Arthur Miller and the Judgment of God Author(s): Anthony R. Collins Source: The South Central Bulletin, Vol. 42, No. 4, Studies by Members of SCMLA, (Winter, 1982), pp. 120-124 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press on behalf of The South Central Modern Language Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3188270 Accessed: 24/04/2008 15:26

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=jhup.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We enable the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

http://www.jstor.org 120 THE SOUTH CENTRAL BULLETIN Winter, 1982

ARTHUR M,LLRERAND THE JUDGMENT OF GOD ANTHONYR. COLLINS University of Houston

Perhaps more than any other modern playwright, effective plays to follow. Dealing with questions of right Arthur Miller writes plays in which the spectator is and wrong in a very overt manner, it reveals Joe Teller's required to pass a moral judgment on the actions of the guilt in manufacturing defective airplane engines during protagonist. Although Miller obviously is concerned with World War II. This sin cost the lives of twenty American the problems of individual conscience, his plot fliers including Joe's own son. Although effective on stage, construction, character development and even final this work leaves the spectator with the feeling he has resolution of the play invite, or in some cases insist, that witnessed something of a morality play. any individual assessment of guilt be measured against a A few years later in 1949, Miller abandoned such more abstract and general moral standard. In orderto deal questions of clear-cut morality and gave audiences Death of with Miller's technique in a general critical overview, it is a Salesman, one of the most significant and stageworthy necessary to posit the existence of an ultimate moral plays of the 20th century. The most extreme theatricalism authority against which the playwright's, the character's, and expressionism are so absorbed into the flow of the and the spectator's judgments can be measured. It is action that viewers or readers are unaware of the means by possible to do so without introducing any distracting which the author completely controls their sensibilities. theological argument simply by suggesting that, in a Perhaps this mastery and complex usage of theatrical style functional sense, the judgment of Godlies behind the moral is needed to reflect the conflicting moral issues of the play. versions of right and wrong as embodied in his plays. Willy Loman is not so specifically culpable as was Joe In some plays, Death of a Salesman being the chief Teller. There is no one decision he made to which one can example, God is conspicuously absent, and as a result, point with assurance and say, "Yes,that is where he fell."It Willy Loman fails to arrive at any recognition of the cosmic is rather Willy's inability to distinguish between genuine moral order and his place in it. Even though the play is values and illusion which leads him down a twisted road to magnificent theatre and reflective of the age which catastrophe; everything is obscured, as in real life, with engendered it, the viewer senses a lack of moral resolution, misperception and confusion. a final judgment on Willy, which even the Epilogue fails to dispel. In Death of a Salesman, Miller brings to life a In other works such as All My Sons, The Crucible, View contemporary,lower-middle-class family in which Godand From the Bridge, and After the Fall, the externalized moral His rules for conductplay no part, and, as is to be expected, authority, as well as the reflective moraljudgment process, false values emerge to fill the moral vacuum. And as is is realized to a greater though varying degree. An usually the case in dramatic representation of this examination of these works, including Death of a situation, such hollow values eventually betray the Salesman, will illuminate the ways in which Miller has protagonist. Brooks Atkinson wrote in his initial review of used the presence or absence of a moral stance and/or God the play on February 11, 1949, ". .. The illusions by which for dramatic purposes and how this usage traces an he (Willy Loman) has lived - opportunities missed, wrong evolution in Miller's concept of moral action. formulas for success, fatal misconceptions about his place Miller's dramatic technique is the familiar one of in the scheme of things. ... The phantom of it all has representing an action which leads to a critical decision caught up with him. ... Suddenly there is nothing."2 which in turn reveals the protagonist's moral stance. In Writing fifteen years later, the distinguished director almost every case, the decisions of the protagonist prompt Harold Clurman echoes, "Willy's hollow 'religion' has judgment from the other characters in the play, from the crippled his faculties, corrodedhis moral fibre." spectators and, more or less implicitly, fromGod. As is often The action of the play unquestionably