ole damn truth. ---In some miserable dark corner of my soul I'm still not sure why I'm condemned! (He weeps helplessly) (138-139).
The question Miller leaves us with is whether a man can truly be forgiven if he is not even sure what he has done wrong in the first place. Nevertheless, Miller shows us that Lyman does still have a soul in the character's appreciation of the simple love which the nurse enjoyed with her husband and child while fishing on a lake. After his family leaves, Lyman is asked by the nurse if he wants something for his pain, but Lyman insists that she stay and talk to him. He asks her what she and her family talk about when they are fishing on the lake. She responds:
. . . Well, let's see . . . this last time we all bought us some shoes at that big Knapp Shoe Outlet up there?---they're seconds, but you can't tell them from new (141).
In the heyday of his greedy selfishness, Lyman would have scorned the nurse and her family and their conversation about a sale on shoes, but in the dawning light of his possible redemption, Lyman sees the conversation as much more. With "painful wonder and longing in his face, his eyes wide, alive," Lyman says to himself:
What a miracle everything is! Absolutely everything! Imagine . . . three of them sitting out there together on that lake, talking about their shoes! (He begins to weep, but quickly catches himself and with a contained suffering stares ahead) (141-142).
It is clear that Miller does not want to go too far with Lyman and show him as obviously redeemed. Lyman has come a long way in the play in terms of opening himself to some possible salvation and forgiveness, but he has not gone all the way. There is still resistance in him, which he recognizes when he declares that there is some part of him which does not know what he has done to be condemned in the first place.
The primary message of the play is that what is important in life is not satisfying one's g...