Abstract
This essay examines The Ride Down Mt. Morgan (1991/1998) as Miller’s lampooning of a pernicious individualism that arose in America during the 1980s that celebrated self-centeredness and greed and undermined the ideals of community and social justice that had been essential political guideposts during earlier decades in which Miller came into adulthood and began his career as a playwright. The play is explored as a significant piece in Miller’s ongoing analysis of conflicting aspects of the American Dream and is both a diagnosis and a prognosis of the political culture not only of the Reagan years, but also of what it later would become not only in the United States but also wherever neoliberalism dictates its rules, which are in dire contradiction with democratic principles.
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Russo, T. (2020). Reaganism in The Ride Down Mt. Morgan. In: Marino, S., Palmer, D. (eds) Arthur Miller for the Twenty-First Century. American Literature Readings in the 21st Century. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37293-4_12
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