August Wilson and Arthur Miller: American Realism Playwrights
Once society has no need for something, that something must adapt or it dies out. For theatre in the latter half of the 19th Century, it adapted. American realism developed as a means for theatre to be useful to society, with content focused on everyday people’s struggles (Trumbull 1). In this sense, American realism can be defined as literary work that is a social commentary involving or based on the personal experiences from the authors life. African American playwright August Wilson focused his plays on black lives in America through the decades of his life. Arthur Miller wrote plays on working class white families. The two, born in the midst of realist drama, wrote of different subject matters, had an overlap of themes with Fences and The Death of a Salesman, and both represent American Realism as it is known today.
Looking at American history, there’s probably no time in which being an African American was easy. From being plucked from the homeland and forced into slavery to today’s Black Lives Matter movement, hardships have always plagued African Americans. Fortunately, August Wilson lived in a time where, as a black man, he had enough freedom to write and publish plays but still lived through and witnessed the hardships blacks endured, which is the focus of Wilson’s plays. Wilson was born in Pittsburgh on April 27th, 1945 as Frederick Kittel (Eval and Pearson par 1–2). Despite becoming a well-known American playwright, Wilson’s education wasn’t that of the average literary artist. In fact, Wilson dropped out of high school in ninth grade due to an accusation of plagiarism and instead went on to educate himself at the local library (Bogumil 2). This was the second school Wilson had attended, having transferred from Central Catholic High School due to “the relentless bigotry of his classmates” (Eval and Pearson par 3). Bogumil explains that Wilson’s focus had been on poetry and fiction, though his desire was to eventually become a playwright (2–3), and adopting the pen name August Wilson over his birth name he focused his time on poetry until 1978 (Eval and Person par 3–4). Even from his beginnings, the child of a white German immigrant who wanted nothing to do with his children and an African American woman (Bogumil 1; Eval and Pearson par 2), Wilson endured the hardships of being an African American in America.
August Wilson’s work was in part based on his experiences throughout his life, including the people he knew and the situations he witnessed. This is part of what makes Wilson a realist playwright; he wrote about that which was based on the genuine. In his description of early American realist plays, Curvin explains that the characters are complex and the playwright uses bits of his own experience to add a realistic aspect to the plays (452) just as Wilson did. Some of Wilson’s characters were based on people in his life. For example, Wilson’s character Sam from The Janitor was based on someone he met while doing various small jobs at age sixteen (Bogumil 2). Additionally, his step-father “David Bedford is a model for Troy Maxson in Fences…” (Bogumil 2). These are just a few examples of how Wilson used people from his life to create realistic characters.
Not only does Wilson use people in his life to create characters, he also used his own experiences to add to the stories he created. Nadel explains that August Wilson used the blues to create commentary on the African American life, adding opinions to his characters out of blues songs and overall using “blue” and “blues” as a multidimensional literary device (50). Bogumil even quotes Wilson on how blues are one of the artistic influences of his work (4). Additionally, after witnessing work by Athul Fugard and Imamu Amiri Baraka, Wilson realized he could use his plays to make political commentary, creating such works as The Homecoming and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (Bogumil 4–5). Brockett and Hildy consider August Wilson “[one] of the most effective African American playwrights” with his accomplishment of “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (1984), about the humiliations, small victories, and defeats of African American musicians working for exploitive whites…” (527). Possibly the most obvious use of experience in Wilson’s work is the fact that most of his plays are set in Pittsburgh (Bogumil 7), his hometown. Wilson lived through the latter half of the nineteenth century, and as such was interested in using his art to show African American lives through the 1900’s. Wilson thus created the “Pittsburgh Cycle,” made up of ten plays that “attempts to express the African American experience in each decade of the twentieth century” (Brockett and Hildy 546). As Curvin expresses, successful realist drama duplicates concepts, desires, motivations, and the general mood of a time period (452–453). August Wilson is able to do just that through his work.
Fences is a prime example of Wilson’s realist work. Written in 1985, it is said to “reveal the psychological and economic wounds inflicted on an African American family by social and employment barriers” (Brockett and Hildy 527–528). However, it is so much more. Troy is based on Wilson’s stepfather and their complex relationship, including the aspirations Bedford pushed on his stepson. (Bogumil 2). Also, Nadel suggests that Fences includes the idea that Troy inherits “from his father a warrior spirit that can then be converted into a blues legacy” (7). Of course, this is just one example of how Wilson’s play Fences was influenced by real life people and experiences. Not only does Wilson include bits of his past, he also adds in metaphorical elements that can be linked to blues, something quite important to African Americans lives.
