Death of a Salesman

Death of a Salesman

Terms to Know: (See the Death of a Salesman Power Point in the attachments at the bottom of this page)

tragedy

tragic hero

tragic flaw

hamartia

hubris

catharsis

verbal irony

situational irony

structural irony

intensification

reciprocity

cumulative structure

The Playwright: Arthur Miller (1915-2005)

(Pictured here in 1949 after the release of Death of a Salesman)

Arthur Miller was born in Manhattan New York City, near the lower edge of Harlem in 1915. His father was a comfortably middle-class manufacturer of women's coats, and his mother was a schoolteacher. The Miller family moved to Brooklyn in the early 1930s because the Great Depression had plunged them into great financial difficulty. These years of poverty and struggle influenced many of Miller's plays. After he graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School in Brooklyn, Arthur Miller spent the next two and a half years working as a stock clerk in an automobile parts warehouse until he had saved enough money to attend college at the University of Michigan. He finished college with financial aid from the National Youth Administration and from the money he earned as a night editor of the Michigan Daily newspaper. While there, Miller began to write plays, several of which were rewarded with prizes. Upon graduating from college in 1938, Miller returned home to New York where he married Grace Slatter and had two children, Jane and Robert. While back home, Miller also joined the Federal Theatre Project, an arts program sponsered by the U.S. government. However, before his first play could be produced, the Project ended. A college football injury kept him from active service in the Second World War. He worked as a fitter at the Brooklyn Naval Yard and wrote radio scripts, he also wrote two novels during this time - Situation Normal (1944), a volume of material about army life, and Focus (1945) a novel about anti-Semitism...

It was not until three years later that Miller was able to find success on the stage. His play, All My Sons, debuted to positive critical reviews in 1947, and it was a big hit with audiences as well. This play established him as a significant voice in American theater. Two years later, with Death of a Salesman, Miller did indeed dare and risk more. Likewise, he gained more as well. With this play, Arthur Miller soared to new artistic heights and critics began to regard him as one of the greatest twentieth-century American playwrights. The play was a huge success, and ran for 742 performances at the Morosco Theatre, New York. The play also won a Pulitzer Prize.

The next several years were very good for Miller, during which time he had several hit plays, culminating with The Crucible, which debuted on Broadway in 1953, during the height of Senator Joe McCarthy's congressional investigations in "un-American" activities of U.S. citizens (which mostly meant involvement with the Communist Party)...Miller reflected the paranoia and hysteria of the time in The Crucible. Later he was called to testify before the House un-American Activities Committee, and was asked to tell the committee members the names of U.S. citizens who were involved in communist activities. Miller refused and was thus cited with contempt of Congress, a serious crime. This conviction was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1958 [after it was discovered that Sen. McCarthy had no list of names of Communist infiltrators].

In 1956 he divorced his wife and married actress and sex symbol Marilyn Monroe, whom he first met in Hollywood in the early 1950s... [I]n 1961 it ended in divorce. He is revered as one of America's greatest playwrights who helped define American drama.

From: http://www.zeiterion.org/Salesman.pdf

About Death of a Salesman

While Miller tackles the social question of the effect the capitalistic American Dream myth has on an ordinary family, its enduring appeal seems to lie in the fact that Miller tapped into the hopes and fears of not only America but a global public. Universal questions about the nature of happiness and success, of aging and of family responsibility are tackled. Willy Loman has the quality of an everyman, whose struggle to attain his dreams of success resonates within us all.

In his own words...

"…To me the tragedy of Willy Loman is that he gave his life, or sold it, in order to justify the waste of

it. It is the tragedy of a man who did believe that he alone was not meeting the qualifications laid

down for mankind by those clean-shaven frontiersmen who inhabit the peaks of broadcasting and

advertising offices. From those forests of canned goods high up near the sky, he heard the thundering

command to succeed as it ricocheted down the newspaper-lined canyons of his city, heard not a

human voice, but a wind of a voice to which no human can reply in kind, except to stare into the

mirror at a failure."

Arthur Miller, “The ‘Salesman’ Has a Birthday,” The New York Times, February 5, 1950

"The first image that occurred to me which was to result in Death of a Salesman was of an enormous

face, the height of the proscenium arch, which would appear and then open up, and we would see the

inside of a man’s head. In fact, The Inside of His Head was the first title. It was conceived half in

laughter, for the inside of his head was a mass of contradictions. … The Salesman image was from

being absorbed with the concept in life that nothing in life comes “next” but that everything exists

together and at the same time within us; that there is no past to be “brought forward” in a human

being, but that he is his past at every moment and that the present is merely that which his past is

capable of noticing and smelling and reacting to.

