The Fall and After: Albert Camus and Arthur Miller

'THE FALL AND AFTER: ALBERT CAMUS AND ARTHUR MILLER MOST OF THE RESPONSE TO Arthur Miller's After the Fall focussed upon the autobiographical elements of the work. Miller, in turn, defended it rather well in two articles: "With Respect For Her Agony-But With Love," Life, LXI (February 7, 1964), 66; and "A Forward By the Author," Post (February 1, 1964), 32. All the attention given to the autobiographical elements detracted from the playas Miller rightly observed. This is in one sense the price a writer pays for a well-publicized extra-literary life. And one cannot discount the autobiographical elements which have been amply catalogued by Newsweek, Time, and Life. Yet there are other aspects of this play which need to be examined, aspects which when clarified reveal this play to be a fine humanistic study as well as a masterpiece of theatrical expression. What is most surprising about After the Fall, aside from its autobiographical statement, is its marked similarity to Albert Camus' The Fall. It is strange that an author dedicated to reproducing his personal misfortunes on the stage, as some critics argued, should deal with the same subject and materials that Camus, another writer in another life, dealt with in his novel. What is strange is that no one protested Camus' use of autobiographical material. Is it, perhaps, that the subject and materials for revealing that subject are part of the modern everyman's experience and are not private to either Miller or Camus? Consider the most superficial likenesses between the play and the novel. Both narrators are lawyers and at the moment of telling their stories both are on rather bad terms with the profession. Each has button-holed a listener to whom he confesses his life and his guilt. Clamence in The Fall speaks to a man he met in a Dutch bar, and Quentin in After the Fall speaks to "The Listener" who sits in a chair near the edge of the stage. Miller said of the listener that some would see him as a psychoanalyst or even God. Miller defines him, however, as his central character, Quentin, who is re-examining his whole life in order to understand why humans are driven to kill.1 Clamence, Camus' hero, tells his listener in the end: "I adapt 1 Mr. Miller has refused permission to quote from his play. Consequently, the few specific references will be identified by the pagination of After The Fall (New York, 1964). 206 1966 'The Fall AND AFTER 207 my words to my listener.... 1 mingle what concerns me with what concerns others. I choose the features we have in common, the experiences we have endured together, the failings we share."2 Curiously enough the man Clamence addresses is also a lawyer, and just as MiIIer's listener is Quentin, so too Clamence's listener may be himself . In each case the device is an effective dramatic one because the author is also able to speak directly to his audience. The speakers in each work have great difficulty getting to the central, painful incident of their lives, in both cases a suicide. Each hesitates quite naturally to speak of it, and this too contributes to the developing dramatic tension. What most upsets each man is that he might have prevented the suicide had he made the effort. Each man chose at that moment in his life not to involve himself. Clamence heard the cry yet could not bring himself to act responsibly. Quentin tried to stop Maggie from taking her piIIs and did succeed, yet later because their marriage had not worked, he fails to stop her and feels his own complicity. What is presented in both works is an Augustinian confession, and both are very similar in the telling. Only the conclusions differ. How have both men been equaIIy guilty? Of what? And why is Quentin able to renew his life when Clamence is not? What comes after the fall? This last question is the one Miller answered with his play. Both men have been good lawyers and both have tried more than most men to help the poor, the guilty, and the defeated. It is only...