I watched a documentary about Arthur Miller on HBO Max last night. I cannot recommend it strongly enough. It was a great overview of one of my favorite writers and a truly great American playwright.
I’ve read 4 of his plays: The Crucible, Death of Salesman, All my Sons, and my personal favorite, After the Fall – which is a semi-autobiographical commentary of his failed marriage to Marylin Monroe. When it came out, it was roundly trashed by the critics. I think they were more than a bit unfair – but rather understandable in the context of the 1960s. And because it doesn’t tell the story sequentially, it is a hard read.
For example, according to Sarah Bradford, in her biography, America’s Queen: The Life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, “Jackie, who had admired Arthur Miller enough to seat him at her table at the Malraux dinner, turned on him for his betrayal of Marilyn in his play After the Fall, which opened in New York on January 23, 1964. For [Jackie Kennedy] loyalty was the ultimate test of character, and in portraying Marilyn as a self-destructive slut whom he had abandoned for her own good, Miller had dismally failed it.”
Nonetheless, in my humble opinion, it’s a great play, and I still remember specific parts of it in my mind almost 50 years later after. More importantly, it’s a part of many great books and plays I was required to read during my high school experience- in a suburban high school in Pittsburgh during the early 1970s.
What I think is more remarkable about my having read the works of Arthur Miller is when I read them. And why I had to read them.
I was required to read these plays as a part of high school English classes taught by some truly great teachers. I took a wonderful AP English class senior year taught by Ms. Holloman. The format was simple – the class met four times a week, we read one book per week that was assigned to us, and every Monday, we spent the entire class writing an essay on the book we had read ( or were supposed to have read in the preceding week – some of them were hard to get through). Ms. Holloman was a merciless critic of our writing, and she almost always took time to review with us how we could get the point across in better language. As a result of her efforts, I was able to test out of the Freshman English requirement at The Citadel and go into Major British Writers as a freshman. The course was normally a requirement for sophomores because every cadet had to take two years worth of English at the college regardless of major. I recognized later on how helpful that requirement was in my life, and I hope the college still has it.
So what is the point of this sugary stroll down memory lane? It is simply to recognize that without understanding why we are where we are as a country, learning the technical skills of a trade doesn’t have real meaning. In the current argument about forgiving student debt, It’s one of the most frustrating things in the world to me to hear someone say, “Well, it’s your fault for majoring in English [or fill in the blank of any non-technical major here] instead of some useful area of study.” I consider that to be a stupid point of view. I get that there are fields of study that the market economy values more than someone who understands great literature, but I would respond by pointing out we need it all; we need engineers and scientists, but we need teachers and artists and playwrights equally as much. All of them should be choices that individuals get to make, and it should not bankrupt them to learn and change their choices if need be.
Why? Robin Williams explained it in this classic scene from Dead Poets Society:
When I attended The Citadel, English was a recommended pre-law major for those who strove to become lawyers. It emphasized writing and speaking, which I think anyone would agree is a part of the legal profession. My subsequent experience in the Navy has given me strong feelings on what the background education of a Naval Officer should be. Here’s a news flash, engineering is not at the top of the list that I think a future Naval Officer should study. The Navy does a great job of teaching the scientific things. However, it does a lousy job of teaching the background reasons why we have a Navy and what that nation the Navy serves.
I owe a debt to the English teachers in my life; without them, I would never have read any of Miller’s plays. As I said, science, technology, business classes – they all have their uses – but the knowledge of literature those hard-working and underpaid men and women taught, teaching writing and reading, served me the best in my life. We really should try harder to remember that.