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THE TEMPTATION OF INNOCENCE IN THE DRAMAS OF ARTHUR MILLER. By Terry Otten. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2002; pp. xvi + 280. $39.95 cloth.
In The Temptation of Innocence in the Dramas of Arthur Miller, Terry Otten critically surveys the career of a playwright who has survived the "vagaries and vicissitudes of theater criticism" (ix) for more than half a century. Otten's study begins with Miller's college plays in the 1930s, and continues through the successes of the 1940s and 1950s, the failures of the 1960s, the ignominy of the 1970s and 1980s, and into his comeback near the end of the century. The common thread Otten finds running through Miller's work is his "quintessential theme of guilt and responsibility" (xi), and how it connects to the search for innocence, which Otten believes Miller sees as the greatest, and potentially most destructive, temptation one can encounter.
Throughout Miller's plays, characters fall victim to the chimera of innocence which masks an underlying state of ignorance. In Otten's view, Miller believes "the only evil greater than an act of evil itself is the claim of innocence that allows for selfdeception to camouflage the potential for evil in one's self" (24-25). Miller's characters struggle with guilt and claim innocence to conceal the truth, often injuring others in the process. Thus, Joe Keller in All My Sons passes the blame to his partner to absolve himself; Willy Loman engages in self-delusion in Death of a Salesman by longing for his innocent past; Eddie Carbone in A...