Themes

Abstract

In the ‘Introduction’ to the Collected Plays, Miller shows that he is quite clear what his plays are ‘about’. Most of them have a similar central theme: ‘Probably the single most powerful infleunce on my way of writing [was] not only to depict why a man does what he does, or why he nearly didn’t do it, but why he cannot simply walk away and say to hell with it. To ask this question is immediately to impose on oneself not, perhaps, a style of writing but at least a kind of dramatic construction. For I understand the symbolic meaning of a character and his career to consist of the kind of commitment he makes to life or refuses to make, the kind of challenge he accepts and the kind he can pass by. I take it that if one could know enough about a human being one could discover some conflict, some value, some challenge, however minor or major, which he cannot find it in himse lf to walk away from or turn his back on.’ And for Miller, the humanist, the only guide to tell a man what he should or shouldn’t do, is his conscience. This is true of both John and Elizabeth Proctor