I wished to create a form which, in itself as a form, would literally be the process of Willy Loman’s

way of mind. But to say “wished” is not accurate. Any dramatic form is an artifice, a way of

transforming a subjective feeling into something that can be comprehended through public symbols.

Its efficiency as a form is to be judged – at least by the writer – by how much of the original vision

and feeling is lost or distorted by this transformation. I wished to speak of the salesman most precisely

as I felt about him, to give no part of that feeling away for the sake of any effect or any dramatic

necessity. What was wanted now was not a mounting line of tension, nor a gradually narrowing cone

of intensifying suspense, but a bloc, a single chord presented as such at the outset, within which all the

strains and melodies would already be contained. The strategy … was to appear entirely unstrategic.

… If I could, I would have told the story and set forth all the characters in one unbroken speech or

even one sentence or a single flash of light. As I look at the play now its form seems the form of a

confession, for that is how it is told, now speaking of what happened yesterday, then suddenly

following some connection to a time 20 years ago, then leaping even further back and then returning

to the present and even speculating about the future."

Arthur Miller, Introduction to Collected Plays, 1957

"Willy is foolish and even ridiculous sometimes. He tells the most transparent lies, exaggerates

mercilessly, and so on. But I really want you to see that his impulses are not foolish at all. He cannot

bear reality, and since he can’t do much to change it, he keeps changing his ideas of it."

Arthur Miller, Salesman in Beijing, 1984

"The form of Death of a Salesman was an attempt, as much as anything else, to convey the bending of

time. There are two or three sorts of time in that play. One is social time; one is psychic time, the way

we remember things; and the third one is the sense of time created by the play and shared by the

audience. …The play is taking place in the Greek unity of 24 hours; and yet it is dealing with material

that goes back probably 25 years. And it almost goes forward through Ben, who is dead. So time was

an obsession for me at the moment, and I wanted a way of presenting it so that it became the fiber of

the play, rather than being something that somebody comments about. In fact, there is very little

comment really in Salesman about time. I also wanted a form that could sustain itself the way we deal

with crises, which is not to deal with them. After all, there is a lot of comedy in Salesman; people

forget it because it is so dark by the end of the play. But if you stand behind the audience you hear a

lot of laughter. It’s a deadly ironical laughter most of the time, but it is a species of comedy. The

comedy is really a way for Willy and others to put off the evil day, which is the thing we all do. I

wanted that to happen and not be something talked about."

Arthur Miller, Michigan Quarterly Review, 1985

From: http://www.zeiterion.org/Salesman.pdf

Modern Tragedy from THE Ancient Tragedy, Oedipus Rex by Sophocles

(From: Wikipedia - Oedipus Rex)

Background of Oedipus Rex

As is the case in most climactic drama, much of what constitutes the myth of Oedipus takes place before the opening scene of the play. In his youth, Laius was a guest of King Pelops of Elis, and became the tutor of Chrysippus, youngest of the king's sons, in chariot racing. He then violated the sacred laws of hospitality by abducting and raping Chrysippus, who according to some versions killed himself in shame. This cast a doom over Laius and his descendants.

The protagonist of the tragedy is the son of King Laius and Queen Jocasta of Thebes. After Laius learns from an oracle that "he is doomed/To perish by the hand of his own son", he tightly binds the feet of the infant together with a pin and orders Jocasta to kill the infant. Hesitant to do so, she orders a servant to commit the act for her. Instead, the servant takes the baby to a mountain top to die from exposure. A shepherd rescues the infant and names him Oedipus (or "swollen feet"). The shepherd carries the baby with him to Corinth, where Oedipus is taken in and raised in the court of the childless King Polybus of Corinth as if he were his own.

Plot Summary

As a young man in Corinth, Oedipus hears a rumour that he is not the biological son of Polybus and his wife Merope. When Oedipus questions the King and Queen, they deny it, but, still suspicious, he asks the Delphic Oracle who his parents really are. The Oracle seems to ignore this question, telling him instead that he is destined to "Mate with [his] own mother, and shed/With [his] own hands the blood of [his] own sire". Desperate to avoid his foretold fate, Oedipus leaves Corinth in the belief that Polybus and Merope are indeed his true parents and that, once away from them, he will never harm them.

