Introduction to American Drama

The Historical, Social, and Cultural Context

 1941-60: drama of turmoil and uncertainty

 America emerged from the Second World War as the richest and most powerful nation in
the world. The economic problems of the Depression (In1929 the bubble of prosperity in
America after the First World War burst and the Wall Street Crash brought economic chaos
to America and the world. Unemployment rates zoomed upwards, numerous banks failed,
the value of most company shares decreased with alarmingly and many companies
collapsed. For the next twelve years, until America entered the Second World War, the
country was battling against this 'Depression'. The 'American Dream' of ever-increasing
prosperity, the freedom to pursue personal goals allied to a close community ethos, the
pursuit of happiness, love and the closeness of family ties, seemed to be just that: a dream)
had largely been solved by the war economy and, over the next fifteen years, many - but by
no means all - American citizens would enjoy a substantial rise in their living standards.
However, along with victory and this new affluence, came several legacies from the war:
 Weapons of mass destruction had been in use for the first time when America dropped
nuclear bombs on two Japanese cities in 1945.
 The Cold War with the Communist Eastern bloc countries began. A Third World War
seemed possible against the other 'superpower', the Soviet Union.
 The Cold War brought widespread paranoia about internal 'Red' subversion. The House Un-
American Activities Committee started investigating Communist infiltration into American
life, and writers came under particularly close scrutiny
 An extreme right-wing conservatism.
 It was in this era of great American power and wealth, but also widespread fear, paranoia
and the rumblings of rebellion, that Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams would establish
themselves as the leading dramatists of their time. Through their plays, both would respond
- albeit in very different - to the confusions and turmoil of post-war American society

 Drama:
 Great theatrical activity in the US in the 19th century – no movies, TV, or radio
 Every town of any size had its theatre or “opera house” in which touring companies of
actors performed.
 No significant drama was performed in this century, with audiences preferring farce,
melodrama, and vaudeville to serious efforts.
 Soon after the beginning of the 20th century, realism became the dominant mode of
American drama.
 Realistic drama is based on the illusion that when we watch a play, we are looking at life
through a “fourth wall” that has been removed so we see watch the action.
 This realism was the result of the European influence, with psychology and taboo
subjects explored in the dram of Europe.
 European drama, which was to influence modern American drama profoundly, matured
in the last third of the 19th century with the achievements of three playwrights: Henrik
Ibsen, August Strindberg, and Anton Chekhov. They were intent on representing life in a
more realistic style.
 Realism in the theatre emerged from a desire to reject excessive theatrical artificiality. It
represented everyday reality in a style that would seem familiar to the audiences that
came to see these new plays. The dramatic language was meant to be close to everyday
speech, the situations and settings akin to the kind of social problems and milieus familiar
to contemporary audiences. Realism had an influence on the American stage in this
period, but mainly in terms of elaborately realistic sets.
 Ibsen, who was profoundly influenced by psychologists Sigmund Freud and Carl
Jung, tackled subjects such as guilt, sexuality, and mental illness—subjects that had never
before been so realistically and disturbingly portrayed onstage (like in A Doll’s
House and Enemy of the People).
 Strindberg brought to his characterizations a unprecedented level of psychological
complexity (like in The Father and The Dance of Death).
 Chekhov shifted the subject matter of drama from wildly theatrical displays of external
action and emotions to the concerns of everyday life (like in The Three Sisters and The
Cherry Orchard).
 They presented characters and situations more or less realistically, in what has been
called the “slice-of-life” dramatic technique.

 Realism and Eugene O’Neill: Putting American Drama on the Map

 Very soon after the little theaters off Broadway succeeded with realistic plays (about
1916), Broadway adopted it, too.
 In 1916 and 1917, two small theatre groups in New York (the Provincetown Players and
the Washington Square Players) began to produce new American plays.
 Provided a congenial home for new American playwrights like Eugene O’Neill, whose
first plays were produced by the Provincetown Players. These small playgroups would
produce any play, in any style, that commercial theatre would not touch. These groups
were the beginning of modern American dramatic theatre.
 Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953) generally considered the first important figure in American
drama. Introduced into American drama the techniques of realism earlier associated with
Ibsen, Strindberg, and Chekhov.

