阿瑟米勒生平.doc

American playwright who combined in his works social awareness with deep insights into personal weaknesses of his characters. Miller is best known for the play DEATH OF A SALESMAN (1949), or on the other hand, for his marriage to the actress Marilyn Monroe. Millers plays continued the realistic tradition that began in the United States in the period between the two world wars. With Tennessee Williams, Miller was one of the best-known American playwrights after WW II. Several of his works were filmed by such director as John Huston, Sidney Lumet and Karel Reiz. Dont say hes a great man. Willy Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper. Hes not the finest character that ever lived. But hes a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. Hes not to be allowed to fall into his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must finally paid to such a person.(fromDeath of a Salesman) Arthur Miller was born in Harlem, New York City; the family moved shortly afterwards to a six-storey building at 45110th Street between Lenox and Fifth Avenues. His father, Isidore Miller, was an illiterate Jewish immigrant from Poland. His succesfull ladies-wear manufacturer and shopkeeper was ruined in the depression. Augusta Barnett, Millers mother, was born in New York, but her father came from the same Polish town as the Millers. The sudden change in fortune had a strong influence on Miller. This desire to move on, to metamorphose ?or perhaps it is a talent for being contemporary ?was given me as lifes inevitable and righful condition, he wrote in TIMEBENDS: A LIFE (1987). The family moved to a small frame house in Brooklyn, which is said to the model for the Brooklyn home in Death of a Salesman. Miller spent his boyhood playing foorball and baseball, reading adventure stories, and appearing generally as a nonintellectual. If I had any ideology at all it was what I had learned from Hearst newspapers, he once said. After graduating f