Postwar American drama

LILIAN HELLMAN (1905-1984) came from a Jewish family of the South and her work reflected social changes of that region, contrasting times before and after the Civil War. Her first play, Children´s Hour, was still pre-war, it is about two women running a private school and one little spoiled student who she does not want attend school makes a story that these two female teachers have a lesbian relationship. The scandal spreads in the small Southern prejudiced town and the school is closed. One teacher commits suicide, another loses her fiancée.

Little Foxes depicts the new ruling class that emerged after the Civil War. It tells a story of a Southern family that became rich during the Civil War and now runs an exploiting business, destroying old valuable culture. Another Part of the Forest is about the same family but precedes it.

In Watch On Rhine she was one o the first writers who started deal with fascism, she wanted to warn Americans since they do not care about some Germany so she set the scene in America. Hellman was political active in the left-winged politics during 1950s, similarly to Odets, and for that was blacklisted, investigated by McCarthy´s committee and her work could not get published. She described all that in her memoir Scoundrel Time.

ARTHUR MILLER (1915-2005) became the most popular American playwright after the war since his plays are realistic and he never used any symbols like O'Neill or experiments on stage. He produced mainly social criticism and openly criticised American dream, depicting over-motivated character who want to succeed because of the idyllic idea that everybody can be what they want to be.

All My Sons (1947) depicts a protagonist wants to make money on the war so he sells defective parts of airplanes to American army which causes deaths of many pilots, including one of his sons. The whole family pretends not to know about it because if they admitted it, father would be responsible. Eventually, the second son finds out, confronts his father and wants him go to the police but he cannot admit it publicly so he commits suicide.

Death of a Salesman's (1949) protagonist Willy Lowman is an old travelling salesman with not special skills and spent all his life trying to sell things nobody really wanted and now company does not need him anymore but he does not want to face reality and still pretends his life had sense. The only time he has to face the fact he is a failure as so will his sons is when he commits suicide to that his family can live from insurance. Throughout the play Willy is blind to reality, refuses to admit failure and when he finally decides to commit suicide, he sees his value in insurance, hoping that his sons can start a new life with the money. However, his below average sons cannot use it for anything proper. The play expresses the falseness of American dreams and its destructive effects.

The Crucible (1953) is a political play, similarly to Hellman who addressing the red scare. Unlike her, Miller set the story in the Salem village during Puritan times, stating parallel during of Puritan witch-hunt and post-war America's scare of anything left-winged.

As Miller was of Jewish origin, he wanted to express it also in his work but as he was scare of another wave of anti-semitism, he rather addressed universal American topics and published his Jewish play much later. Playing for Time (1980) was based on real events, about women orchestra in concentration camp.

Miller was also a popular figure with a very publicly visible marriage to Marilyn Monroe. He wrote screenplays for her but he also had to take care of her when she was drunk. Finishing the Picture (2004) was the last tribute to her, written a few months before Miller's death.

TENNESSEE WILLIAMS (1911-1983)

His plays are considered to be controversial because of open sexual and psychological relationships. Characters are neurotic, sexually obsessed people and usually female characters. The recurring motif is the conflict between fragile sensitive female characters and the world of other characterss representing animalistic aggressive forces. He attempt to defend old values and innocence in the world that does not accept them but he avoided to present it as a fight between good and evil. His characters are not black and white and images of love range from sentimental romantic to sexual violence. He was not experimental like O'Neill but he used symbolism.

His early plays were realistic like Glass Menagerie which is a partly autobiographical play consisting of memories of the protagonists who recalls with his mother, an aging Southern lady and shy handicapped sister who is collection little glass animal figure. The sister, as well as her mother, are symbolically compared to these glass figures, better to be confined in order not to be broken by the cruel world.

Streetcar Named Desire (1947) deals with a culture clash between Blanche DuBois, a relic of the Old South, and Stanley Kowalski, a rising member of the working class.

Blanche DuBois is a fading but still-attractive Southern woman. Blanche arrives at the apartment of her sister Stella. The local transportation she takes includes a streetcar route named "Desire." The reference is symbolic and has a metaphorical meaning. Blanche is literally brought to the Kowalski place by “Desire,” but also by her own desire - her sexual escapades with a student which ruined her reputation and drove her out of town. The steamy urban city is a shock to Blanche's nerves. Stella fears the reaction of her husband Stanley Kowalski. Blanche tells Stella that her supervisor allowed her to take time off from her job, when in fact, she has been fired for having an affair with a 17-year-old student. She was in short marriage with a man who turned out to be a gay and his subsequent suicide has led Blanche to withdraw into a world in which fantasies and illusions. Stanley Kowalski is a force of nature: brutish and sensual. He dominates Stella in every way and is physically and emotionally abusive. Stella tolerates it as this is part of what attracted her in the first place; their love is based on powerful animal-like sexual chemistry, something that Blanche finds impossible to understand. Stanley discovers Blanche's past through a co-worker and he confronts. His attempts to "unmask" her are cruel and in their final confrontation, Stanley rapes Blanche, which results in her nervous breakdown. In the closing moments, Blanche utters her signature line to the kindly doctor who leads her away: "Whoever you are, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers."

Then Williams moved on surrealistic plays like Camino Real inspired by Eliot's The Waste Land in which he presents moral American wasteland after the war together with surrealistic fragments from mythology. Later life he moved to social realist plays as in Cat On a Hot Tin Roof (1955) depicting moral decay of Southern families.