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STRUCTURE IN AFTER THE FALL: The Relevance of the Maggie Episodes to the Main Themes and the Christian Symbolism CRITICAL OPINION DOES NOT SEEM ABOUT TO CRYSTALLIZE ITSELF very soon on After the Fall, a play which provoked even initially a deeply divergent cleft among our literary and dramatic critics. Reaction to the play is now distinctly weighted on the negative side, with the major charge levelled against Miller being that he has failed to transmute , satisfactorily, autobiographical material into art. The charge is a serious and legitimate one, but it is one which has not yet, as far as I know, been thoroughly substantiated. Critics have pointed accusing fingers at Miller for dropping whole episodse of his own life into the play without giving them proper aesthetic distance; they simply cite as proof the well-known facts of his own biography. But the matter of taste seems too often to be inextricably confused with all this, and questionable taste should not necessarily be identified with bad art. Does the play seem to lack aesthetic distance to someone who knows nothing of Miller's biography, or-as we should rather have t.o phrase it in this case-does the play seem structurally inchoate, weak, or confusing? This is the basic question which will have to be answered before any definitive critical opinion of the play can be formed. A basic structural problem presented by the play is whether or not the second act of the play-the "Marilyn Monroe act" to those who simply cannot divorce the biography from the drama-really develops thematically, in an integrally important and relevant fashion out of the first act. The second act takes the spotlight off Quentin really, who is the only flesh and blood character in the play, and gaudily illumines the figure of Maggie (something which it does whether or not the ghost of Marilyn Monroe appears in the eyes of the beholder). A shift in focus so important as this might be supposed to involve a severe disjuncture of theme and meaning, and this, in fact, would seem to be obliquely supported by the general remarks of many who have seen the play to the effect that the second act is "too long" or "embarrassing" or "says too little." The main purpose of this paper will be to examine very briefly whether or not the second act is, in fact, connected tightly enough to the first act. 233 234 MODERN DRAMA December Proceeding, as we should, on the assumption that there is an organic connection between Acts' One 'and Two, let us begin by examining in what manner Act II develops or further presents themes developed in Act I. All of the skeletal themes of the play appear rather early in the first act: the responsibility of a man to his fellow human beings, the assumption of guilt for wrongs done to others, the balance between personal and mutual identity in marriage. These themes, as presented, are clearly not inseparable; rather they constantly converge and darkly blend together in sometimes strange concoctions hastily, although showily, shaken up by Miller. The blending is, of course, to be taken as part of Quentin'S, and, ultimately , the author'S, struggle for his "vision," but Quentin never succeeds in preparing a satisfactory visionary cocktail in Act 1. First-wife Louise tells Quentin at one point that he is "completely confused"l (p. 58) in comparing his relationship with her to his defense of Lou. Quentin simply radiates nIoral earnestness, though, and there Can be little doubt that he is trying desperately to win through to some meaningful synthesis for himself, a vision whereby he can come to honest terms with the guilt within him and establish a basis for determining "what people are to one another." (p. 10) That these are "big" and important issues for all modern men, Miller manages to suggest to the audience in a score of unsubtle ways. "Here is a thoughtful and sensitive man, who, by dint of circumstance, has been forced to reassess his most important personal and social values," is the basic impact we are supposed to have felt in Act I, and probably most...

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