Arthur Miller Biography

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Arthur Miller * Born October 17, 1915, New York, New York, U.S.—Died February 10, 2005, Roxbury, Connecticut. * American playwright, who combined social awareness with a searching concern for his characters' inner lives. * Miller was shaped by the Depression, which spelled financial ruin for his father, a small manufacturer, and demonstrated to the young Miller the insecurity of modern existence. After graduation from high school he worked in a warehouse. With the money he earned he attended the University of Michigan (B.A., 1938), where he began to write plays. * His first public success was with Focus (1945), a novel about anti-Semitism. All My Sons (1947), a drama about a manufacturer of faulty war materials that strongly reflects the influence of Henrik Ibsen, was his first important play. Death of a Salesman became one of the most famous American plays of its period. It is the tragedy of Willy Loman, a small man destroyed by false values that are in large part the values of his society. Miller received a Pulitzer Prize for the play, which was later adapted for the screen (1951). * The Crucible (1953) was based on the witchcraft trials in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692, a period Miller considered relevant to the 1950s, when investigation of subversive activities was widespread. In 1956, when Miller was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee, he refused to name people he had seen 10 years earlier at an alleged communist writers' meeting. He was convicted of contempt but appealed and won. Arthur Miller * Born October 17, 1915, New York, New York, U.S.—Died February 10, 2005, Roxbury, Connecticut. * American playwright, who combined social awareness with a searching concern for his characters' inner lives. * Miller was shaped by the Depression, which spelled financial ruin for his father, a small
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