 American drama before O’Neill tended to be mild and sentimental, rarely questioning
the life and attitudes it depicted, and almost never challenging the accepted traditions
of the time.
 It consisted mostly of shows and spectacles staged by special effects that dazzled
audiences.
 Melodramas and farces were also written for famous actors.
 Eugene O’Neill’s intense psychological plays were a radical departure from the
romantic (as in romanticism) convention of theater as entertainment.
  Included speeches in common language or dialect, and concentrated on characters on
the fringes of society, where they struggle to maintain their hopes and aspirations, but
ultimately slide into disillusionment and despair.
 O’Neill introduced or revived many techniques that have since become staples of
American theater: repetition of actions or phrases to underscore dramatic intent; use
of symbolic masks or costumes (as in Greek theater); use of archetypal themes from
classical religion or mythology; and revival of the Elizabethan devices of soliloquy (a
speech made by one character onstage in which he talks to himself or herself and
reveals his/her thoughts without addressing a listener) and aside (a piece of dialogue
intended for the audience and supposedly not heard by the other characters onstage)
to reveal a character’s inner state.
 O’Neill’s looked deeply into all his characters, producing portraits of desire and
frustration, delusion and failure.
 With his experimental flair, his enormous output (he wrote 32 full-length plays and
20 one-act plays, as well as numerous manuscripts), and his high aspirations for the
theater, Eugene O’Neill dominated American drama in his generation. His plays were
widely produced abroad, and he was the only American playwright to have won the
Nobel Prize for Literature (1936).
·
 Post World War II
· The 1950s often regarded as a period of relative calm before the storm that broke over
American society in the 1960s and 1970s. American dramatists would chronicle the maelstrom
that America became in these decades

 Two famous playwrights dominated post-World War II theater until the 1960s: Arthur
Miller (1915-2005) and Tennessee Williams (1911-1983).
 They remain the dominant figures of the second half of the 20th century. Miller and
Williams represent the two principal movements in modern American drama: realism,
and realism combined with an attempt at something more imaginative.
 From the beginning, American playwrights have tried to break away from the strict
realism of Ibsen, Strindberg, and Chekhov and to blend it with a more poetic form of
expression. Miller’s Death of a Salesman (1949), Williams’ The Glass Menagerie (1944)
and Thornton Wilder’s Our Town (1938) are some of the best examples of this style of
writing.
 Miller’s best work, Death of a Salesman, is one of the most successful in fusing the
realistic and the imaginative; in all his other plays, however, Miller is the master of
realism.
 He is a true disciple of Henrik Ibsen, not only in his realistic technique, but in his concern
about the impact of society on his characters’ lives.
 In Miller’s plays, the course of action and the development of characters depends not
only on the characters’ psychological makeup but also on the social, philosophical, and
economic atmosphere of their times.
 Miller’s most notable character, Willy Loman Death of a Salesman, is a self-deluded
man, but he is also a product of the American dream of success and a victim of the
American business machine, which disposes of him when he has outlived his usefulness.
  Miller is a writer of high moral seriousness, whether he is dealing with personal versus
social responsibility (as in All My Sons [1947]) or with witch hunts past and present (as
in The Crucible [1953]). He writes a plain, muscular prose that under the force of
emotion often becomes eloquent.

 Miller's form and style

A writer of strong social and political commitments

 An intellectual dramatist – plays express moral, social and political ideas

 Strong critic of contemporary American society and its values

 Recurrent themes: relationship between the individual and society, injustice, exploitation,
competition, vested private interest, the problem of capitalism which directly or indirectly affects
the characters of his play

 In Miller’s plays – expression of motives at crucial moments – a plausible defence of a false

position by one of the characters is followed by an attack on it by another character in terms of
social responsibility and ethical uprightness – the character who makes the statement is Miller’s
spokesperson

 Characters in his plays:

 Ordinary people

 early experiences as a clerical and manual labourer, and direct knowledge of lower middle-class
– so, his characters are never aristocratic

 They make money, but are culturally underprivileged

 They inhabit a sub-culture that is banal

 Speech is colloquial, slangy, and characteristically American

 Idea of the tragic:

 Did not follow the idea of the tragedy in the classical sense

 His heroes are not noble – ordinary men and women

 He locates the source of tragic action in what he called ‘fanaticism’ – the total determination to
risk everything in a conflict

 Hero’s conception of himself may be wrong, but he must be willing to sacrifice himself to it, and
this sacrifice is tragic
 It flows from an obsession which allows no way out psychologically – suicide is the only answer

 Form:
 Describes his kind of writing as ‘conventional realism’

 Characters are such as those met in real life, involved in familiar situations of everyday existence,
developing in accordance with the well-known psychological principles at a particular time in a
particular place

 Narrative proceeds from cause to effect, and past to future

 Words and actions have consequences which reveal human nature in particular social contexts

 Realistic picture of life includes moral judgements: there is a wider human significance of
individual destiny – a significance which is objective and universal

What is the American Dream?

