After the Fall by Arthur Miller
"After the Fall" is a play by Arthur Miller that delves into the psychological struggles of its protagonist, Quentin, as he reflects on his past and his relationships with women. The narrative unfolds in a unique expressionistic style, where Quentin engages in an internal monologue, addressing an unseen audience he perceives as a jury. Set against the haunting backdrop of a colorless stone tower symbolizing Nazi concentration camps, Quentin grapples with feelings of guilt and a sense of failure stemming from his marriages to Louise and Maggie, as well as his estranged connection to his mother.
Throughout the play, Quentin's interactions with key characters, including Holga, his prospective third wife, and Maggie, whom he marries, reveal his emotional detachment and struggles with intimacy. As the narrative shifts between past and present, it highlights significant historical contexts, including the impact of the Holocaust and the McCarthy hearings, which shape Quentin's worldview. Critics have noted that while the play presents powerful moments, it suffers from structural imbalance and a lack of coherence between its two acts.
Ultimately, "After the Fall" serves as an exploration of identity, love, and the complexities of human relationships, leaving the audience to ponder Quentin's journey toward acceptance of his past and the possibility of forging a new path forward.
After the Fall by Arthur Miller
First published: 1964
First produced: 1964, at Lincoln Center, New York City
Type of plot: Expressionist
Time of work: The 1950’s
Locale: New York City
Principal Characters:
Quentin , a lawyerHolga , his prospective wifeLouise , his first wifeMaggie , his second wifeFelice , a devoted clientMother , his motherMickey , andLoucas , lawyer friends
The Play
After the Fall begins with Quentin sitting center stage on a chair in a dim light. In the background is a three-level, colorless stone tower, symbolic of the Nazi concentration camps, on which the people of his past walk in and out of his mind as he talks to himself. Quentin is, as it were, on trial, and he addresses the jury, “the Listener” or audience, in order to justify himself to himself. His monologue then becomes a dialogue with the people of his past as he seeks to alleviate his guilt over destructive relationships with two former wives.
Because the action takes place in Quentin’s mind, the episodes in act 1 are piecemeal and seemingly disconnected, but several major characters do emerge, along with distinctive periods of contemporary history. The first is Holga, an archaeologist and his prospective third wife, through whom he visits the Nazi death chambers of the late 1930’s, discovering in the process that no one is innocent. Holga has a feeling for this place and for her mother who died there, but with a long narrative telling how she kissed an idiot child in a dream, she endeavors to convince Quentin that he must accept the past and go on.
Quentin, though he would like to become a “separate person,” is different from Holga. He lacks any feeling for the Holocaust. He cannot mourn his mother, and after two failures in marriage he is skeptical about his relationship with Holga; indeed, he cannot sign letters to her “With love.” This void does not mean, however, that he is emotionally divorced from former relationships.
There are several women who cloud Quentin’s past: One is Felice, a client whose divorce he managed. He has no feeling for her, though she idolizes him. It is his first wife, Louise, who calls attention to his indifference to women, indeed his use of them as instruments to provide “a constant bath of praise.” The constant quarreling between Quentin and Louise leads to flashbacks of his childhood, of his dominating mother (for whom he cannot weep), and of other historical periods. The stock market crash of the 1920’s, followed by the Great Depression, when his father lost his fortune and his wife’s respect (she wants a divorce and calls him an idiot) leave their mark on Quentin. It is in this context that Quentin’s mother tells him he must learn to “disappoint people. Especially women.”
Another influential period is that of the Senator Joseph McCarthy Senate committee hearings of the 1950’s. Lou, Quentin’s professional client, has been subpoenaed. Then he is betrayed by another friend, Mickey, who insists that he will “name names.” In the end both are destroyed by their honesty. Quentin would like to separate himself from Lou but also finds this difficult. Lou’s book, in which he tells the truth, is symbolic of Quentin’s own effort to tell the truth about his own life, confess his guilt, and somehow be separate or free.
That life includes his affection for a needy young woman, Maggie. “I met a girl tonight,” he confesses to Louise, and he leaves Louise a letter to read in an effort to “start being real.” This action only serves to cause feelings of self-loathing and to separate him further from his wife. Maggie’s naïveté, too, causes him discomfort, for his love for her is undercut by her inability to take care of herself.
Act 2 is a more focused act, tracing the development of the single relationship between Quentin and Maggie. In the background are his prospective wife Holga, who fears that she “may not be all that interesting,” and his first wife Louise, who counters Maggie’s serious question, “What am I?” (to which Quentin replies, “You love life”), with the sarcastic answer, “The word is tart.” At first Maggie sees Quentin as “a god,” while he perceives her as “so beautiful” and “all love.” She is naïve and innocent, he “not innocent—nor good.” They are married, and she becomes subservient to her husband, changing her will and her analyst.
Soon, however, Maggie becomes jealous of her husband’s relationships with other women. Though he says that he adores her, he senses that she finds little joy in life. Maggie strives to become an artist but ends up a victim of her managers and the media. At one point she demands that certain musicians be fired, and though Quentin does her bidding, he sees that her personality is changing drastically; she becomes paranoid and abusive in her language, resorting finally to pills on top of whiskey.
