Arthur Miller was the first of America's great modern playwrights. His thoughtfully constructed plays dwelt on the themes that bothered post-World War Two America: guilt, paranoia, the failure of the American dream, insecurity, political ideology. He was the conscience of that America, pointing a finger at America's ills without resorting to retribution or point-scoring.
Besides his undoubted talent as a playwright, he is also remembered for his marriage to the American icon, Marilyn Monroe. This coming together of two supposed extremes of American society - the glitzy, dumb, Hollywood blonde and the erudite, older New Yorker - revealed Marilyn Monroe's ambition to be taken seriously, but, with her colossal insecurity, was doomed. Miller wrote her last great role in The Misfits as her marriage and life came to an end.
Throughout his life, despite the breakdown of his marriage which he returned to in his work again and again, Miller retained a dignified integrity. This was most apparent in his testimony before McCarthy where, unlike some of his theatrical colleagues, Miller maintained his silence, refusing to name names. Just as Kazan's film On the Waterfront was a worthy, if indefensible, justification for betraying former friends, Miller confronted the McCarthy trials in The Crucible, reaffirming the necessity of the individual to stand by his and his friends' beliefs.
After Monroe's death, Miller faded from the spotlight, as his plays no longer addressed contemporary America so immediately (which may account for his failure to win the Nobel Prize). However, his plays still remain as popular and as telling.
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