This study will present a critical appreciation of Arthur Miller's The Ride Down Mt. Morgan. The key to a full appreciation of this play is found in the playwright's "Staging Note":
The play veers from the farcical to the tragic and back again and should be performed all-out in both directions as the situation demands, without attempting to mitigate the extremes (Staging Note).
Miller was in the twilight of his career when he wrote the play, and with such a staging note it is clear that he is trying to break free of constructions which he has labored under in earlier plays. Certainly his most famous work is thoroughly tragic, with little humor and certainly less farce. In The Ride Down Mt. Morgan, Miller wants to present a play which will defy his image as an exclusively tragic writer, but at the same time retain the tragic elements of his vision. It is as if he were saying life is not merely tragic, but also farcical, and the farcical is as crucial to a full appreciation of life and art as the tragic is.
To properly appreciate this play, it is also necessary to realize that Miller is a writer whose works generally carry profound social and political messages of a liberal bent. This liberal philosophy is expressed in this play as a critical analysis of the Reagan era, the era of greed and self-indulgence. The life of Lyman Felt is meant to be representative of that decade of selfish greed. He is a man who was once a much more sensitive man---a poet, in fact---and who became rich in the insurance business. He is involved in a serious car accident, and finds his tawdry life paraded before his eyes as he recovers in the hospital. One of the moral messages of the play is that the sins of one's past will eventually catch up with one.
The end of the play provides some sign that redemption for Lyman, unlikely as it may be, is not impossible. He says to Bessie:
. . . I'd give anything for your forgiveness. But you deserve the wh...