 In the definition of the American Dream by James Truslow Adams in 1931, "life should be
better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or
achievement" regardless of social class or circumstances of birth

 Unlike in feudal aristocracies, there were no glass ceilings for individual aspiration

 Based on the belief that all men are born equal and have the right to the pursuit of success
and happiness according to his individual ability

 Man could attain success through his own efforts – ‘rags to riches’ story

 The idea that life will get better, that progress is inevitable if we obey the rules and work
hard, that material prosperity is assured

 History of the American Dream

 In the 19th century, many well-educated Germans fled the failed 1848 revolution. They
welcomed the political freedoms in the New World, and the lack of a hierarchical or
aristocratic society that determined the ceiling for individual aspirations.

 The discovery of gold in California in 1849 brought in a hundred thousand men looking for
their fortune overnight. Thus was born the California Dream of instant success. Historian H.
W. Brands noted that in the years after the Gold Rush, the California Dream spread across
the nation:
  The old American Dream ... of men and women content to accumulate their modest
fortunes a little at a time, year by year by year. The new dream was the dream of instant
wealth, won in a twinkling by audacity and good luck.

 Freelance writer James Truslow Adams popularized the phrase "American Dream" in his
1931 book Epic of America:

 But there has been also the American dream, that dream of a land in which life should be
better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his
ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret
adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not
a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each
man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are
innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the
fortuitous circumstances of birth or position ... The American dream that has lured tens of
millions of all nations to our shores in the past century has not been a dream of merely
material plenty, though that has doubtlessly counted heavily. It has been much more than
that. It has been a dream of being able to grow to fullest development as man and woman,
unhampered by the barriers which had slowly been erected in the older civilizations,
unrepressed by social orders which had developed for the benefit of classes rather than
for the simple human being of any and every class.

 There are many ideals that appear in American Literature such as, but not limited to, all
people are equal, America is the Land of Opportunity, independence is valued, The American
Dream is attainable, and everyone can succeed with hard work and determination.

 John Winthrop also wrote about the term called American Exceptionalism. This ideology
refers to the idea that Americans are the chosen ones, and that they are the light.

 Since the 1920s, numerous authors, such as Sinclair Lewis in his 1922 novel Babbit, and F.
Scott Fitzgerald, in his 1925 classic, The Great Gatsby, satirized or ridiculed materialism in
the chase for the American dream. For example, Jay Gatsby's death mirrors the American
Dream's demise, reflecting the pessimism of modern-day Americans. The American Dream
is a main theme in the book by John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men. The two friends George
and Lennie dream of their own piece of land with a ranch, so they can "live off the fatta the
lan'" and just enjoy a better life. The book later shows that not everyone can achieve the
American Dream, thus proving by contradiction it is not possible for all, although it is
possible to achieve for a few. A lot of people follow the American Dream to achieve a
greater chance of becoming rich.

 Symbolism in the Play

1. Fallen Tree
The play shows a family tightly enclosed in the backyard of their house, "hedged" in during summer
when all is in bloom. "Tall, closely planted poplars" surround the yard, creating the illusion of
insularity, a family protected from the rest of the world. But the single fallen tree, with its upper
trunk and branches "toppled beside it," is highly ominous. Miller makes it an apple tree, heightening
the symbolic reference to the biblical Garden of Eden. The tree marks a place where, like Eden—
from which the biblical Adam and Eve are expelled after committing sin— guilt and innocence will
be debated and a price exacted for refusal to face truth.

The tree was planted to honor Larry, missing in action, and serves as a central focus for the tensions
and battles of will the members of the family wage. Further, it is a magnet for neighbors and others
who enter the garden to witness and participate in the unmasking of deadly pretense. Characters
comment on the destruction of the tree during a storm, foreshadowing Larry's fate. Chris, Larry's
older brother, removes the tree, but the symbolic meaning remains like a storm cloud hovering over
the scene until the final revelations.

