hello students welcome back to my class

today i am going to

discuss with you one of the

suggested topics from pipsm

for your exam purpose

and already some of you

have requested me to

discuss at least few questions

from this open

book system of examination

point of view so today i have taken the

opportunity to discuss

such a question or such a topic

and the topic is

arthur miller's introduction to the

collected pledge

so generally the question comes

about the conceptions or the generic

questions

so here the question can be asked as

discuss arthur miller

as a playwright

of 20th century with his

experiments on dramaturgy

or the question can also be asked about

evaluate arthur miller

as a playwright and as a critic

so as you know arthur miller was an

american playwright

of 20th century of prominence

and not only he was a prolific

playwright but also he was

a prominent essayist who

produced his critical views

in this essays particularly this but

one that we are discussing today

the purpose of his writing this

essay or the book was to introduced his

sixth pledge

the man who had all the luck all my sons

death of a salesman crucible a view from

the breach

a memory of to mundach

and he was compelled to write this book

because he

found that the response to

some of his plays were not very

encouraging

and even some of the plays were received

in the undesired ways

as people got confused about his

experiments

so in this book he is going to explain

about his

ideas about play and his experiments

and what he experimented with and how he

experimented with

so the collected place is all about the

genesis
and experiments of

each and every play and he has made it

into several chapters so before going to

that we have to

write about arthur miller that arthur

miller

as a playwright he was

immensely influenced by the 19th century

norwegian

dramatist henry gibson

and in spite of his influence

through ibsen he was basically

a classicist in his approach to the

playwriting

and in his last chapter

we can find that he is telling a play i

think or to make sense to common sense

people

i know what it is to have been

rejected by them even unfairly so but

the only challenge or the effort is

the widest one and the tallest one which

is the people

themselves so he is

claiming that a play must

make common sense

the sense out of common sense to the

people

and he is also writing at the beginning

of the
book about aristotle and his

concepts of the three unities

and he is also conforming to all these

ideas of

aristotle by telling that a play must be

dramatic then narrative

in the middle part of this book he is

also discussing

about the difference between cinema

and drama particularly when he is

discussing

about death of a salesman

and the film based on it by telling

that when it enters into a film

a cinema always wipes out everything

that is presented before the scene

and in this way it becomes a narrative

then dramatic so he's telling

by whatever means it is accomplished the

prime business

of a play is to arouse the passions of

its audience

so that by the root of passion may be

opened up new relationships between

a man and men and between men

and men drama is akin to the other

inventions of the man in that it ought

to help us to know

more and not merely to spend our

feelings

so in

relation to the aristotelian concept

he is talking about drama

to bring about

the focus on the passions of the

audience

in a new relationship between man and

men

so what is this man and man that means

he is talking about the individual self

and the social self

miller is always finding that conflict

within the individual

in the modern world because modern world

is a world of self

analysis is a world of

critical existence

so he is finding that every individual

is suffering from that conflict

between his inner self his individual

self and the social self

so man and men and between men and men

and that is the cause of suffering in

the modern

tragic hero but his plays offer hope and

solace for a world desperately seeking

to find

a glimmer of hope in the world of

darkness as we know that 20th century

when

the two world wars were part and all

human moralities were sacrificed

all human values were

sacrificed man become hopeless

so the play is the only

instrument that offers the hope to man

it should

that is the idea of miller

and miller's place so the possibility

for redemption

transcendence even triumph in the face

of seemingly overpowering odds

and adversity most inimical to human

enterprise

and achievement so his plays

are somewhere becoming moral pledge

because they are trying to show the man

who is struggling against all the odds

all pervading confusion

and inimical forces

some hope

his place were mean to provoke the

audience to think

but his plays are not simple

depictions of human struggle against all

odd but it is also

the instrument to think with he provides

the thought to the audience through his

pledge

though he was guided by ibsen's

place of causation but

he also introduced with

it shorten other

elements certain other thoughts

to make it more adaptable

on the part of the common man of 20th

century

he feels that society and individuals

are mutually dependent and when this

balance is lost

both suffer so in modern period

the society and individual both suffered

because he believed that men and society

they are mutual man is that the

individual is there in the society and

the society is that within the man

and when both suffered it became an

unbearable