The relationship between Maggie and Quentin deteriorates, with her claiming that “you lost patience” and him maintaining that “we are all separate people. I have to survive too.” To himself though, he admits, “I have been cruel.” Finally, Quentin finds himself squeezing Maggie’s throat, thinking that it is his mother’s, and the incident leaves Maggie ironically alone—separate—shortly before the ambulance carries her away. “I loved that girl,” he says, while Holga comments ambiguously, “No one is innocent they did not kill!”
In the end, Quentin seems to accept Holga’s view that one must accept one’s lack of innocence and go on, though it is not quite clear if that is possible. As the figures of his past pass in review, Quentin affirms to the Listener that, though he has failed, he can try to “love the world again.” He then walks into the dark with Holga.
Dramatic Devices
After the Fall is expressionistic, an interior monologue in which the imagery is symbolic, the structure erratic, the characterization general. Together these elements convey the unconscious tension in Quentin’s mind as he attempts to justify himself to the Listener/jury/audience. As indicated in the stage directions, the windows of the Nazi concentration camp are “eyes” that appear “blind and dark,” like those of most of the characters. The colorless hollows of the tower reflect the holes in Quentin’s memory as the characters on the three levels appear and disappear, as though in his mind. The lighting is dim to dramatize the fogginess of his memory as he seeks to address the Listener from his chair, alone on the stage.
As though in the mind, the play proceeds by abrupt transitions in time, space, and mood as the protagonist makes a symbolic journey in search of his identity in a hostile world. His life with Louise, the loss in his family, Lou and Mickey’s demise, and his meeting Maggie all intertwine as experiences of his childhood are juxtaposed to more recent events. Act 1 does have movement, however, toward the more orderly sequence of events in act 2, which develops Quentin’s relationship with Maggie.
If there is something that holds the play together it is certain key words: “idiot,” “separate person,” and “love.” It is not clear in the end whether Quentin really becomes a separate person who can love another, but the notion of the “idiot child” is, at least dramatically, fully resolved. At the outset, Holga tells how she kissed her idiot child. Maggie in her innocence then takes on the aspect of a disturbed child. Quentin’s mother calls his father an idiot, an insult Louise applies to Quentin. Quentin’s final leaving with Holga is a symbolic indication that, in recognizing Holga’s notion of the idiot child, he as idiot has embraced his own decisions and failures and so is both separate and free.
Critical Context
Though After the Fall represents a bold experiment in dramatic techniques, many critics have seen it as a failure. It includes some touching moments, as in the humorous language of Quentin’s Jewish mother in act 1, or the pathetic, psychotic change in Maggie in act 2. However, it lacks structural balance, for the two acts do not seem to cohere, nor is there an underlying force that might make Quentin’s case plausible.
Nevertheless, After the Fall is a major step in Miller’s development as a playwright. All My Sons (pr., pb. 1947), a well-crafted play, stresses collective moral responsibility: The sins of the capitalistic father are visited on the son who flies the airplanes his father builds. In the 1950’s, Miller began to experiment with expressionism in the vein of August Strindberg. In his most famous play, Death of a Salesman (pr., pb. 1949), Willy Loman’s dreams of success are undercut by his failure in reality. Still, Willy inspires a love in his son Biff that gives the play a sense of tragic joy. The Crucible (pr., pb. 1953), which includes expressionistic elements, elevates John Proctor’s individual honesty and integrity, in contrast to the hysterical thinking of the group.
After the Fall, which takes place totally in the mind, is far more existential in conception than its predecessors. Quentin decides to leave behind his past, those he helped to destroy, and go on as an individual, but unlike Willy in Death of a Salesman, he inspires a love that is problematic at best. Quentin lacks the strong character of John Proctor.
Miller’s plays postdating After the Fall use similar themes in far more conservative ways. Incident at Vichy (pr. 1964) features characters of great courage and integrity who make significant moral judgments despite the collective guilt that taints human actions. The Ride Down Mt. Morgan (pr. 1991) concerns a guilt-ridden bigamist dying in the presence of his two wives and a daughter. The Price (pr., pb. 1968), in which several brothers struggle over a piece of furniture, is important for its characterization and use of detail, elements Miller sacrificed to the development of general themes in After the Fall.
In commenting on After the Fall in his autobiography, Timebends: A Life (1987), Miller laments the fact that he underestimated the public’s determination to read Maggie as Marilyn Monroe. He contends that the public’s failure to “consider innocence lethal” was a kind of denial, the same kind that “brought about the play’s tragic ending.”
Sources for Further Study
Bigsby, C. W. E., ed. File on Miller. London: Methuen, 1988.
Centola, Steve, ed. The Achievement of Arthur Miller: New Essays. Dallas: Contemporary Research Press, 1995.
Hayman, Ronald. Arthur Miller. New York: Ungar, 1972.
Hogan, Robert. Arthur Miller. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1964.
Miller, Arthur. Timebends: A Life. New York: Grove Press, 1987.
Moss, Leonard. Arthur Miller. Rev. ed. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1980.
Mottram, Eric. “Arthur Miller: The Development of a Political Dramatist in America.” In Arthur Miller: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Robert W. Corrigan. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1969.
Stanton, Stephen. “Pessimism in After the Fall.” In Arthur Miller: New Perspectives, edited by Robert A. Martin. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1982.