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.

performance at the climax

5, preceding the resolution which contains Patricia's departure for home in the company of her husband. Why can one inmate leave trustfully while the other is frightened into what looks much like relapse, and how does all this relate to contemporary American life, its games, worries and values? Hardly any more questions can be raised about the play in general, its essence being realized in the verbal details, ironies nuances and gestures. As Leonard Moss reads Miller's long introduction to the Collected Plays, the writer claims to have been involved "with three stylistic modes prevalent in modern drama, which may be labeled the realistic, the expressionistic, and the rhetorical."

6 It is the last of the three that seems most justifiably applicable in reference to the play under scrutiny. The Last Yankee displays affinity with the former plays of Miller also in its use of autobiographical elements. Female depression and depression in general, for instance, have long been part of the writer's world of experiences. His second wife, Marilyn Monroe was notoriously unbalanced and unable to sever herself from her past, "a troubled woman whose desperation was deepening no matter where she turned for a way out"

7 She died of an overdose of sleeping pills, as the writer "was coming to the end of the writing of After the Fall."

8 When asked about his mother in an interview, Miller said: "She was very warm, very nice, musical. She was a good storyteller. And subject to fits of depression." On being further interrogated as to what caused her depression, he went on to depict briefly the wider context, that is the failure of American aspirations: "What bothers everybody in this country? Frustration. You are surrounded with what you think is opportunity. But you can't grab on to it"

9 Patricia's dissatisfaction 5 Cf. Gina Thomas, "Wenn Frauen zu viel leiden. Amerika in der Psychiatrie: Arthur Millers "The Last Yankee" im Londoner Young Vic," Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 16 Fevr. 1993, S. 29. 6 Leonard Moss, Arthur Miller (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1980) 95. 7 Timebends, 466. 8 Ibid., 531. 9 Leonard Moss, "The Absence of the Tension: A Conversation with Arthur Miller," Leonard Moss, op. cit, 118. 65