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.siders what he, personally, has created and realizesPeter works for an export company and remem-it is very little.He and his wife have not even hadbers Levin and Adele playing a piano duet for hischildren.He wonders if Adele is content with theirfamily, but he has never heard of Douglas.Peterlife and with him.The still is black and impos-seems a tough character, living a narrow existence,ing.When Vincent asks Douglas to wait until theybut his curiosity is roused by Levin’s descriptioncan have it inspected, he refuses, confessing he hasof Douglas.He offers to take Levin to see if theycancer and needs to see the still working beforecan find the still.As they travel, Levin noticeshe dies.Observing the couple, Levin decides thatthe landscape has changed: most of the trees havealthough she hates their life, Denise loves her hus-been cut down and the road is badly eroded with-band deeply and will not abandon him.Vincentout their protection.Peter is intrigued by Levin’soffers to expedite the inspection, and his apparentconcern over the state of the country, having lostdecision to get more involved allows Douglas tothe habit, believing that nothing can be done aboutaccept and embrace his friend.Levin is amazedsuch things, even while he does seem to be posi-at the “outbreak of hopefulness on all sides,” nottively involved—being part of a local business andunderstanding its source.It seems to rest more inhelping various Haitians.the camaraderie between these people as they workThey pass a small impoverished village wheretoward a common goal, rather than in the potentiallocals have their junk set out for sale.Peter buys023-354_Miller-p2.indd 3325/3/07 12:52:53 PMTwo-Way Mirror 333a small, worn spoon.He then asks Levin why he isimportance of hope.This is something Peter hasso interested in Douglas, and Levin decides it mustevidently lost, having witnessed all the failures ofhave something to do with Douglas’s evident con-his parents and grandparents’ generations.Levinviction.Levin wants to see if that conviction hasand Peter discuss the unfortunate state of Haitiheld or if he just dreamed it.Peter gets drawn intoas they return to town, and seem to see little thatthis quest for meaning, evidently having lived withcan be done.However, back at the hotel, Levina vacuum of meaning in his own life.They stop bybecomes infected by that very sense of hope Doug-a broken down taxi, and Peter casually fixes it.Helas displayed.He still cannot rationalize it, but heuses a rope he has been given by a passing horsecan appreciate it.rider who had refused payment, in another echo ofDouglas’s passion and preparedness to sacrificeLevin’s earlier trip with Vincent.Peter fixes the taxihimself and his family to a crazy scheme to dis-without thought of recompense but also withouttill turpentine on the island has inspired Levin toany enthusiasm or sentimentality, which bemusesreevaluate his own life.His discovery that the stillLevin.He begins to see a likeness between himselfstill exists transforms him for he sees this existence and Peter; both tend to hide behind a facade ofas evidence of hope.Levin decides that passion-detachment.ate involvement, however apparently absurd, is itsLevin recognizes Douglas’s driveway, and theyown reward and that a life without such passionfind the house.The sparse furnishings remain, butis one that is hardly worth living.In his insight-the family is gone.They continue up the mountainful commentary on the tale, CHRISTOPHER BIGSBYto find the still, and Levin ponders if he might bedescribes Levin’s transformation in terms of a redis-doing this in an attempt to turn back the clock tocovery of “his own passion in trying to account fora time he still had Adele.They ask some locals forsomeone else’s” Finding the still, Bigsby suggest,guidance, and an elderly man, Octavus, admits hehas been Levin’s act of invention to place him on aonce worked for Douglas and can show them thepar with Douglas as a man who cares, regardless ofequipment.Levin recalls Jimmy and his convic-the outcome.tions, now buried along with the man.He wondersif something can possibly be left behind after suchFURTHER READINGintense beliefs.Octavus takes them to the still, andBigsby, Christopher.Arthur Miller: A Critical Study.both Peter and Levin are delighted to see it.TheyNew York: Cambridge University Press, 2005,ask Octavus if it had ever been lit, and he explains462–469.how Douglas had briefly run the still.They had pro-duced turpentine, but he had given most of it awayuntil he had no money left to continue productionand could find no one to buy the business to keepTwo-Way Mirror (1982)it going.We learn his wife abandoned him after all,returning to the United States with her children,Miller’s one-acts Elegy for a Lady and Some Kind and Octavus had kept an eye on Douglas during hisof Love Story previewed at the Long Wharf The-final days.He bequeathed the still to Octavus, butatre in 1982 as part of a double bill titled 2 by A.Octavus had no money to pay anyone to run it, soM.However, the title was changed to Two-Way it had remained unused.Mirror for its 1989 premiere in GREAT BRITAIN at On his deathbed, Douglas gave his helper athe suggestion of CHRISTOPHER BIGSBY.While 2 bynote of advice: “If the idea goes let it go, but ifA.M.conjures up a suggestion of those uncomfort-you can keep it, do so and it will surely lift youable nightmares that one encounters at two in theup one day.” Octavus had never understood whatmorning—and it is certain that Miller intends forthis meant, but he feels happier at having passedthese plays to be anything but soothing— Two Waythe message along.Peter and Levin wonder as toMirror indicates more strongly the ambivalenceits meaning.Levin senses it refers to the upliftingof their visions.For Bigsby, such a title suggested023-354_Miller-p2
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