play has provoked is: B. Murphy and S.C.W. Abhotson, Understanding Death of a Salesman (Westport 1999). " The main literature is mentioned in note 7.

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