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.

Well what's it going to be, equality or what kind of country?

—I mean am I supposed to be ashamed I'm a carpenter? ... I mean everybody's talking labor, labor,' how much labor's getting; well if ifs so great to be labor how come nobody wants to be it? ... Do you ever hear people brag about a bricklayer? I don't know what you are but I'm only a dumb swamp Yankee, but

... (10) Their clash reveals total disagreement and a hopeless lack of understanding, expressed by the younger's outburst and the oldens shaking "his head with a certain condescension" (11) as well as by the fact that both resume what they were doing before their verbal encounter. Taken as a whole, this protracted exposition to the play enacts the depression-generating core problem of the American society: the failure of interpersonal communication and relationships because people view one another not as humans first of all, but as players in an artifically set game. Leroy rightly assumes that depression has nothing to do with bills or the number of children or relatives. As a general malaise, it has infected not only the wives but their men as well, although in a less spectacular way. Frick has become insensitive and hypocritical while Leroy "is threatened by lethargy and stubbornness."

1

1 The exposition anticipates Patricia's later summary: "You've got a right to be depressed. There's more people in hospitals because of depression than any other disease." (17) This also answers why the play, in spite of the fact that the number one sufferers in it are women, should not be analyzed in a simplifying way, blaming patriarchal society for the purposelessness and mental illness of its female members. Most people just can't find themselves, as Miller himself said in a BBC interview conducted by Christopher Bigsby shortly after the London premiére of The Last Yankee in early 1993. Confronting a tentatively recovering Patricia and a Karen of conspicuously incoherent conversation, Miller wades deeper into the problem. The younger woman is dissatisfied with her husband's refusal to make 1

1 Helen McNeil, "Pictures from an institution," The Times Literary Supplement, 5 February 1993. 68