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20世纪美国最伟大的剧作家之一—阿瑟·米勒

I'm Barbara Klein. And I'm Steve Ember with People in America in VOA Special English. Today we tell about Arthur Miller. Many theater critics believe he was one of the greatest American playwrights of the twentieth century.

Several plays by Arthur Miller will probably be performed for many years to come. That is because critics say Miller was able to dramatize the emotional pain that average people suffer in their daily lives.

A critic once described Miller as an activist for the common man. He demonstrates this well in one of his most famous plays, Death of a Salesman. The main character is a man whose dreams of success in business have died.

But Miller's interest in the average man did not stop him from exploring major problems of society. In The Crucible, for example, he shows what happens when unreasonable dislike and fear cause people to accuse innocent people of horrible crimes.

Some other of his best-known plays include All My Sons, A View from the Bridge and After the Fall. Arthur Miller was born in New York City in nineteen fifteen. He died in two thousand five at his home in Roxbury, Connecticut.

For sixty years, he created one dramatic work after another. Miller won many awards for his plays. Among them were a Pulitzer Prize, New York Drama Critics' Circle prizes and Tony awards.

In nineteen eighty-four, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D. C. honored him for his lifetime work in drama. Miller also created stories for movies. For example, he wrote The Misfits for actress Marilyn Monroe.

Miller's television drama, Playing for Time, told of an orchestra of prisoners at the Nazi death camp, Auschwitz, during World War Two. Miller was also a political activist for human rights. But it was drama performed in the theater that Miller loved most.

Arthur Miller grew up in New York. His father, Isidore Miller, manufactured clothing and operated a store. But the father lost his money in the great economic Depression in the nineteen thirties.

The family had to move from a costly apartment in Manhattan to a small house in Brooklyn. During the Depression, Arthur worked at many jobs to earn money for college.

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