supports these the case in theatre, the spectators are expected to serve as contentions, these judgments on Willy's moral failings. We the eyes of God, witness and accessoryjudge to all that has must never forget that Willy received his inspiration to happened, and due to the condensing and focusing power of become a salesman through seeing an elderly drummer dramatic representation, to be better able to form a moral being treated with deferenceon a passenger train. Even the conclusion than they would be in real life. recounting of it strikes the hearer as whimsical to the Harold Clurman says that in the plays of Miller, "Man extreme. In a dialogue with the shade of his departed and must pay and pay and pay - for everything."' This is successful Uncle Ben, Willy attempts to define his concept certainly true of the moral choices the characters make or of what it takes to succeed in life: fail to make. Willy Loman fails in the moral arena and dies. .... The sky's the limit, because it's not what you do, His son, Biff, must sever himself fromthe family and father Ben. It's who you know and the smile on your face! It's he loves to find himself. Eddie Carbone in View From the contacts, Ben, contacts ... that's the wonder of this Bridge dies as a price for trying to play Godin the life of his country,that a man can end with diamondshere on the niece, Catherine. Quentin in After the Fall must undergo basis of being liked.4 shattering self-revelation before our (and God's) eyes before he can find redemption. One of Miller's lesser known Nowhere in this garbled litany is there a mention of hard of plays bears the title, The Price, and although ostensibly work, intelligence, aptitude, honesty, fair play, or any concernedwith the sale of a deceased parent's estate to an the other tiresome virtues. It must be rememberedthat this antique dealer, it is, in fact, an account of the price two credo, this being "well liked" is the value system Willy so brothers have paid over the years for moral choices they industriously presses on his two boys, Biff and Happy. made. Willy is, nevertheless, uncertain and asks of Ben: "Ben, am Miller's first notable effort to treat issues of morality,All I right? Don't you think I'm right? I value your advice" My Sons, may be regarded as preparation for the more (p. 160). As a matter of fact, Ben does not think Willy is Winter, 1982 THE SOUTHCENTRAL BULLETIN 121 right, putting his trust in things "you can lay your hands empty promises he has made to himself and others. Death of on" such as diamonds and timber. Ironically, Willy never a Salesman offers no hope that anyone can come to terms does take Ben's advice at any point in the play. Perhaps this with modern society and preserve his dignity as a human is because Ben's credo requires a hard-heartedness that being. Charley, Willy's moderately successful neighbor, Willy simply does not possess. remains aloof from the vitality of existence as his strategy Eventually, must come a judgment about Willy and it is for coping. Bernard, Charley's eminently successful son not easy. How much blame must he assume for his and Biff's contemporary, triumphs in life in a wrong-headednotions? Are we living in an age which gives matter-of-fact, apparently preordained way. Perhaps too many choices to people temperamentally and Miller is judging twentieth-century America and its intellectually ill equipped to deal with them? Has our illusory alternatives as much as he is Willy Loman. secular materialism overwhelmed man with images of In The Crucible (1952), Miller turns from a society in consumption, luxury, and the easy deal? Has he reached a which there are not God-givenabsolutes to one in which the point, fatal for any culture, where manual labor is scorned presence of God, or the devil, permeates the very air the because it is manual? It is made clear in the play that Willy characters breathe. Although the major thrust of the play would have been a first-rate carpenter, but as he says to is an indictment of a suspicious theocracy, the underlying Bill, "Yourgrandfather was better than a carpenter." movement is of one man's search for vindication in the Willy is not an evil or brutal man as those terms are used, sight of God and himself. but can he be judged blameless? If he had simply ruined his John Proctor is a truly good man, and unlike Willy own life, and perhaps Linda'sby following his delusion that Loman, a capable and respected member of his community. being well-liked is all the world requires of anyone it would Even this, Miller seems to argue, is not sufficient to insure be bad enough, but Willy displays such a narcisstic need to him from ruin. Proctor is married to the saintly Elizabeth be idolized by his sons that he prevents their maturation Proctorand he defers to her moral stature, especially since into reasonable adults. his adultery with the servant girl, Abigail, some time back In what is probablythe climax of the play, this infantile has comprised his own sense