The American Century: Literature since 1945 683to the personal. Whatever the subject and setting, the focus is on individual
experience and, in particular, the problem of individual guilt. So, in After the Fall, the
central character Quentin prepares for his third marriage with the fear that his past
history does not make him deserving of happiness. Talking to the audience about
the past, then moving back to join in past events as he recollects them, Quentin is
plagued with guilt over his failures and betrayals. He recalls, for instance, the neurotic
demands made by his second wife Maggie, summed up in her insistent “Love me,
and do what I tell you. And stop arguing.” He recognizes them as impossible, yet
he feels guilty for not having met them. What he comes to realize, finally, is that the
defects for which he blames himself are part of the human condition. As human
beings, he and we must accept and forgive our imperfections, and then build for the
future on the basis of that acceptance. We need “to know, and even happily, that we
meet unblessed,” Quentin concludes, “not in some garden of wax fruit and painted
trees, that lie of Eden, but after, after the Fall.”
The personal resonance of plays like After the Fall was sustained in some of Miller’s
later works. Elegy for a Lady (1982), for example, is an elegant and ambiguous
exploration of love. A man enters a shop to buy a gift for his dying lover; the
proprietress of the shop attempts to help him make a choice and seems gradually to
take on the character, the persona of the dying woman. Some Kind of Love Story
(1982), in a similarly intense, intimate way, investigates the strange relationship
between a private detective and a prostitute he has been questioning about a murder
over the years. I Can’t Remember Anything (1987) again concentrates on a couple,
this time an elderly one, to dramatize the pleasures and the pains of old age.
Mr. Peter’s Connection (2000) focuses on the title character, as he struggles to forge a
connection between his past and present. A few other later dramas return, however,
to the social emphasis of Death of a Salesman and The Crucible. The Archbishop’s
Ceiling (1977) uses the setting of an unnamed East European country to consider
the political and moral responsibilities of the artist. It is not clear to an American
writer visiting the country if he is genuinely interested in the plight of the people he
is visiting, or simply using them for his writing. It is not clear, either, if the two
European writers he meets are spies or simply complicit in the suppression and
constant surveillance that scars their country, where even the most innocent
conversation loses its innocence because it might be overheard. Even more
memorably, The American Clock (1986) returns to Miller’s earlier dramatic
explorations of the national democratic experiment. An epic history of the
Depression of the 1930s, in both personal and public terms, the play focuses on
the memories of two survivors. One, called Les Baum, dwells on the domestic: the
decline of his middle-class Jewish family into poverty. The other, a financier named
Arthur Robertson, concentrates on the social: his survival, thanks to his ability to
anticipate the economic crash. Together, though, the recollections of the two men
register an abiding faith in the ability of the American nation to repair and redefine
itself. What the Depression did ultimately, Miller suggests, was strengthen and affirm
democracy, to give Americans back their belief in themselves. “She was so like the
country,” Baum observes of his mother; “money obsessed her but what she reallyGGray_c05.indd 683ray_c 05 .indd 683 8 8/1/2011 7:31:39 PM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 31 : 39 PM