Further analysis of Fences reveals just how much is buried in this play based on an African American family of the 1950’s. Nadel notes the importance of spirituality and the metaphysical in Wilson’s plays, such as Troy’s meeting with Mr. Death in Fences (73). Wilson makes use of the metaphysical to note a spirituality within the black community of America. Bogumil’s analysis of Fences reveals further complexities in Fences as a whole. Not only is Fences a commentary on racial injustices, but it also makes note of how racism affects and permanently wounds a family (38). Additionally, the time period chosen for this play is quite significant. Born in the mid 1940’s, Wilson’s childhood and adolescence were plunged into the beginnings of the Civil Rights Movement. Similarly, the family in Fences lives in the 1950’s such that “Troy and his family live when the seeds of the Civil Rights Movement are about to be sewn…” (38). Additionally, Bogumil makes note of how:
Wilson … employs another theme common to American drama — that the sins of the father are visited upon the family, resulting in a financially and psychologically dysfunctional family that can only cure itself or resolve its conflicts by the purgation of the father figure. (41)
These are just a few of the analyses on Fences, but it is apparent that the inspirations of Wilson’s work and the characters he had developed based on people in his life expresses truths about America, thus being American realism.
Anyone who lived from the early 1900’s into the early 21st century would have seen great changes in America, and thus would have stories to share with the world about the United States. Arthur Miller is one such individual who took his experiences to the page and the stage. Miller was born on October 17th, 1915 in Harlem, New York to a wealthy Jewish couple who lost everything in 1929 due to the Wall Street Crash (Bloom 8; Biography.com Editors par 2–3). Unlike Wilson, Miller completed high school and eventually went on to college. However, due to Miller’s grades and lack of funds, he wasn’t able to attend university until 1934 (Bloom 8). Similarly to Wilson, though, Miller worked a series of odd jobs in late adolescence and early adulthood and educated himself in literature (Bloom 8). Miller’s inspirations aided in his focus on playwriting. Bloom notes that for Miller, Henrik Ibsen was a large influence in regards to the realist play style (8). Additionally, Miller’s success with plays written in college and his playwriting professor Kenneth Rowe inspired Miller to pursue playwriting as a career (Biography.com Editors par 3). With ambition gleaming in his eyes, Arthur Miller went on to become one of America’s greatest playwrights.
Arthur Miller witnessed some of the most iconic periods of American history living through the Great Depression, World War I, and World War II. As such, Miller lived in a prime time to witness America’s shifting identity and write realist drama pinpointing the cracks in the American dream as its identity was transformed by materialism. Miller, having been influenced by Ibsen who is often seen as “the father of modern realistic drama” (Trumbull 4) was certainly conscious of his work as that of realism. One of Miller’s works, The Crucible, and its underlying messages put Miller under fire. Brater explains that The Crucible “gave dramatic shape to the fear, manipulation, and crass opportunism of the dangerous McCarthyite [movement]…” (5–6). It’s clear that Miller was not afraid of making political statements through his art, even though he was under scrutiny by the HUAC (House of Un-American Activities Committee) (Biography.com Editors par 10). The Crucible is probably the most notable political commentary of Miller’s plays for its effect on Miller’s own life and the backlash from the government.
His work did not always focus on politics of the time. In fact, a change in the content of his work occurred as he began studying and dissecting the American dream and identity. For example, Brater notes that:
Miller’s American characters are threatened with extinction… [and] … when they lose their bearings in the disappearing sense of communal identity what they have really lost is themselves. (6)
Miller began examining what the American identity lacked and what was wrong with the American dream. Or, as Bloom points out, Willy Loman of Death of a Salesman is the epitome of “everyman” and is a believer in the American dream who buys into “the myths of the capitalistic society in which he is subsumed” (53). Again and again, Miller spotlights the American identity, showing all of its holes and cracks. One of Miller’s more personal works was a screenplay, The Misfits, written for his lover Marilyn Monroe (Biography.com Editors par 13). In general Miller did not use personal experiences in his work quite like Wilson had done, yet Miller certainly made an effort, successfully at that, to make his work a commentary on America in important moments of his life and America’s history.
