Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T09:01:27.928Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

8 - The Holocaust, the Depression, and McCarthyism

Miller in the sixties

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2006

Christopher Bigsby
Affiliation:
University of East Anglia
Get access

Summary

In some ways Miller seemed out of synch with the sixties. Rather than writing about Vietnam or civil rights, he chose to look back to the Depression in The Price, the Holocaust in After the Fall and Incident at Vichy, McCarthyism and the Depression in After the Fall. Yet all three plays also explore the problem of denial, and to Miller this was the central issue of the moment. Denial, after all, lay behind the American attitude toward race, and it facilitated the waging of an immoral war in south-east Asia. There is certainly no evidence that he abstracted himself from the political realities of the decade. Quite the contrary. He became actively involved in the anti-war movement. Yale, the University of Michigan, and even West Point invited him to speak about the war. He had not, however, forgotten about McCarthyism, warning students, at a University of Michigan teach-in, that the FBI, who, he claimed, was sitting among them, would hold them accountable for their actions and even ask them to condemn their present passions in the future. He nevertheless applauded the student protest, calling it “the essential risk of living.”

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×