of worth. Being human, dependence is shattered for Biff when he discovers his however, he is resentful of the penance he feels Elizabeth is father with another woman in a Boston hotel room.Biff has forcing upon him: flunked math and could not graduate from high school and No more!I should have roaredyou down when first you accept a college scholarship; he fled to Boston seeking the told me your suspicion. But I wilted and, like a omnipotent father who could make everything right again. Christian, I confessed. Confessed!Some dream I must Biff had been denied the opportunity,so necessary for every have mistaken you for God that day. But you're not, adolescent, of gradually replacing the idealized, infantile you're not, and let you remember it! Let you look image of the parent with one more in conformity with sometimes for the goodness in me, and judge me not. human nature. In an instant Biff was expected to replace (p. 258) idolization with appreciation of his father's fallible This is, of course, the issue of the play in general; the right humanity. He could not do it and fled. of any mortal to apply God'sjudgment to another human Biff, who is the only member of the Loman family with being inevitably depends on self-election to the tribunal. the spiritual toughness to face any unpleasant truth, spent Elizabeth is, however, a sympathetic character, and the next seventeen years trying to find himself, to find denies that she seeks such a role in John's life: something to replace that set of values he knew was as I do not judge you. The magistrate sits in your heart phony as his father. In his work as a ranch hand in the that judges you. I never thought you but a good man, western states, Biff found a vague sort of pantheism. He John only somewhat bewildered. (p. 258) speaks of it to his father: She is right, of course. It is John Proctor's internal I stoppedin the middle of that building and I saw - the magistrate who must be satisfied before he will find peace sky. I saw the things I love in this world. The work and before God. the food and the time to sit and smoke ... all I want is That is the scene in the microcosm of the Proctor out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I household, however,and John will soon find himself thrust, am. Why can't I say that, Willy? (p. 201) against his wishes, into the larger arena of Salem itself. In Biff has been forced to pass judgment on his father, a this community there are those who feel duty bound to function he did not seek. The disparity between the image judge their brothers and sisters on the scales of his father would project to the world and Biffs own righteousness. The Reverends Parris, Hale, and Danforth perception of his father's character forces the issue. Biffs may differ considerablyin motive and charity, but all three severest indictment of his father is over the disorderWilly's accept it as their right to root out what they perceive to be ideas have caused in his own expectations: the evil in Salem. And I never got anywhere because you blew me so full - The Devil is alive in Salem, and we dare not quail to of hot air I could never stand taking orders from follow whereever the accusing finger points anybody! That's whose fault it is. (p. 200) (p. 272) So complete is Willy's delusion and so fearful the possibility says Reverend Hale, the most humane of the three. That that his life is a lie that he retreats from any confrontation the "accusing finger" is directed by vengeful or hysterical with the truth. He exists to commit suicide with the same false values he lived by. There is no heroic recognition for in the The Willy play. only consolation is that he kills 1Harold Clurman, "Arthur Miller - Theme and himself as much out of love as out of guilt. Variations,"Theatre, I (1964), 18. In the final scene, the Requiem, Biff reiterates his 2BrooksAtkinson, "Deathof a Salesman,"The New York determination to live a life true to himself. For his brother, Times, Feb. 11, 1949. Happy, there is no hope. He has been infected by the Willy 3Clurman, p. 16. Loman syndrome and declares that he will "show the 4Arthur Miller, Eight Plays, (Garden City: Nelson world"that Willy did not die in vain. Unfortunately, as has Doubleday, Inc. 1981), p. 160. Subsequent references to been made clear in the play, Happy is distinctly second Miller's plays are from this edition, indicated by page rate, and this boast will take its place among the other numbers in parentheses. 