existence on the part of the individual

so he wanted to

bring in a new style

that is realism which he borrowed from

ibsenian epson

but at the same time he wanted to

experiment with this realism

to him realism is that style

which goes beyond the packets of

the reality it should go deeper into the

surface to explore

the reality of individual the reality

of his mind the reality of his

sufferings

the reality of his dreams so on and so

forth

therefore he is trying to put

question his plays are putting questions

at each and every juncture of the play

and to him

that the effects of misguided

conceptions of a number of insignificant

men

upon society when people allowed their

consents

an intensely private emotion to be

guided by an external force of another

man

men state or some other force

he is finding in this modern world there

are few people who are trying to impress

who are trying to guide who are trying

to enforce their ideas

upon the whole society and in this way

they are committing the same and

the individual is subscribing to that

idea of the megalomaniac person

somewhere and through that he is

becoming a victim
and he is suffering and at the same time

he is struggling

with his own self

therefore miller's plays are not

exclusively about individuals

but more precisely are about humanity

and human societies

with all their contradictions and

complications

and

in his dramas his style was always

realism for it was the only means to

penetrate beyond the surface of the

visible packets

of life but in spite of that his plays

were never melodramatic

and he has

his conformity with aristotelian concept

of drama but at the same time also

he wanted to move with the time and

space

because in this book

he is discussing one after another of

his pleas

and he is feeling that even a genius

cannot continue with the same idea

in different time and different space

therefore we have to change

so what he had changed what he had

believed
as the concept of tragedy

or what is the concept of modern tragedy

according to

arthur miller miller believes that in

modern times

the ordinary man the common man

who has thought himself to be uncommon

by some fanatic ideas

becomes the suitable candidate for

tragic personality or tragic hero

so he is telling that the modern tragic

hero

is suffering from fanaticism

if the classical

tragic view was

that of fate romantic

view was that coming from the character

in the modern tragedy

it comes from the fanaticism of the

individual

who believes who goes beyond

the limits of his own self

to subscribe to any idea

and for that he suffers and he is

prepared to

place everything for that and ultimately

he suffers

and he destroys himself

but here in the modern tragedy miller

says

that modern tragic hero commits suicide

because when he confronts

the ultimate reality

in comparison to his own fanatic ideas

he has no way out but has to commit

suicide

and he analyzes the play like all my

sons

and death of a salesman where willie

lowman

or joe keller they are committing

suicide so modern tragic hero commits

suicide

the tragic flaw in modern tragedy is

fanaticism

the modern tragic hero is the individual

who subscribes to

that fanaticism

but miller himself confessed he wanted

to show

that man can live with dignity and

purpose in a universe which could not

guarantee any of them

and it one had to carry on by imposing

meaning on a meaningless world so

why this modern tragic hero is

committing suicide because he thinks

that his dignity lies with his own

belief
it may be fanatic to others to the

society

but it is his dignity so willie loman

has to commit suicide joe killer has to

commit suicide

because they subscribe to that idea and

they think their dignity lies there

and in the first chapter

he is describing his elaborating about

the act of drama in general

and he is talking about the classical

pledge

he is dealing the drama and its

production must represent a well defined

expression

or profound social needs needs which

transcend any particular form of society

or any particular historic moment it is

therefore possible to speak of

fundamentals of the pawn

so he is telling that drama means

conflict

but this conflict it has to

be well defined in expression and

it should transcend any particular form

of society or a particular historic

moment

it should not be confined or arrested by

a particular moment
it should go beyond its suggest a

universal

idea there possibility of drama without

mimicry conflict tale

or speech is not possible so here he is

very much

classical in his approach and he is

talking of a great

a greek seat was harder than an american

and even he had to call a halt to a

dramatic presentation after a couple of

hours

so he is telling the drama is organic

and the drama

must be of a definite

length of or a definite period

it should have a proper beginning it

should have a proper ending

there should be a proper end so in these

aspects

he is very much classical and a follower

of aristotle

and then he is

describing about the

style whether what is realistic style

and what is non realistic style

it is the nature of the question asked

and answered rather than the language

used whether

verse ordinary slang or colorless prose

that determines whether the style

is realistic or nonrealistic so he is

trying to answer to some of his critics

and audience

that whether his plays are realistic or

unrealistic he's telling

really the style of realistic and

non-realistic doesn't depend on what

type of language

