The Man Who Had All the Luck

The Man Who Had All the Luck is a play by Arthur Miller.

David Beeves is a young Midwestern automobile mechanic who discovers he is blessed with what appears to be almost supernatural good fortune that allows him to overcome every seemingly insurmountable obstacle that crosses his path while those around him fall in defeat. Like Midas, everything he touches is tinged with gold, leaving him to wonder if and when his luck will change and he too will be forced to deal with life's tragedies, until he eventually realizes that his good heart, hard work, and quick thought have been responsible for his success far more than luck.

Arthur Miller’s second major play (after No Villain) The Man Who Had All the Luck follows protagonist David Beeves’ existential exploration into the enigmatic question of how fate and the human will interact with each other. The play takes on a fantastical, parable-like architecture in its plot construction and character development as we follow Beeves into three and a half of the luckiest years of his life. The story begins during an evening in April at an undisclosed Midwestern town, evoking a feel of nostalgia and Americana in the process. David Beeves works as a self-taught auto mechanic in a barn that doubles as a repair station – this is where the entire first act takes place. The scene unfolds as David tells J.B., a local shop owner, that he plans to confront his girlfriend Hester’s father about their intention to marry. This, of course, is not as easy as it seems; her father, Andrew Falk, has resented David for over seven years and still controls every aspect of Hester’s life. After receiving conflicting advice on how to mediate the situation from J.B., Hester, his father Pat, and Shory (a disabled veteran who manages the feed and grain store adjacent to the barn), a rich farm owner named Dan Dibble brings his Marmon over for repair after a competing mechanic informs him that the engine will have to be taken apart. J.B. then notes to David in secrecy that getting the Marmon to run properly might cement his place in the tractor business, despite David’s lack of prowess in tractor repair. David agrees to the job with brisk charm, though is filled with doubt about his ability to diagnose the Marmon properly.

Shortly thereafter, Mr. Falk arrives in a bitter frustration, ordering Hester to return home and confronting David Beeves directly. David, restraining himself from rash emotion and violence, bluntly tells Falk that he and Hester are marrying. Falk subsequently threatens to kill Beeves if he sees him again and pushes his stalled car away. Only moments later Dan Dibble returns with Hester, admitting in a stunned confession that he accidentally hit and killed her father with the front of his vehicle. David, feeling an ambivalent combination of sympathy for Hester, elation now that his obstacles have been removed, and a skeptical notion that what just happened was unreal, stays in the barn to work on the Marmon. As time presses on, Beeves gets progressively more tired and frustrated with his incompetence in diagnosing the Marmon’s mechanical issues. At the brink of his exhaustion, an Austrian mechanic named Gus enters the barn and offers to fix the Marmon at no charge while David rests. When he awakes in the morning, Gus has disappeared and Dibble has returned. Assuming that David was the one who repaired the automobile, Dibble promises to bring all of his tractors that need work done to David in the future, and guarantees the forming of other business connections along the way. In utter disbelief of his luck, David is unable to accept the money for restoring the Marmon.

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