122 THE SOUTHCENTRAL BULLETIN Winter, 1982 young girls does not affect the willingness of the servants of his life was a lie, he attempts to keep her from growing up God to hang the best people of the community. into womanhood. Discussing Catherine's impending The trial scene is the climax of the play, and Deputy marriage with Beatrice, his very perceptive wife, he says: Governor Danforth establishes the credentials of the Beatrice, she's a baby, how is she gonna know what she inquiry early on: likes? Do you know, Mr. Proctor,that the entire contention of To which Beatrice replies: the state in these trials is that the voice of Heaven is Well, you kept her a baby, you wouldn't let her go out. I speaking through these children? (p. 285) told you a hundred times. (p. 455) Anyone who disagrees will fall under the earlier In A View from the Bridge, Miller attempts to elevate his pronouncement of the paranoid Reverend Parris: "All domestic tragedy to a higher universal level, suggesting innocent and Christian people are happy for the courts in that Eddie Carbone is possessed by daemonic passions far Salem" beyond the reach of rational thought, guided toward The imperfectionsof any system ofjudgment, possibility catastrophe by some sort of perverse destiny, which in of error, any concept of mercy and the realities of human meaning, if not scale, is akin to those forces which led nature are banished as objections before this pronounce- Agammenon, Phaedra, and Medea to ruinous deeds. As is ment and heavenly charter. The action of the play makes it made absolutely clear in the Epilogue of Death of a clear that these self-elected saviours cannot be expressing Salesman, a mindless yet total commitment to any ideal, the will of God. even a wrong one, excuses a great deal when the account The climax of the witch hunt occurs when Elizabeth books are balanced. Proctoris called to testify as to her husband'snature. It has By far the most interesting character from the viewpoint been established that this is a woman who "cannotlie." She of this present inquiry is that of the lawyer, Alfieri. Only is the best of the goodin Salem. N. Joseph Calarco,writes of peripherally involved in the action, he serves as the the Wayne State Repertory production of this play, that observer, God-like in his prescience yet powerless to alter this was a moment of almost unbearable tension for the the course of events. Recognizing that mortal law and audience.5 on Elizabeth's answer, most means could never fend off the impending catastrophe, Everything hinges in John Proctor'sattempt to impeach Abigail as a Alfieri tells us that he even went to a wise, old woman particularly and witness by confessing his adultery with her. Danforth the neighborhoodfor advice. She merely nodded said, levels the deadly question at Elizabeth: "Isyour husband a "Pray for him." lecher?"Faintly she answers, "No, sir,"and her husband, Several times during the course of the play, Alfieri must unknown to her, is condemned. delineate the limits of human law. He suggests to Eddie What at first appears to be an attempt to protect the good that it is good that the law gives him no recourseto prevent name of her husband eventually is revealed to be a critical Catherine's marriage in that such a union is the way of distinction between social and sacred justice. Danforth is nature and God. Later, after Eddie has reported Rodolpho, asking about a particular action performedby John Proctor Catherine's betrothed, and his brother Marco so that the at a particular time in the past; Elizabeth is offering a immigration authorities will remove them from his world, Christian answer to the question. Although her husband Alfieri underlines the distinction between the two realms erred in the past, he sins no more. The temporary fall of law, human and divine. He is trying to convince Marco promptedby his animal passions has not indelibly marked not to follow his Sicilian code of honor and kill Eddie for his him as a voluptuary or womanizer. Elizabeth represents betrayal. God's forgiving judgment when she asserts her huband is Marco: Then what is to be done with such a man? not a lecher, but the answer serves to indict and condemnin Alfieri: Nothing. If he obeys the law, he lives. That's this arena of human misinterpretation and distortion. As all. Calarco says: "Whenjudicial truth becomes a personal lie, Marco: The law? All the law is not in a book the link between social and profane justice collapses ... Alfieri: Yes. In a book. There is no other law. The judge becomes a witch. ... Justice destroys man and (p. 464) unleashes the furies."6 God'sjustice has been perverted This is the human law, but Alfieri suggests Eddie will pay through the misguided zeal of his agents, and John Proctor to a higher court. must restore moral order to the universe through personal Alfieri: This is not God, Marco. You hear? Only God transcendence and sacrifice. In the moments before his makes justice. (p. 465) of death, Proctor says: After being released on bail and with promise citizenship God does not need name nailed upon the church! through marriage to Catherine, Rodolpho tries to make my of God sees my name; God knows how black my sins are! peace with Eddie, also invoking God'sgreater knowledge It is (p. 331) human motives: enough. It for God, but not sufficent for earthly Rodolpho: It is my fault, Eddie. I wish to apologize. Enough perhaps, ask authorities, and when they will settle for nothing less than was wrong that I do not your