you are using in the drama whether it is

prose poetry or whatever it may be

rather it is dependent on the question

that is being asked within the drama

and this question is asked through many

ways

even when a character appears he is

talking about the characters

characterization he is telling

when a character appears on a stage the

character himself is a question

on the part of the dramatist

so he is telling to put it another way

when the career of a person rather than

the detail of his motive stands at the

forefront of the play

we move closer to the non realistic

styles and vice versa

so when the details of the motive

stands at the forefront of the play

then then we move closer

to non-realistic style so non-realistic

style comes when

we look within the motive

of the character or the

dramatic personae

an organic connection rather than a

temperamental choice

involved in the style in which a play is

written and must be

performed so he is talking about the

organic connection

then a temperamental choice involving

style

so in this way he is talking about the

organic concept

or form of drama and

then he's talking about the

influence upon style is the conception

and manipulation of time in play

he is talking about aristotle's concept

of unity of time

space and all these things and he is

telling that

the style also depends on how the

dramatist conceives

and manipulates the time

within the play he is telling

that manipulation of time when a plate

tried to depict the natural passage of

our

natural passage of time it is realistic

and when that has been

compacted or destroyed

then it is non-realistic

compacting of time destroyed the

realistic style by violating a sense of

reality

but it had made a symbolic meaning in

drama

then he is coming to talk about the

characters the greeks were interested in

a character's social

symbolic side rather than his family

role which is why the greek unity of

time

imposed on drama was not arbitrary but

concomitant

to their interest so

in this way he is talking about

the style of the play what is realistic

style and what is non realistic

and he is also talking about the

idea he used the term idea to refer to

the discovery applied to men

other than the hero different plays use

time

characterization etc

the less capable a man was of walking

away from the central conflict of the

play

the closer he approached to tragic

existence and he is

in a very simple manner describing the

tragic possibility

within a character he is telling the

person who cannot

walk away from the intensity of

the conflict is having the tragic

possibility so such characters will have

the tragedy

therefore the modern tragic hero suffers

in the second chapter he is talking

about

idea and theater and here he is telling

that the first is that a place idea may

be useful as a unifying force

empowering that is to evoke a consent

emotional life on the stage but that in

itself it has

no aesthetic value since after all it is

only means to an

end so he is telling

that idea is very important in play

but if it does not have any aesthetic

value

and it is only a means to an

end then

the idea cannot

hold the whole play

dramatic form is a dynamic thing and

the new idea appears to be very close to

insanity in some of the place

because when his plays were

performed some of his plays didn't get

good reception and he's telling that

when he is trying to present some new

ideas

people are considering it as insane but

these ideas they are binding the

characters

and the play or the conflict

only when we enter into the idea in a

meaningful aesthetic manner

and he is telling that the function of a

place to reveal

him to himself so that he may touch

others by virtue of revelation of his

mutuality with them so the duty of the

playwright

is to reveal him to himself

and through that he has to touch others

by virtue of revelation of his mutuality

that means the universal truth

the universal feelings the universal

ideas

must be said through a play

in chapter 3 he is discussing about

the two plays and particularly all my

sons and here again he is

re-affirming to the aristotelian concept

a play must end

and end with a climax and to forge a

climax the forces in life

which are infinite complexity must be

made finite and capable of a more or

less succinct

culmination so in this way basically

he is a classicist but

with the modern times

he is bringing the desired

changes to make a play

successful

and we find

again he is discussing about the

ibsenian concept of realism

and he is telling what ibsen is trying

to present

within the realistic problem

the problem is not to make complex what

is essentially explainable

it is to make understandable what is

complex without distorting and over

simplifying what cannot be

explained so he is telling that

a place should discuss about the problem

but the problem should not be over

simplified
the problem should be

should neither be made complex nor

oversimplified but it should be related

in explainable manner

and it should be related to the audience

in the universal

logic and then

we find in chapter 4

he is talking about the

death of a salesman and he is informing

about

here he is forming the idea about the

modern tragic hero

so what he is dealing

the salesman image was from the

beginning observed with the concept that

nothing in life comes

next but that everything exists together

and at the same time within us

that there is no past to be brought

forward in a human being

but that he is his past as every moment

and that

