Arthur Miller's Circles of Responsibility: A View from the Bridge and Beyond

Abstract

Arthur Miller is a good enough critic to understand the differences between himself and the other two great American playwrights. And - like almost any artist — he finds his rivals lacking to the degree that they are not himself. Thus, Tennessee Williams is too narrow. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, taken by Miller to be representative of the problem with Williams, suffers from not being a Miller play. Miller wants the Tennessee Williams play to be a contest for power between Big Daddy and his son Brick. But Tennessee Williams mishandled that significant social theme so that "it gets deflected onto a question of personal neurosis. "Characteristically, Williams narrowed the important Millerian theme of "mendacity in social relations" to mere "mendacity of human relations." Williams was more than anyone else responsible for his era's "translation of current life into the war within the self ... The Greeks would not have done that. They were more like Arthur Miller than like Tennessee Williams. Those classic "great works are works of a man confronting his society," just as they should be. The greatness of Greek plays is that "They're social documents, not little piddling private conversations.” Miller approves of the fact that "Greek drama clearly conceived its right function as something far wider than a purely private examination of individuality."