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Al-Ahram Weekly 3 - 9 August 2000 Issue No. 493 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 3 - 9 August 2000 Issue No. 493
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Plain Talk
By Mursi Saad El-Din
In common with many people, in Britain as well as America, I seem to be obsessed with Arther Miller. It may be Miller's impending 85th birthday (in November) that prompts such an explosion of concern, or perhaps it is simply that Miller is a playwright for all seasons and all lands. The latter possibility is the more probable, for with two of his plays running in London, and a revival of his classic All My Sons, Miller's presence is, to all intents and purposes, inescapable.
All My Sons, first produced in 1947, was received enthusiastically in the wake of World War II. Described as "a war-crime tribunal for Middle America," it depicts the fates of two war victims, one of whom is reported dead, the other missing. It is a family drama, in which the individual is defined by reference to his place in the family. It is "inside the family that the larger issues of morality and politics are argued about," comments Robert Hewison in a recent issue of The Sunday Times.
Most of his plays, indeed, are about individuals -- except for The Crucible, in which an entire community is portrayed. I remember seeing the play in 1954 at the Bristol Old Vic, produced by the renowned Warren Jenkins.
I was reminded of the play when I read John Peter's review of Miller's The Crucible in History, a newly published book. For Miller, Peter contends, "history is a matter of conscience." And the history Miller writes about is of events that he lived through himself -- the Wall Street crash, Roosevelt's New Deal, the Second World War, the Cold War and McCarthyism, the Kennedy assassination, the civil rights movement, Watergate and Vietnam, the collapse of Communism, the Gulf War -- all of which are "trials at which humanity was found guilty as charged." The book is a collection of essays and lectures, the title of the book being the title of a lecture delivered at Harvard.
"It is an account of the genesis, impact and afterlife of one of his greatest and most frequently performed plays," Peter writes. The lights were going out all over liberal America in the 1950s, Senator McCarthy sniffing for "communists" all over -- in the government, the army and, most famously, in Hollywood.
Based on the Salem witch hunt of 1692, The Crucible was a strong response to McCarthy's totalitarianism. It exemplifies the power of history, whether destructive or constructive. Through the play Miller managed to say that there are similarities between historical and modern witch hunts, demonstrating -- in a powerful way -- the continuing power of the past over the present.
The published text of the play includes a long introduction accurately detailing the Salem event. "The Salem tragedy," we are told, "developed from a paradox." It is a paradox -- and I paraphrase -- in which we still live, and there is no prospect yet of its being adequately resolved.
Stated simply, it would read something like this: For good, even high purposes, the people of Salem developed a theocracy, a combination of state and religious power whose foremost function was to keep the community together, preventing any disunity that might open it up to the subversion of material or ideological enemies. "The witch hunt was a perverse manifestation of the panic that set in among all classes when the balance began to turn toward greater individual freedom."
Miller goes on to point out that the witch hunt was far more than an exercise in simple repression. It was also, importantly, "a long overdue opportunity for anyone so inclined to express publicly his guilt and sins, under the cover of accusations against the victims... Long held hatreds of neighbours could now be openly expressed and vengeance taken, despite the Bible's charitable injunctions."
A chilling reading, undoubtedly, and not least because its psychological perspicacity continues to ring true. The need to confess, as a means of condemning, appears to be one of humanity's least appealing, if widespread, traits.
