xy
@xy, member from Sept. 25, 2023
“You can't eat the orange and throw the peel away — a man is not a piece of fruit.”
Arthur Miller book Death of a Salesman
Willy
Source: Death of a Salesman (1949)
“I realized what a ridiculous lie my whole life has been.”
Arthur Miller book Death of a Salesman
Source: Death of a Salesman
“A small man can be just as exhausted as a great man.”
Arthur Miller book Death of a Salesman
Linda
Source: Death of a Salesman (1949)
John Hale
Source: The Crucible (1953)
Context: It is mistaken law that leads you to sacrifice. Life, woman, life is God's most precious gift; no principle, however glorious, may justify the taking of it. I beg you, woman, prevail upon your husband to confess. Let him give his lie. Quail not before God's judgment in this, for it may well be God damns a liar less than he that throws his life away for pride.
“The two most common elements in the world are hydrogen and stupidity.”
Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States
“The jungle is dark but full of diamonds, Willy.”
Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States
Source: Death Of A Salesman
Source: The Crucible (1953)
Context: Danforth: Do you mean to deny this confession when you are free?
Proctor: I mean to deny nothing!
Danforth: Then explain to me, Mr. Proctor, why you will not let —
Proctor: [With the cry of his whole soul] Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!
“Few of us can easily surrender our belief that society must somehow make sense.”
Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States
Why I Wrote 'The Crucible in The New Yorker (21 October 1996) https://archive.is/20130630000741/www.newyorker.com/archive/content/?020422fr_archive02 <br class="br">Context: Few of us can easily surrender our belief that society must somehow make sense. The thought that the state has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people is intolerable. And so the evidence has to be internally denied.
Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States
On The Crucible, in a 1987 interview; as quoted in "Arthur Miller, Moral Voice of American Stage, Dies at 89" by Marilyn Berger in The New York Times (11 February 2005) http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/11/theater/newsandfeatures/11cnd-miller.html?ei=5070&en=3842d0df3195ba4c&ex=1148356800&adxnnlx=1148209567-ZnjnGzbndB3P1XvCU5BNDg&pagewanted=all&position= <br class="br">Context: I was very moved by that play once again when the Royal Shakespeare Company did a production that toured the cathedrals of England. Then they took it to Poland and performed it in the cathedrals there, too. The actors said it changed their lives. Officials wept; they were speechless after the play, and everyone knew why. It was because they had to enforce the kind of repression the play was attacking. That made me prouder than anything I ever did in my life. The mission of the theater, after all, is to change, to raise the consciousness of people to their human possibilities.
Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States
Tragedy and the Common Man (1949)
Context: I think the tragic feeling is evoked in us when we are in the presence of a character who is ready to lay down his life, if need be, to secure one thing — his sense of personal dignity. From Orestes to Hamlet, Medea to Macbeth, the underlying struggle is that of the individual attempting to gain his "rightful" position in his society.
Sometimes he is one who has been displaced from it, sometimes one who seeks to attain it for the first time, but the fateful wound from which the inevitable events spiral is the wound of indignity and its dominant force is indignation. Tragedy, then, is the consequence of a man's total compulsion to evaluate himself justly.
Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States
Tragedy and the Common Man (1949)
Context: There is a misconception of tragedy with which I have been struck in review after review, and in many conversations with writers and readers alike. It is the idea that tragedy is of necessity allied to pessimism. Even the dictionary says nothing more about the word than that it means a story with a sad or unhappy ending. This impression is so firmly fixed that I almost hesitate to claim that in truth tragedy implies more optimism in its author than does comedy, and that its final result ought to be the reinforcement of the onlooker's brightest opinions of the human animal.
For, if it is true to say that in essence the tragic hero is intent upon claiming his whole due as a personality, and if this struggle must be total and without reservation, then it automatically demonstrates the indestructible will of man to achieve his humanity.
Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States
Collected Plays (1958) Introduction, Section 7
Context: By whatever means it is accomplished, the prime business of a play is to arouse the passions of its audience so that by the route of passion may be opened up new relationships between a man and men, and between men and Man. Drama is akin to the other inventions of man in that it ought to help us to know more, and not merely to spend our feelings.
Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States
On The Crucible, in a 1987 interview; as quoted in "Arthur Miller, Moral Voice of American Stage, Dies at 89" by Marilyn Berger in The New York Times (11 February 2005) http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/11/theater/newsandfeatures/11cnd-miller.html?ei=5070&en=3842d0df3195ba4c&ex=1148356800&adxnnlx=1148209567-ZnjnGzbndB3P1XvCU5BNDg&pagewanted=all&position= <br class="br">Context: I was very moved by that play once again when the Royal Shakespeare Company did a production that toured the cathedrals of England. Then they took it to Poland and performed it in the cathedrals there, too. The actors said it changed their lives. Officials wept; they were speechless after the play, and everyone knew why. It was because they had to enforce the kind of repression the play was attacking. That made me prouder than anything I ever did in my life. The mission of the theater, after all, is to change, to raise the consciousness of people to their human possibilities.
Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States
Why I Wrote 'The Crucible in The New Yorker (21 October 1996) https://archive.is/20130630000741/www.newyorker.com/archive/content/?020422fr_archive02