Conclusion

Abstract

Arthur Miller has spent most of his adult life trying to make sense of the events through which he and his contemporaries have passed. In his youth he absorbed from his environment a conviction that society could be changed, and that art could be an agent of that change. When he rose to prominence in the years just after the war, he tended to associate with similar-minded colleagues such as Harold Clurman, Elia Kazan, Kermit Bloomgarden, Mordecai Gorelik, Arthur Kennedy and Martin Ritt. He shared with such artists a rather idealistic view of drama based on the aims of the Group Theatre and the example of the plays of its principal playwright, Clifford Odets. He also believed that Broadway offered him his best opportunity to reach a wide cross-section of the public.