Arthur Miller's The Ride Down Mt. Morgan

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

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me 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 greed or lust, but instead developing loving relationships with other human beings and learning to appreciate the small "miracles" of everyday life. The indictment by Miller of the Reagan years and human greed in general is not only a political or socioeconomic indictment, then, but is more importantly ethical and spiritual. When Miller has Lyman refer to his being "condemned," it is above all a spiritual condemnation he is experiencing. Miller knows that human beings do not change their personalities overnight, no matter how powerful an enlightening experience might be. Real, profound, lasting change takes time and hard work, and Miller is making this argument when he has Lyman "quickly catch himself" when he starts to weep at the play's end. Miller is acknowledging that Lyman will not easily give up his resistance to the truth, and that ch

Category: Literature - A