A Synthesis of Psychological Aspects with the Sociological Constrains in Arthur Miller Tragedies

This paper analyses the amalgam of psychological elements with the social realism where his characters are placed. The paper focuses on the inner conflicts of the characters and points out the literary devices that Miller uses to bring to life. Miller’s drama embodies the Freudian concept of human psychological nature and the father-son conflict which is present at his most successful works. These conflicts are evident in "The Crucible," "All My Sons," "The Death of a Commissioner," "View from the Bridge," "After the Fall," and "Descent from Mount Morgan.” In the plays where this conflict is not the primary conflict, it serves as a bases where other inner conflicts are grown.

Collapse of the Ideal in Arthur Miller’s All My Sons

Idealism is a pivotal motto of the propaganda led and announced by America's pursuit of the dream since its establishment in the new world, but what has emerged as a dream has ended up as an illusion. The aim of this paper is to expose how Arthur Miller portrays the collapse of the ideal father figure in an exemplary American family at the time when the pursuit for personal and familial betterment was used to disguise materialistic corruption and egoistic thirst for social mobility in American society at the expense of values and ethics.

Christer Kihlmans självbiografi Livsdrömmen Rena (1982) i ett postkolonialt perspektiv

This article deals with the autobiography Livsdrömmen rena (1982; The Clear Dream of Life), written by the Finland-Swedish author Christer Kihlman. It is his second so-called South America book and is based on the writer’s own experiences from the early 1980s, when he visited several South American countries. The text is seen in a theoretical-methodological frame of postcolonial studies, i.e. the 1978 book Orientalism by Edward W. Said, which describes, how “the Orient”, Oriental people and nations were viewed by their western colonizers. The analysis, which also takes into account Latin American postcolonial specificities, follows the article author’s already performed interpretation of Kihlman’s first South America book, Alla mina söner (1980; translated as All My Sons, 1984).

The necessity for human solidarity in Arthur Miller’s All My Sons

Arthur Miller’s All My Sons depicts the human tendency of self-deception, betrayal and guilt which leads to the deterioration and the collapse of human values. The intensity of these elements may vary but they run through all of his plays. In All My Sons, Joe, a selfish businessman, in order to save his business from ruin, supplies defective cylinder heads to the American Air Force which results in the death of 21 fighter plane pilots. Joe atones for his crime by committing suicide. According to Miller, the American Dream creates false hopes that prevent people from being proud of what they have accomplished to make their lives better than they would be elsewhere, and eventually fail at achieving anything. Guilt is fundamentally a prosocial behavior because it strengthens interpersonal relationships. It is a kind of regretful, remorseful, painful, and aversive feeling aroused by one’s own actions or inactions. Guilt is different from regret in that guilt is more related to interpersonal harm whereas regret is more related to intrapersonal harm. Guilt is usually related to and is operationalized as the acceptance of responsibility for harm. Guilt has long been related to prosocial behavior. People tend to use altruistic means when under the stress of guilt.1