This article from The Buffalo News recently caught my attention:

🔗 John Proctor Is the Villain delivers catharsis

It covers a new play, John Proctor Is the Villain, which reimagines Arthur Miller’s classic The Crucible through a modern lens. Set in a Georgia high school classroom, it follows a group of students as they read the play and wrestle with themes of justice, loyalty, and power through the filter of their own lives. The journalist, Michelle Goldberg, also references Aristotle’s idea of catharsis—that deep emotional release we experience through storytelling and tragedy.

That word—catharsis—hit home for me.

It brought me back to the first time I read Arthur Miller’s other masterpiece, Death of a Salesman. I was shaken by the quiet despair of Willy Loman, a man who couldn’t bounce back from life’s blows. And then I thought of my own father—who, unlike Willy, never let getting fired define him. He stayed proud. He stayed useful. He kept going.

That contrast between Miller’s tragic character and my father’s quiet resilience stirred something in me I couldn’t shake. It led me to write an article about it:

📎 Willy Loman’s Plight Is Common Among Many Today

Looking back now, I realize that moment was cathartic in the truest sense of the word. It was a chance to reflect—not just on literature, but on life.

As someone surrounded by strong women—four daughters, a daughter-in-law, and my 93-year-old mother who still gives me advice I actually listen to—I’ve come to appreciate how the stories we tell, and how we choose to interpret them, really do evolve with each generation.

Sometimes it takes a 70-year-old play and a Greek philosopher to remind us that.