The Allegory of Quest

A deep sense of social consciousness is an intrinsic tenet of Arthur Miller’s tragic stance but beyond that his plays are universal tragedies. Miller makes the allegorical theatre creating ‘the protagonist in search’, his Everyman in whom he dramatizes the struggle of contemporary man with the forces of his age’. With this basic contention in view, Dr. Kumar’s The Allegory of Quest analyses and explicates Miller’s dramatic corpus as an allegory of quest, as an appropriate structure for a moral exploration of modern man’s dilemma. The present book seeks to examine Miller’s plays as a continuation of the metaphysical tradition of American dramatic literature which began with Eugene O’Neill. In fact, Miller is concerned with the existential dilemma of human life and the relevance of values to human beings. In the process his plays make powerful explorations into the depth of human misery, the crisis of human identity and the vast panorama of immense anarchy and futility. Allegorically divided into seven chapters, the book is, in fact, an in-depth study of Miller’s drama as an allegory of quest, as a kind of Morality theatre tracing its roots into the 15th century drama and into the international tradition emerging from various parts of the west in modern times.