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Arthur Miller has been writing plays about the necessity to confront oneself consciously with one's aggression. In his introduction to After the Fall, he summarized his thoughts about this task as follows:
He [the central character of the play—Quentin1] is desperate for a clear view of his own responsibility for his life.… He is faced, in short, with what Eve brought Adam—the terrifying fact of choice. And to choose, one must know oneself, but no man knows himself who cannot face the murder in him, the sly and everlasting complicity with the forces of destruction. The apple cannot be stuck back on the tree of knowledge, once we begin to see, we are doomed and challenged to seek the strength to see more, not less. When Cain was questioned he stood amazed
Dr. Krystal is Professor of Psychiatry, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan.
It is my guess that this name represents a little pun on the theme of the search for the conscious truth—thus the hero represents the author in the quest for truth and understanding, and the fifth son at the Seder who asks the “unspeakable” question.
Page 355and asked “Am I my brother's keeper?” Oswald's first words on being taken were “I did not do anything.” And what country has ever gone to war proclaiming anything but injured innocence? Murder and violence require innocence, whether real or cultivated [Miller, 1964a, p. 32].
In the same introduction Miller describes and defines the “Listener” of the play as being “to some a psychoanalyst, to others God,” or Quentin himself turned at the edge of the abyss to look at his experience, his nature, and his time in order to bring to light, to seize, and—innocent no more—to forever guard against his own complicity with Cain, and the world. Thus the playwright presents an artistic conception of his hero's (i.e., his own) self-analysis. What makes After the Fall Miller's conscious portrayal of an analysis is that he deals exclusively and admittedly with the psychic reality of the protagonist (