Guilt And Redemption: A Study On The Moral Meanings Of The Juridical Images In Five Of Arthur Miller's Plays

Arthur Miller (1915-2005), one of the most important playwrights in postwar American theatre, has been a favorite of Chinese critics since his works were introduced into China in the 1960s. However, of the research about Miller done in China, most of it pays attention only to his masterpiece Death of a Salesman while neglecting his other plays. Therefore, this thesis selects five of Miller's major plays other than Death of a Salesman to study the juridical imagery in them. The selected plays are All My Sons (1947), The Crucible (1953), A View From the Bridge (1956), After the Fall (1964), and Incident at Vichy (1964).By "juridical," we refer to its dictionary meaning in Collins English Dictionary and Thesaurus, that is, "of or relating to law or to the administration of justice; legal" (623). In the context of Miller's plays, "juridical images" specifically refer to images of the trial, court, judge, accuser, defender, lawyer, prison, prisoner, police, police office, the detention room, etc. Juridical images in the five plays are either related to McCarthyism or to the Holocaust. The cold juridical imagery in The Crucible, A View From the Bridge, and After the Fall implies a negative attitude toward McCarthyism and a distrust toward the law, while All My Sons, After the Fall, and Incident at Vichy turn to explore the causes of the bloody Holocaust and finally find the root in human nature.Miller believes that guilt plays a critical role in both McCarthyism and the Holocaust. Under the terror of McCarthyism, patriotism was required in its strictest sense. Liberal thoughts were constructed into immoral things to ensure the political correctness of people's thinking. Driven by their guilty conscience that they also had such "immoral" thoughts, people hastened to name others as Communists to prove their own innocence, and such betrayals in turn generate more guilt. In the Holocaust, naturally the killers felt guilty because of their wrong-doings. However, the survivors also felt guilty, on the one hand because they survived while others died, and on the other hand because they felt relieved when others died instead of themselves.Miller's concern with guilt is also written into his plays. All My Sons, by describing the torture and alienation within a family whose members have conspired to hide a crime, focuses on the consequences of guilt. In The Crucible, the protagonist finally finds the goodness in himself and dies peacefully, thus the play is mainly concerned with the redemption of guilt. A View From the Bridge, with a highly ambiguous death of its protagonist, occupies a position between the consequences and the redemption. After the Fall and Incident at Vichy probe into the origin of guilt and find it in human nature which consists of both evil and goodness. While the existence of evil leads to human betrayal, the goodness in man makes him shameful of his evil, so guilt comes into being. Three aspects of guilt together show us the evolution of Miller's ethics developed from play to play.