On the road to Thebes, he meets Laius, his true father. Unaware of each other's identities, they quarrel over whose chariot has right-of-way. King Laius moves to strike the insolent youth with his sceptre, but Oedipus throws him down from the chariot and kills him, thus fulfilling part of the oracle's prophecy. He kills all but one of the other men.

Shortly after, Oedipus solves the riddle of the Sphinx, which has baffled many a diviner: "What is the creature that walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three in the evening?" To this Oedipus replies, "Man" (who crawls on all fours as an infant, walks upright later, and needs a walking stick in old age), and the distraught Sphinx throws herself off the cliffside. Oedipus' reward for freeing the kingdom of Thebes from her curse is the kingship and the hand of Queen Dowager Jocasta, his biological mother. The prophecy is thus fulfilled, although none of the main characters know it.

The action of the play

A priest and the chorus of Thebans arrive at the palace to call upon their King, Oedipus, to aid them with the plague. Oedipus had sent his brother-in-law Creon to ask help of the oracle at Delphi, and he returns at that moment. Creon says the plague is the result of religious pollution, caused because the murderer of their former King, Laius, had never been caught. Oedipus vows to find the murderer and curses him for the plague that he has caused.

Oedipus summons the blind prophet Tiresias for help. When Tiresias arrives he claims to know the answers to Oedipus's questions, but refuses to speak, instead telling Oedipus to abandon his search. Oedipus is enraged by Tiresias's refusal, and says the prophet must be complicit in the murder. Outraged, Tiresias tells the king that Oedipus himself is the murderer. Oedipus cannot see how this could be, and concludes that the prophet must have been paid off by Creon in an attempt to undermine him. The two argue vehemently and eventually Tiresias leaves, muttering darkly that when the murderer is discovered he shall be a native citizen of Thebes; brother and father to his own children; and son and husband to his own mother.

Creon arrives to face Oedipus's accusations. The King demands that Creon be executed, however the chorus convince him to let Creon live. Jocasta enters and attempts to comfort Oedipus, telling him he should take no notice of prophets. Many years ago she and Laius received an oracle which never came true. It was said that Laius would be killed by his own son, but, as all Thebes knows, Laius was killed by bandits at a crossroads on the way to Delphi.

The mention of this crossroads causes Oedipus to pause and ask for more details. He asks Jocasta what Laius looked like, and Oedipus suddenly becomes worried that Tiresias's accusations were true. Oedipus then sends for the one surviving witness of the attack to be brought to the palace from the fields where he now works as a shepherd.

Jocasta, confused, asks Oedipus what the matter is, and he tells her. Many years ago, at a banquet in Corinth, a man drunkenly accused Oedipus of not being his father's son. Bothered by the comment Oedipus went to Delphi and asked the oracle about his parentage. Instead of answers he was given a prophecy that he would one day murder his father and sleep with his mother. Upon hearing this he resolved to leave Corinth and never return. While traveling he came to the very crossroads where Laius was killed, and encountered a carriage which attempted to drive him off the road. An argument ensued and Oedipus killed the travelers, including a man who matches Jocasta's description of Laius. Oedipus has hope, however, because the story is that Laius was murdered by several robbers. If the shepherd confirms that Laius was attacked by many men, then Oedipus is in the clear.

A man arrives from Corinth with the message that Oedipus's father has died. Oedipus, to the surprise of the messenger, is made ecstatic by this news, for it proves one half of the prophecy false, for now he can never kill his father. However, he still fears that he may somehow commit incest with his mother. The messenger, eager to ease Oedipus's mind, tells him not to worry, because Merope was not in fact his real mother.

It emerges that this messenger was formerly a shepherd on Mount Cithaeron, and that he was given a baby, which the childless Polybus then adopted. The baby, he says, was given to him by another shepherd from the Laius household, who had been told to get rid of the child. Oedipus asks the chorus if anyone knows who this man was, or where he might be now. They respond that he is the same shepherd who was witness to the murder of Laius, and whom Oedipus had already sent for. Jocasta, who has by now realized the truth, desperately begs Oedipus to stop asking questions, but he refuses and Jocasta runs into the palace.

When the shepherd arrives Oedipus questions him, but he begs to be allowed to leave without answering further. However, Oedipus presses him, finally threatening him with torture or execution. It emerges that the child he gave away was Laius's own son, and that Jocasta had given the baby to the shepherd to secretly be exposed upon the mountainside. This was done in fear of the prophecy that Jocasta said had never come true: that the child would kill its father.