2. Damaged Airplane Parts

The play's action arises from the manufacture of defective airplane parts. The Kellers have achieved
financial security in their solid, expensive suburban home from the parts produced in their factory
and sold on a government contract during World War II. But shoddy practices in manufacturing
caused a large number of defective cylinder heads to come off the assembly line at a crucial time
when the army's need was great. Shipping the defective batch knowingly—to keep business going
rather than to withhold the parts and halt business temporarily—caused the death of the 21 young
men whose planes crashed. The Kellers' son, Larry, took his own life as retribution for the misdeed.
The promise of a future union of the two families, in the marriage of Chris and Ann, is destroyed by
the catastrophic results and continuing lies and evasions. The cylinder heads, therefore, have a
symbolic meaning connected to the damaged "heads" of the men involved and their roles as family
"heads."

Defective airplane parts and defective parental models both can be fatal. Cylinder heads are vital
metal parts, strongly made and polished, covering the combustion chamber and helping to propel the
engine. But the Keller and Deever families are composed of damaged parts that have become warped
and are functioning poorly, propelled by false values and deceitful practices. Their heads are
covering defects that eventually will explode, metaphorically, in the course of the play.

3. Basement Jail
Keller enjoys jovial interactions with his neighbors, including eight-year-old Bert. In the ongoing
game of "deputy" they play, Joe has previously told Bert there is a jail in the basement of the Kellers'
house. Interestingly, the German word for cellar, or basement, is Keller. The jail that exists at the
base of the Keller home represents what lies at the base, or foundation, of Joe's existence. He knows
he has committed a crime for which he belongs in prison. He knows he shifted blame to his partner
who is in prison. The "jail" is not visible to anyone—he wants no one to see what lies under his
expensive and seemingly solid house. Joe's game is disturbing to Kate, always on shaky ground and
aware of her husband's crime. She angrily tells him to "stop that ... whole jail business!"
Connected to the jail game is Joe's gun, "an arresting gun," he tells Bert. Its presence validates the
idea of the jail and foreshadows its use at the end of the play. Rather than face a real jail, Joe uses the
gun to punish himself for his crime.

4. Steve Deever's Hat

Considerable attention is paid to what the characters wear. Ann notices that Larry's clothes are still in
his closet, a sign that his family has still not accepted his death. Lydia's clothes are a topic of
conversation, defining her femininity, and Ann's stylishness is defined from her first appearance by
her fashionable dresses. When George arrives at the Kellers, his shirt is seen as soiled from traveling
in the summer heat, and Chris offers to give him his own shirt, "off his back" in a sense, to integrate
him into the scene. But most prominent is the hat George wears, which his father gave him during the
jail visit. Symbolically, Steve Deever has shrunk from the injustice committed by Joe Keller. George
emotionally recounts his father's appearance: he seems to be fading away into only a "smell." He has
taken his father's hat for his own and wears it to confront the Kellers, putting on battered but resistant
authority and truth. He seems barely aware he is wearing the hat, as he "discovers it" in his hand, but
it takes on definite symbolic value for his function in the play

 Themes in All My Sons

Central event: a businessman’s evasion of responsibility for a wartime decision that resulted in
the loss of lives

Themes are overarching ideas and beliefs that the writers express in their texts.

1. Individual and family; private affection and public duty: The question of relatedness. The
play introduces questions that involve an individual's obligation to society, personal
responsibility, and the distinction between private and public matters. Keller can live with his
actions during the war because he sees himself as answerable only to himself and his family,
not to society as a whole. Miller criticizes Keller's myopic worldview, which allows him to
discount his crimes because they were done "for the family." The principal contention is that
Keller is wrong in his claim that there is nothing greater than the family, since there is a
whole world to which Keller is connected. To cut yourself off from your relationships with
society at large is to invite tragedy of a nature both public (regarding the pilots) and private
(regarding the suicides). Man should recognize his ethical responsibility to the world outside
his home

2. Family: The contemporary ideology is the belief in the family. The family is essential to the
American way of life, and Engels argued that it was also the foundation of capitalism.
Because families made people responsible for dependents, it also made them need more
money. This enslaved them to capitalism where they could be exploited for profit. “The
crime at its center,” notes Bigsby, “raises in stark form the clash between self interest and
human solidarity” - the play is “about a man who places survival above responsibility to a
group, pragmatism above the ideal, loyalty to family above responsibility to society. It is
also, however, about loss, loss of a sense of common humanity”. Chris’s idealism represents
the view that all men are essentially brothers, and our responsibility to each other is as
 important as our responsibility to our flesh and blood. Joe’s ethic, however, represents
Miller’s view of the American value that loyalty to family relations is of paramount
importance. Chris’s men “killed themselves for each other,” while Joe killed others for
himself.