permis- the of Proctor's he recants and goes sion ... But you have insult me too. Maybe publishing "confession," me. to his " . . for now I do think I see some shred of God understand why you did that to death, to insult me at in John Proctor." (p. 332) Maybe you did not mean goodness - 467) Three years later Miller returned to a more contempo- all (p. and less abstract of the issue of Nothing can stop the inevitable course of events, rary setting presentment Marco God's in A View the Bridge. The play however, and Eddie goes out to face the unforgiving judgment from his for Catherine concerns the relationship of Eddie Carbone to his niece, with the added guilt of knowing feelings killed in the that follows. At Catherine, and the tragic result of his inability to allow her were incestuous. Eddie is fight to fulfill her own human destiny. Eddie has a suppressed the very end of the play, Miller appends a brief epilogue by for his niece which turns to resentment and finally Alfieri: passion for half and I like it erupts in violence when she falls in love with the gentle Most of the time now we settle to be an better. But the truth is holy, and even as I know how young man who happens illegal immigrant. I Since Eddie can no more countenance the idea that he wrong he was, and his death useless, I tremble, for calls to me desires his niece than Willy Lomancan accept the idea that confess that something perversely pure Winter, 1982 THE SOUTHCENTRAL BULLETIN 123

from his memory- not purely good,but himself purely, Once Maggie and Quentin are married, however, her for he allowed himself to be wholly known and for that terrible insecurities surface. When she achieves notable I think I will love him more than all my sensible success as a performerin her own right, she has the leisure clients. And yet it is better to settle for half, it must be! to examine her feelings and measure Quentin's willingness And so I mourn him - I admit it- with a certain alarm. to satisfy her insatiable need for reinforcement. As would (p. 470) be expected, Quentin willingly wrecks himself over the Here is another case, as with Willy Loman, where a man question of whether he has not contributedto this unhappy is largely forgiven the pain and suffering he has caused development in her nature. Even worse, Quentin discovers those around him because of the "purity" of his vision, that there is a limit of sacrifice beyond which most rational misguided as it may be. Whether Godwould endorse such a mortals will not or cannot go to save another human being. judgment is for each to decide, but the fact must be noted This realization of the innate imperfection of man crushes that such stubborndetermination to follow a specific course him. of action has providedgrist for the dramatic mills since the One of Quentin's most articulate speeches on this issue time of Oedipus and Antigone. and the contrasting nature of God comes in an exchange After the Fall, written in 1964, is an autobiographical with Maggie. In her ignorance, she imagines Lazarus of the play in which Miller, through the persona of Quentin, the New Testament to have been a woman. protagonist, attempts to justify his life before the eyes of Maggie: But Jesus must have loved her. God and man. This interpretation runs contraryto those of Quentin: Who? redoubtabledirectors and critics. HaroldClurman believes Maggie: Lazarus. that ". .. the judges seat the empty. There is no 'father,'no Quentin: That's right, yes! He ... loved her enough supreme arbiter. He will have to allow us, the audience, to to raise her from the dead. But He's God, judge him."7Leonard Moss, a Miller specialist, cites the see ... and God's power is love without author's own advice against takiqg Quentin's unseen limit. But when a man dares reach for that auditor (the "Listener")to be God.8Authors and directors ... he is only reaching for the power. may have the best intentions in writing and interpreting a Whoevergoes to save another person with play, but their opinion inevitably must fade before the the life of limitless love throws a shadow judgment of the public. It is difficult to read or see After the on the face of God. And God is what Fall without coming to the conclusion that it is a happened. God is what is. (p. 567) "justification"for the life of Quentin, and a large part of an And just as the individual will, in the last analysis, save audience would be tempted to use the word "justification" himself over the one he loves, so does the human race in its Biblical sense of explanation one's actions and console itself with life over the death of unnamed regaining stature in the eyes of God. The play is anything multitudes. Quentin's personal guilt on this score is but a "slice of life" naturalistic work; nor can it be merged with the greater sin of the human race in the considered a "realistic"domestic drama. It is an intensely twentieth century for allowing the Holocaust to occur. All personal and subjective work and if not intended as a these themes are united in Quentin's recognition of the justification before the spectator and God, why go through burden of the survivor: the anguish? What love, what wave of pity will ever reach the As the title suggests, Quentin is in pursuit of the answer knowledge - I know how to kill? - I know, I know - she to the question of whether innocence is possible. In the best was doomedin any case, but will that cure?