Notes "Ditchy" Discovered: Arthur Miller's First Published Short Story
1997; Volume: 34; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0039-3789
Autores Tópico(s)Artistic and Creative Research
ResumoArthur Miller's first foray into genre of short fiction is generally supposed to have occurred in April 1946 with publication in Encore of Plaster Masks, story that owes its impetus to Miller's investigating lives of soldiers for screenplay called G.I. Joe. Actually, however, Miller's first published short story, appeared 18 months earlier in October 1944 issue of Mayfair Magazine, publication apparently overlooked by Miller's bibliographers, biographers, and critics.(1) The indelible stamp of Miller's authorship is most clearly evident in certain autobiographical details that appear undisguised in Ditchy. In Miller's story, tall, thin, young man--similar to lanky Arthur Miller--revisits boyhood neighborhood near Central Park in vicinity of 110th Street, same neighborhood in which Miller lived until he was 13 years old. The now 25-year-old protagonist (just four years younger than Miller in 1944) returns to spot in Central Park where, at age of seven, he had been attacked by three Italian boys who then robbed him of his brand new [pair of] ball-bearing roller skates (Miller, Ditchy 37). Beaten by ruffians, unnamed young man al. so vividly recalls image of a as it grew toward face (37). This violent assault not only plays pivotal role in but also bears striking resemblance to an event that Miller painfully recalls in autobiography, Timebends. Foolishly roller-skating in park alone one day at age of seven or eight, I was ambushed by some Italian kids and would long remember fist coming up fast to my nose as they held me down; then they ran off with my skates (22-23). In scene contrived by Miller to accentuate differences between innocent young boy and older, more mature self, young man returns to Central Park 18 years later and is again confronted by three Italian youths. In second encounter Miller affords protagonist measure of control and maturity that both character and Miller lacked as seven-year-old boys. This time, young man befriends one of Italian youths, boy named in whom young man sympathetically recognizes child grown prematurely old, someone whose own physical pain (his mouth is full of rotting teeth) and lack of fear compel him, perhaps unwillingly, to bully other children and to antagonize adults. Acting compassionately rather than resentfully toward Ditchy, young man treats him to trip to dentist--who promptly exctracts all of Ditchy's teeth--and, afterward, to complimentary ice cream cone. As short story published during time of great social upheaval, in midst of Holocaust and Second World War, Ditchy has an importance that surpasses that of its similarity to actual events in Arthur Miller's life. Sharing features of both modernist fiction and emerging forms of post-war period, Ditchy provides an interesting example of short story form in transition, precursor of change in artistic sensibility transformed by affecting historical events. In Miller's Ditchy modernist influence can best be seen in Miller's focus upon single, memorable incident and in choice of narrative style. Similar to much of modernist short fiction that Clare Hanson describes in Short Stories and Short Fictions, 1880-1980, Ditchy depicts a single moment of intense or significant experience in life of its protagonist (55). That in turn reveals truth to protagonist, experienced as kind of epiphany or moment of vision (Hanson 63) that then precipitates story's conclusion. In for example, young man who is motivated to revisit painful scenes of childhood gains more mature understanding of character and own relationship to past. Miller also uses the `indirect free' style of narration in which voice of narrator is modulated so that it appears to merge with that of character of fiction, form of narrative pioneered by modernists James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Katherine Mansfield (Hanson 56). …
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