3. American dream: The American Dream is one of the themes of most literary works written
during the period. Characters try to achieve this dream of success in one or the other way and
feel frustrated when facing failure – the American dream has been corrupted to focus on
competition and vested interests

4. Capitalism and the value of life: Miller attacks consumer society. The economic system of
capitalism encourages the accumulation of capital as a symbol of success and a protection
against disaster; Capitalist American society reduces human beings to commodities, and
dehumanization is inevitable – wealth and its accumulation become all important at the cost
of human and social values. It leads to injustice and exploitation – this is the foundation for
Chris’s character, including the guilt and unease he feels about returning to a new car and a
new refrigerator, while he left so many of his “brothers” dead on the battlefield. He returns to
a home where family and neighbors “seem to have put idealism aside in the name of a post-
war pragmatism”

5. Opportunity and initiative: Although every person tries, material luck comes to those who
exploit the opportunities. Joe Keller and Steve Deever have similar opportunities, but one
decides to exploit it, while the other does not

6. Identity: Being the person you are. Conflict between being a good son and good husband
and the deeper loyalty to oneself and one’s convictions. There is a rift in the Bayliss marriage
over Dr. Bayliss's desire to do unprofitable research, because his wife wants him to make
more money instead of do what he enjoys and what will help others. Jim’s comment on the
little revolutions when he hears Chris has gone away

7. Denial and self-deception: All the members of the Keller family live in a state of denial or
self-deception in one way or another. Two main facts about the Keller family history must be
confronted. One is Larry's death, and the other is Keller's responsibility for the shipment of
defective parts. Mother denies the first while accepting the second, and Keller and Chris
accepts the first while denying the second. The result is that characters live in a state of self-
deception, willfully ignoring one of the truths so that the family can continue to function in
acceptable ways.

8. Guilt and Justice: Keller’s taking responsibility for the defective cylinder heads and
realizing he could not forgive himself. Paradoxically, Joe Keller's suicide at the end of All My
Sons is both an act of atonement and an escape from guilt. It stems from Joe's realization that
there can be no real forgiveness for what he had done. The alternative is confession and
imprisonment. Death offers Joe another alternative.

9. Choices and Consequences: the play employs a pattern that is fundamental to most
tragedies. Protagonists must, in some degree, be held accountable for their actions. When
 faced with a moral dilemma, they often make a wrong choice. Joe, at a critical moment,
elected to place his family's finances above the lives of courageous American soldiers.

10. Abandonment and betrayal: Joe Keller’s betrayal of Ann’s father and Ann’s and George’s
abandonment of their father; George’s abandonment of Lydia

11. Forgiveness: Forgiveness for Joe Keller must come from Kate and Chris. The letter written
by Larry reveals that he deliberately destroyed himself during the war, profoundly shamed by
his father's brief imprisonment for fraud and profiteering. It is a devastating irony that Joe's
initial attempt to do right by his family—resulting in fraud and the deaths of twenty-one
fighter pilots—leads to destruction of his world.

12. Ethics: Joe's decision to send defective parts is not merely a result of skewed values, it is a
serious breach of ethics. Joe does not fully comprehend how serious a breach it is. To him,
success is more important than anything else, including human life and the good of his
country. By setting up this ethical situation, Miller clearly questions the implications of a
value system that puts material success above moral responsibilities

13. Duty and Responsibility: Joe Keller's sense of duty and responsibility is to the material
comfort of his family and the success of his business - puts these values ahead of what should
have been a higher duty, his obligation to human life. His fear of losing lucrative government
contracts—essentially his greed—blinded him to the murder he was committing.

14. Death: The key in the tragic arc of All My Sons is Kate Keller's refusal to accept the death of
her son, Larry. Initially, prone to false hopes, it seems that she is in denial; finally, it is
revealed that her need to believe that Larry is alive allows her to avoid the terrible
consequences of her husband's deeds. She realizes that if Larry is dead, then Joe is
responsible for his death—something Larry himself confirmed in his letter to Ann. All along,
Kate knew her husband's guilt but desperately avoided it, knowing that it would destroy her
family.