Some Thoughts on American Legal Culture: the Legal ‘Abject’ in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and in William Gaddis’ A Frolic of His Own.

The paper explores through the analysis of the novels “The Crucible” by Arthur Miller and “A Frolic of His Own” by William Gaddis the way people who are initially subjects of law, i.e. holders of rights and obligations, can be transformed by the law and through the law into ‘abjects’. An ‘abject’ is considered to be a person who at some point comes in contact with ‘the fragility of the law’; in other words with actions that take place when the limits and rules fall apart and transform people into abjects of law, a ‘dead body’.