Everything is at last revealed, and Oedipus curses himself and fate before leaving the stage. The chorus laments how even a great man can be felled by fate, and following this, a servant exits the palace to speak of what has happened inside. When Jocasta enters the house, she runs to the palace bedroom and hangs herself there. Shortly afterward, Oedipus enters in a fury, calling on his servants to bring him a sword so that he might kill himself. He then rages through the house, until he comes upon Jocasta's body. Giving a cry, Oedipus takes her down and removes the long gold pins that held her dress together, before plunging them into his own eyes in despair.

A blind Oedipus now exits the palace and begs to be exiled as soon as possible. Creon enters, saying that Oedipus shall be taken into the house until oracles can be consulted regarding what is best to be done. Oedipus's two daughters (and half-sisters), Antigone and Ismene, are sent out, and Oedipus laments that they should be born to such a cursed family. He asks Creon to watch over them and Creon agrees, before sending Oedipus back into the palace.

On an empty stage the chorus repeat the common Greek maxim, that no man should be considered fortunate until he is dead.

Here's a fun short synopsis of the story of Oedipus Rex! It has a couple of inaccuracies.

1. Laius has the servant take Oedipus with pinned feet to Mt Cithaeron, Not the River.

2. Oedipus gouges his eyes out with Jocasta's broach pins (the things that keep her toga on!) Not with a knife. Aside from these mistakes it's kind of funny.

http://www.cleanvideosearch.com/media/action/yt/watch?videoId=oXyek9Ddus4

Critical Notes on Modernism

General Tenets of Modern Literature that Apply to Death of a Salesman:

1. Modernist literature is marked by a presentation of experience as layered, allusive, discontinuous, and uses, to these ends, fragmentation and juxtaposition, motif, symbol, allusion.

2. The (re)presentation of inner (psychological) reality, including the 'flow' of experience, through NEW literary devices such as stream of consciousness.

3. Modernist literature attempted to introduce concepts such as disjointed timelines. Meaning that they break up story narratives to reflect the way we relate back and forth to our past and present

4. In fact, "a common motif in Modernist fiction is that of an alienated individual--a dysfunctional individual trying in vain to make sense of a predominantly urban and fragmented society." These characters are often “uncomfortable or lost” in the world in which they live, and are unable to re-insert themselves into a meaningful existence.

5. Modernism as a literary movement is seen, in large part, as a reaction to the emergence of city life as a central force in society. The modern city was now being built, eg. Skyscrapers. Its imposing nature began to “swallow up” people making us feel “small” in a world where we used to be much more influential.

Some modern characteristics found in this Modern drama:

1. Alienation from Society and Loneliness – meaning characters seem to be alone in their world and are sometimes attempting to “rejoin” a society that may not have a place for them.

2. Procrastination/An inability to act – means that often, modern characters can’t seem to make relevant positive changes in their lives, because what they see in this new reality is strange and difficult to define – also they may have traits that prevent them from “acting” or “making change” in their own lives.

3. Agonized recollection of the Past-constant flashbacks into the past – means that characters are often haunted by their past which prevents them from fully being able to exist in their present.

4. Fear of death and the Appearance of Death – Dark negative themes, and the spector or constant fear of death in a modern world that seems to have created more death than we’ve ever known. Also can show itself by the idea that machines and industry can consume people, that humans are disposable in a new industrialized society.

5. Inability to feel or express Love – coupled with alienation, in a world that seems so dark and ominous, these characters seem to be unable to experience deep feelings of love or acceptance because the very nature of relationships began to be redefined by a new psychological perspective.

Major literary themes emerging in the Modern Period that we can find in this Play:

2. decadence and decay – absent of a moral compass in a modern world (think war and massive death), characters may be indulgent in the desires of the self for self-gain both emotionally/pschologically and economically. Also, cities, while new and developing, were not pretty places and this forces us to examine how our previous understandings about society and self had begun to decay.

3. loss and despair – the lives we had known, and the methods of existing we were sure of as a people had evaporated and shifted so radically that many were unable to regain a foothold in this new and confusing world. Thus, modern characters are seen as struggling for identity, love, and belonging.

6. unavoidable change – means that these characters (us/we) were swept up in change they couldn’t control, which also supports and extends the way we were alienated in this new, modern world.

7. sense of place, local color – settings become more specific and “real” showing the troubling realities of life. Nothing was romanticized! Mostly gone are the pastoral settings of the countryside and their comforting, nurturing elements.