One of the most representative of Miller’s ideals is his play Death of a Salesman. Death of a Salesman, written in 1949, and generally considered Miller’s most significant work, focuses on “the conflict in the American conscious between the desire for material success and for adventure and happiness” (Brockett and Hildy 485). Editors of Biography.com describe Death of a Salesman as a “drama that follows the travails of Willy Loman” who is an aged traveling salesman and who can’t seem to find satisfaction in his life as “the values that he so doggedly pursued have become his undoing (par 6). Willy has an okay job but he feels himself lagging behind others. Not only that, he’s frustrated with his grown sons and seems to be lacking something in his marriage. Bloom suggests that the tragedy of Willy Loman is that he desires to be a good husband and father, but fails as “he is exiled from himself, and so can win no victory
whatsoever” (6). Already, the faults in American society can be seen as this one man struggles to find a feeling of fulfillment as his life nears its end. Bloom’s quote of John von Szeliski nicely summarizes the implications of Salesman, “… von Szeliski maintains that Willy Loman’s failure derives from the fact that his values are not in fact moral but merely material, reflecting the materialism of society as a whole” (40). This failure is certainly in part due to the fact that he has been disillusioned by a materialistic society to feel that success is his only means to be loved. In fact, Bloom points out that “if [Willy] is not successful, then he will not deserve to be loved by his family” (6).
An analysis of Salesman indicates that it is “the ultimate postwar critique of the American dream…” (Brater 5). Death of a Salesman became quite popular and, in fact, “it aims at nothing less than making theater part of the national conversation” (Brater 5). Ultimately, as Bloom eloquently explains, not many American literary works have been so “‘realist’… as Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman” (11). Certainly, Miller is one of America’s great realist dramatists and his play Death of a Salesman, as a commentary on the faults in America’s identity as the country grows, represents an American realist drama.
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller and Fences by August Wilson both represent great American realist works despite the diverse backgrounds of the two playwrights. In actuality, the two plays have some overlapping qualities beyond the obvious that their focus is on an American family with father-son conflicts. Bogumil explains that Fences takes after Death of a Salesman “in which forces external to the family play a key role in the family’s internal conflict” (37). More than that, though, is the key idea that society, its constructed expectations and barricades, is the external force that haunts the protagonists. Bogumil puts it beautifully as he explains:
…like the debilitating influence of a materialistic, mechanistic society on Willy Loman’s psyche in Miller’s play, the lingering and devastating effects of racism and segregation on the conflicted Troy Maxson and his family are portrayed in Wilson’s play. (37–38).
Bogumil explains how Fences is partly focused on “African Americans’ right to obtain the American Dream” (40). Miller’s Salesman focuses on a lower class family and exemplifies just how difficult it was for low income Caucasians to even attempt to achieve the American dream. As Bloom explains it, Willy envies his dead brother for having been successful in that he was wealthy (17). Moreover, as Brater explains:
Death of a Salesman [was] effective in convincing national audiences that there was something fundamentally suspect about a society that venerates material success and then tries to sell it as happiness. (5)
For both Troy and Willy, the desirous American dream puts a pressure on them that causes them to begin breaking. Ultimately, these two plays speak volumes about both black and whites being suffocated by the American dream and society — for blacks it’s their exclusion from it, for whites it’s the unattainability of the materialistic dream, and ultimately this was reality in the time it was written.
These two plays both represent types of realist drama by realist playwrights. The plays’ messages are about how the American dream, misguided at best, can destroy not just a man but also his family. Beyond that, though, August Wilson made it a point in Fences and his other works to show how racism had affected African Americans throughout the years. Truly, “…Wilson presents a decade-by-decade portrait of African American life, capturing both the spirit and voice of African Americans” (Bogumil 6–7). Then there’s Miller who tended to use his work to expose “what still needed to be set right in [America’s] functioning democracy” (Brater 4). Both Miller and Wilson, in their own ways, based on a variety of personal experiences and influences, are distinguished American realist playwrights. Brockett and Hildy wrote that August Wilson is “internationally regarded as one of America’s great playwrights” (546). Freddie Rokem insisted that “No American playwright is more revered on the international stage than Arthur Miller” (Brater and Rokem par 1). In conclusion, August Wilson and Arthur Miller are two celebrated American playwrights who wrote about what was important and real for the American people through the decades of these playwrights’ lives.
Works Cited
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Brater, Enoch, and Freddie Rokem. “Arthur Miller’s Global Theater.” University of Michigan Press. University of Michigan, n.d. Web. 23 Oct. 2016.
Brockett, Oscar G., and Franklin Hildy. History of the Theatre. 10th ed. Boston: Pearson Education, 2008. Print.
Curvin, Jonathon. “Realism in Early American Art and Theatre.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 30.4 (1944): 450. Communication & Mass Media Complete. Web. 22 Oct. 2016.
Eval, and Mary Pearson. “August Wilson Biography — Plays Explored African-American
Identity, Pursued Writing from a Young Age.” — Black, Theater, Produced, and Theatre.
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Nadel, Alan. August Wilson: Completing the Twentieth-century Cycle. N.p.: U of Iowa, 2010.
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