Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1994. [Vol. 2.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 22)

STUDIES - Mária Kurdi: "You just have to love this world." Arthur Miller's The Last Yankee.

writer, and calls The Man Who Had All the Luck, All My Sons, Death of a Salesman, The Price and The American Clock to the reader's mind. 'Yankee" connects with New Englanders as well, for whom Miller, the son of Jewish immigrants, discovered a special liking in himself when researching Puritan culture before he turned to write The Crucible: I had all but committed myself to writing the play, but only at this moment did I realize that I felt strangely at home with these New Englanders, moved in the darkest part of my mind by some instinct that they were putative ur-Hebrews, with the same fierce idealism, devotion to God, tendency to legalistic reductiveness, the same longings for the pure and intellectually elegant argument

2 The above diverging references can offer joint points of departure for an analysis: The Last Yankee adresses both disappointment and belief in American life and its prospects. It is set in a state mental hospital, where 44 year-old Patricia, mother of seven and her older fellow-inmate, childless Karen, receive treatment for depression. (This obviously recalls the hospital setting of The Ride Down Mount Morgan, the play completed last before Yankee in 1991, and echoes one of its heroines, Theo's temporary psychic collapse in a stronger form.) They are visited by their husbands: carpenter Leroy "dressed in subdued Ivy League jacket"

3, a descendant of Alexander Hamilton, one of the constitution-making Founding Fathers, and the financially successful John Frick, who wears a business suit As the review of Miller's play in the Independent contends, "In structure, his play is beautifully worked out the two couples are diametrically opposed and it proceeds rather like a square dance

—first the men do a turn, then the women, then one couple, then all four together."

4 Conversation takes up the whole, there is virtually no action except Karen's highly moving tap-dance 2 Arthur Miller, Timebends, A Life (New York: Grove Press, 1987) 42. 3 Arthur Miller, The Last Yankee (London: Methuen, 1993), 1. All further references are to this edition, respective page numbers will be put in the text in parenthesis. 4 Sarah Hemming's review of The Last Yankee in the Independent, reprinted in: Theatre Record 23 April — 6 May 1993, 488. 64