- And I am Jewish/Puritan tradition, Miller demonstrates that even not alone, and no man lives who would not rather be the potentiality for evil compromisesall human goodness. the sole survivorof this place than all its finest victims. Man is doomed for not being saint and angel. What is the cure? Who can be innocent again on this Depressing as such a view is, it absolutely eliminates the mountain of skulls? I tell you what I know! My possibility of genuine human relationships in this brothers died here - but my brothers built this place; imperfect world. Quentin's stream-of-consciousness, our hearts have cut these stones. (p. 573) highly theatrical revelation of his relationships with the Quentin finally faces the terrible truth of human existence, women in his life shows how devastating was his inability of the desire to survive even those one loves and the only to trust his own goodness. He is too perceptive to flee the possible consolation: truth as did Willy Loman through death. Will he have to And the wish to kill is never killed, but with the ... gift wait for his moment on the gallows, as did John Proctor,to of courage one may look into its face when it appears, see the good within himself? and with a stroke of love - as to an idiot in the house - and In the first half of the is tortured his forgive it; again again... forever. (p. 573) play, Quentin by Quentin finds and at least the imagined failure to "do enough" to defend an old finally redemption promise friend, of happiness toward the survivor. She Max, who has been called up before an by turning Holga, investigating has looked life full in the face, seen the horrors in committee. Max's eventual suicide and the guilt it prompts possible foreshadows this world, and yet affirms life and love. One is left with the Quentin's equally imagined failure to save that Maggie in the second half of the feeling Quentin had the misfortune to become play. involved with women who were as disabled in their as Also, in the first part of the play we witness the way disintegration of Quentin's marriage to his first wife, Louise, who, in the word of Eliz Kazan, ".. is the MOST INSECURE!- That's why she has to pretend she s the most 5N. Joseph Calarco, "Production as Criticism: Miller's secure."9 Quentin's second wife, Maggie, is as far removed The Crucible," Educational Theatre Journal, (Oct., 1977), from Louise at first appearanceas can be imagined. A child p. 360. of nature, innocent because she is unaware, Maggie 6Calarco, p. 363. willingly gives of herself to the world and is sorely used by 7Clurman,p. 20. it. Quentin's gentle regard for her causes her to admire and 8Leonard Moss, Arthur Miller (New York: 72. love 1980), p. him. His learning and manners cause her to 9Nancy and RichardMeyer, "Afterthe Fall: A View from characterize him as God-like. the Director's Notebook,"Theatre, II (1965), 59. 124 THE SOUTH CENTRAL BULLETIN Winter, 1982

he was in his, and had he found Holga at the outset, the Salesman. John Proctormakes the rational judgment that course of his life might have been markedly different. Yet there may be some good in him just moments before his the suspicion remains that Quentin's self-flagellation was death and realizes that this fact transcends the events of a necessary part of his growth as a human being. Had he his dying. He believes, as must any rational believer, that met Holga first, he might very well not have been prepared God'sjustice will eventually triumph over the momentary to appreciate the gift of affirmation she offers him. In spite distortion of human law. of his neurotic tendency to assume undeserved guilt, Quentin is placed, of course, in a dramatic situation Quentin has successfully justified his existence and which more closely parallels the modernage and to which it survival. is easier to relate. He is a thinking man, perhaps too much Quentin is not alone; all the characters in these plays of so, but lacks the solid foundation of faith to sustain him as Miller are driven to justify their existence to some degree or it did Proctor.Quentin does possess that vague, humanistic another. Usually this action is prompted by the tension impulse to do good which often passes for belief in a secular between divine justice and human attempts to embodyit in age, but, in spite of the differencebetween the protagonists, this temporal sphere through mprality of law. As Godis the the dilemma of After the Fall is not so very different from only agent who can see into the human heart and that of The Crucible.How does one reconcile the instinct for