Nothing is as visionary and as blinding as moral indignation” 2. And that is why facts, for those who turned left – now as then – could mean so little. Rather it was a moral catastrophe, a violent revelation of the hypocrisies behind the facade of American society. His condemnation of the excesses of capitalism or materialism is ultimately the result of a moral rejection: “At the time it was beyond me to rationalize my feelings, but I knew that the Depression was only incidently a matter of money.

However, there were other cases in which he refused to compromise over aesthetic and ethical aspects of his work, leading him to write in his autobiography Timebends: “History bends the ease with which I could in the sixties, understand the fear and frustration of the dissident in the Sovietized world was the result, in some great part, of my experience before the Un-American Activities Committee in the fifties” 1 Despite references to his Marxist sympathies during the thirties and early forties, the main thrust of Miller’s criticism is essentially moral, a word he uses frequently in the autobiography.

This is especially true of his work during the fifties when he was involved in several confrontations with the authorities, the most well-known of which is his appearance before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1956. 408.ġMany of Arthur Miller’s plays undoubtedly provide us with a critical perspective on American society and its values. 1 Miller, Arthur, Timebends, New York, Grove Press, 1987, p.

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