the present is merely that which is past

is capable of noticing

and smelling and reacting so

he is exploring willie lowman's

character and he's telling

that willie lowman

is representing this modern tragic hero

he was the kind of man you see muttering

to himself on a subway decently dressed

on his way home

or to the office perfectly integrated

with his surroundings

accepting that unlike other people

he can no longer restrain the power of

his experience

from disrupting the superficial social

sociality of his behavior consequently

he is working on two logics which often

collide

so the social self and the individual

self they are

in the conflict and that is the tragic

the source of tragedy in modern tragic

hero

as we find in the case of

willie loman and then

he is talking about the fall of the

modern tragic hero aristotle having

spoken of a fall from the heights it

goes without saying

that someone of the common mold cannot

be a fit tragic hero

but he's telling it is now many

centuries since

aristotle lived things to change and

even a genius is limited by his time

and the nature of the society so modern

tragedy

must accept the common man

as the tragic hero

and he is also

the modern man is also the modern tragic

hero is also

fighting against the law of success

which is created by the society

the law of success is not administered

by stature of church

but it is very nearly all as powerful in

its grip upon men

and man is always controlled by the

social norms

in modern society by the social ideas

and he suffers in spite of his

individual

thoughts and morality he falls prey to

this social college

so on the other way

miller accepts that

it is the police in the society

or in the social morality that causes

suffering

in modern times and then he is talking

about the autonomy of art

and he is telling the very impulse to

write i think springs from an

inner chaos crying for order for meaning

and that meaning must be discovered in

the process of writing

or the what lies dead as it is finished

that why

a writer should write why he is writing

he is composing his pledge

because it springs from inner chaos

crying for order somewhere the artist

wants to bring order out of the chaos

and through that he wants to create a

meaning

that meaning must be discovered in the

process of writing otherwise

it is all dead

and in chapter 6 he is discussing about

intellectualism

which should come in place of

emotionalism

number one and secondly he is talking

about reaction against

political terror or fanatical

righteousness his plays are going

against

this reaction against political terror

or fanatical righteousness

and number three

he is telling that

out of the morris of subjectivism the

squirming single defined process which

would show that the scene of public

terror is that a divest man of

of himself that how modern man

is divested from his own concerns

because of the subjectivism

that is there being imposed on him

by the social values

so in this way he is discussing about

the play crucible

and he is telling that

crucible is also a play which is

different

from the other pledge

he had written earlier

and finally

he is talking about

the our self-awareness

the self-awareness on the part of

the dramatist or the playwright who is

going to

depict the

unsettling fear and

the partisanship that deflected the

sight of the real

and inner theme which again was the

handling over of the consensus to

another

be it woman the state or a terror and

the realization that the conscience goes

the person the soul immortal

and the name that there was not one

mention of this process in

any review he is telling that

a playwright must bring before the

audience

those unsettling fear and partisanship

which is there in the inner

experience of the individual within the

society

so that the audience will be capable of

realizing

what is that social self

and individual self and how it is

in conflict with each other and how it

is

in modern times the society is

compelling the individual

to give up the concerns to become

immoral

so he is feeling i found in myself a

personal detachment towards it

the story and one does towards a

spectacle in which one is not engaged

but which holds a fascination

deriving from its monolithic perfection

so in this way he is telling that a

dramatist must

keep himself away from

the conflict conflicting selves he

should not

ally himself with any of the self

whether it is individual or the social

because

he finds both of them to be

not only in conflict but both of them in

the state of

imperfection and that is the role of a

dramatist

to present so in this way

i can say that these are the basic ideas

of miller as a playwright

and in the process of depicting all

these things he had taken

some experiments and from realism

he is going towards the

from the historical realism he is going

towards the

dramatic realism which is

displayed in the form of expressionism

so miller is suggesting expressionism

to explore this inner conflict in modern

times

within the tragic protagonist

i don't know how much i have been able

to justify

within this limited time about such a

vast topic

but the conceptual questions must be

answered

in this manner you have to discuss about

miller as a writer miller's conformity

with the classical idea but how he has

made progress he has not differed we

can't use the word differ

but he has made progress from that he

has made progress also from the ibsenian

realism or from the conventional realism

towards

the expressionism thank you