understand totally the motivations and intentions of any life with moral absolutes? Unlike a Willy Loman, Quentin protagonist, the human spectator is forced to make his usually thinks he knows what he should do, but finds the judgments from the imperfect revelation of those implulses concrete realization of his idealism beyond his capacity. He as seen in the dramatic semblance. feels he would have stayed with Maggie to the bitter end, The inability of the characters to integrate their even though he could not "help" her, but discovered the motivations with what may even roughly be approximated price to be greater than he could willingly bear. This is the as God'swill seems to arise from the inherent fallibility of source of his guilt. It is the agonizing choice of Milton's man. The Adamic Fall from grace is still haunting Adam all over again; shall he remain with his erring mankind, but the focus is not so much on the actual act of spouse and willingly endure the fruits of her error?Unlike disobedience as it is on the propensity to let the irrational Adam, Quentin flees, but he is nonetheless denied and passionate overwhelm the reasonable and just. Miller Paradise. He finds no peace within himself. seems to be of two minds on this. Although one can see the When Quentin turns to Holga at the end of After theFall, unreasonability of Quentin's inability to accept himself as he is demonstrating the triumph of reason over the a basically good person, or Willy's dogged determination to irrational guilt he feels for Maggie's death and the greater pursue a career beyond his capabilities, it is, nevertheless, and equally irrational assumption of personal guilt for the suggested that there is a forgiveness implicit in passionate Holocaust. commitment. This is made clear in the Requiem at the end How is this reasonable? The answer is found in the of Death of a Salesman when Charley says no one "dast earliest reference to the Judaic God;He created this world blame this man," for he had a dream. Alfieri in the brief and at least tacitly permits the evil and pain which epilogue to View From the Bridge expresses his admiration partially corrupts it. It is the duty of man to find and build for the passion of Eddie Carbone, however misguided it upon the vast good that remains. And if modern man may have been. apparently fails to marshal his enormouswealth and power Willy and Eddie are quite clearly representative of the to resolve those evils which are resolvable, so has it ever modern average man, the "commonhero," who lacks the been. The perversity of human nature must, in some intellectual and perceptive powers to sort out the cause of indecipherable,way, be part of the divine scheme of things. his ruin, nor do either of these protagonists have the moral It is equally true that if no mortal love can ever achieve fibre to face the truth about themselves. There are the selfless devotion of divine love, that is no reason to progenitors for this representation, incidentally; young adjurelove. After the Fall clearly asserts that mankind can Eckdal in The Wild Duck comes immediately to mind. find peace only through that most misused of human In that light, Gregers Werle is the ancestor of Quentin capabilities - to love. To love and affirm that humanity is and, to a lesser degree, John Proctor. These figures are worth all the trouble and pain it causes is perhaps the tortured by the ideal of a perfect truth or love in human highest form of transcendence. It is an expression of faith relationships. The Crucible and After the Fall are more and in no way diminished if it is, at best, a reflection or optimistic than View From the Bridge or Death of a imitation of the perfect love of God.

1983 SCRC MEETING CCTE IN 1983 The 32nd annual meeting of the South Central Renaissance Conference (jointly with the RSA) will be at The 50th annual convention of the Conferenceof College the Peabody Hotel, Memphis, Tennessee, 24-26 March. Teachersof English will be held 4-6 Marchon the campus of Information may be obtained from Louis Charles Stagg, Baylor U and at the Waco Sheraton Inn. In addition to chairman of the local arrangements committee, Dept. of papers on pedagogy and literature, the program will English, Memphis State U, Memphis 38152. Joseph E. feature Texas author Shelby Hearon, who will talk about Riley is the SCRC program chairman. writing and read from her own work. SCRCofficers for 1983 are James Sims (USM),president, and Robert Schmaltz (USL), vice-president. Arvilla Taylor For further information write directly to Keith C. Odom, (Midwestern)is executive secretary-treasurerand editor of executive secretary, Box 32872, Texas Christian the Newsletter and Gary Stringer (USM) is editor of University, Fort Worth,Texas 76129. CCTEdues of $5 may in Renaissance Culture. (See spring/summer, also be sent to him. RobertBarcus, chairman of the English Explorations local 1982, Bulletin, p. 7, for additional data.) department at Baylor, is chairman of arrangements.