Susan C. W. Abbotson Critical Companion to Arthur Mi

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.The angels try to cheer God up,Eve into dissatisfaction over her earthly life.Adam,Azrael even offering to kill Adam and Eve, butEve, Abel, and Cain recall their dreams of deathGod points out that He still loves them.He decidesand decide that it was a vision of Abel’s demise.to talk to Lucifer, who tries to justify his actions,Cain questions his parents about their relation-insisting that without evil, good has no true mean-ship to God and the inequities of their lives.Heing.God sends him to hell, insisting that He noand Abel argue over work, and Eve defends Abel.longer loves him.Lucifer vows revenge and leaves,Cain feels put upon but resists his anger by huggingwhile God comments that He will miss him.his brother.Then a snake drops from Heaven, and023-354_Miller-p2.indd 1025/3/07 12:52:23 PMThe Creation of the World and Other Business 103they hear coyotes howl.Lucifer flings the snakeGod, Adam holds no one to blame, and Cainaway as Adam and Eve decide to confess to theirrefuses responsibility—God gives up on humanity.sons how they came to leave Paradise.Cain takesHe leaves them to Lucifer, to live lives withoutthe news harder than Abel, admonishing his par-any rules.Lucifer is uncertain that he wants theents for not asking for God’s forgiveness and con-job, and Eve remains unhappy, wanting somethingtinuing to act as if still innocent.He makes themdone about Cain.She rejects Lucifer as she andall pray.Adam praise God, realizing that unlike Lucifer,Lucifer persuades Abel to agree to build a fenceGod actually loves them.Lucifer pleads with Cainthat Cain had demanded by telling him that histo reject God, but he feels too empty to care.brother is dangerous.Cain suggests that he buildGod sentences Cain to live with his guilt andit across the other side of the mountain, and out ofsets the mark of a smile on him, which he cannotfear, Abel agrees.Cain begins to build an altar torelax.Then God leaves, telling them that they willGod on which he places an offering of his vegeta-not see Him again but must look for Him in theirbles.To Cain’s disapproval, Eve suggests that Abelhearts.They are distraught and confused as Lucifermake an offering too, and he slaughters a lamb.leaves them too.Eve and Cain argue as each triesLucifer appears with the head of a bull announc-to understand what has happened.Cain continuesing that he is “God on earth” and that they canto refuse responsibility, and since his parents ask fordo whatever they want.While Adam attacks him,repentance, he leaves.Adam turns to Eve askingEve goes to his defense, accepting his offer.Theyher to forgive Cain, but she cannot.The play endsbegin a dance into which she draws her two sons,with Adam’s desperate pleas for “Mercy!”and then to Lucifer’s delight, Cain begins to havesex with his mother while Abel waits his turn.GodCRITICAL COMMENTARYarrives to break the mood.Closely following the Genesis story with a few gagsLucifer suggests a truce, offering to take chargethrown in, Miller is trying something new in Theof humanity in all its imperfection, leaving God toCreation of the World and Other Business.Despite its try to work on their improvement.Swallowing Hisalmost farcical humor at times, we should not be dis-anger, God inspects the offerings.He is satisfied buttracted from the deeper commentary on the naturepraises Abel’s lamb the most.While He goes offof humanity, mostly illustrated through the debateswalking with the others, Cain stays behind, sulking,between God and Lucifer.This is after all aboutand kicks down the altar.He decides to send hishow humankind was created, not just the world,family away and keep the farm for himself.Luciferand this, in large part, is the “Other Business.”warns him that God is tricking him into killing hisIt is noticeable in the opening description thatbrother and tries to get him to hide.Cain insists oneven as night becomes day, some shadows remain,seeing Abel first and, finding fault in all Abel says,and the costume of the “naked” man is covered inattacks and kills him with a flail.The others returna pattern of light and dark.Thus, from the start, looking for Abel and find the corpse.Cain blameswe are reminded that good and evil as commonlyGod for showing Abel favoritism, but God pointssymbolized in terms of light and dark are both eter-out that He simply prefers lamb to onions.Cainnally present.In one sense, they each define theasks if this is God’s justice, and God points out thatother as Lucifer suggests, for without evil, goodHe has never used that word and that everyoneloses its intensity of meaning.Similarly, guilt helpsis different.Eve demands that God kill Cain as adefine innocence, and sin the possibility of virtue.murderer, especially as Cain is so unrepentant.To be totally innocent and perfectly good as AdamLucifer insists that God is to blame because Heand Eve are in Paradise is to condemn the humansent down Azrael, but God explains that He wasrace to a bland nonexistence.Humanity becomestesting Cain, hoping that his love would outweighdefined by its mix of good and evil, the real ques-his envy; and that Cain simply failed the test.Dis-tion becoming, which takes precedence? Thesatisfied by their responses to events—Eve blamesambivalent answer is that either one is possible; it is023-354_Miller-p2.indd 1035/3/07 12:52:23 PM104 The Creation of the World and Other Businessall a matter of personal choice.Humankind, madeParadise, the couple find life more of a struggle,in the image of God, is willfully capable of bothbut they also find it more rewarding.The world ofcreation and destruction.The play’s title might alsohumankind is varied and potentially preferable tobe interpreted as an indication of this concern withthat of God, who finds His own angels somethingopposites, with “Other Business” indicating theof a bore and can even miss Lucifer for his morepotential destruction of the world, as the oppositelively rebellion.For Miller, innocence is a deaden-of its creation [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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