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DEATH OF A SALESMAN BY ARTHUR MILLER

DEATH OF A SALESMAN BY ARTHUR MILLER. A little Historical Couching. Set in 1949 and informed by The Great Depression/Stock Market Crash The 1920s Immigrant society looking to “ pull themselves up ” “ The business of America is business ” (Coolidge) The installment plan Hyper-patriotism

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DEATH OF A SALESMAN BY ARTHUR MILLER

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  1. DEATH OF A SALESMANBY ARTHUR MILLER

  2. A little Historical Couching • Set in 1949 and informed by • The Great Depression/Stock Market Crash • The 1920s • Immigrant society looking to “pull themselves up” • “The business of America is business” (Coolidge) • The installment plan • Hyper-patriotism • The legacy of Manifest Destiny and The American Dream • The special virtue of American people to accomplish things

  3. ENTER WILLY LOMAN- BAFFLED BY FAILURE • Play takes place in 24 hours • Miller likened it to: • Geological strata: different times are present at the same instant • CAT scan: simultaneously reveals inside and outside

  4. American Nightmare? • The house previously represented American dream, where he raised a family and reached for “the golden glitter of a dream” • Now hemmed in by apts, and taunting him with his failure • Work previously represented competition and dreams, now it feels like a dead end

  5. THE FLUTE • Play begins with the flute • Takes Willy back to childhood- Father made and sold flutes • Father deserted Willy and Ben • Ben later deserted Willy. • Miller’s notebook- Willy is living a temporary life, waiting for his father’s return and the return of dreams

  6. PROPS • All characters remain on stage throughout, being animated when they move into the forefront of Willy’s troubled mind or swung into view by a turntable. • No blackouts • Think about the effect of this stage direction.

  7. WILLY JUMPS FROM RECONSTRUCTED PAST TO ANXIOUS PRESENT • Gap between dreams and blunted ambitions • cause- irony, guilt, disillusionment, and regret. • Can’t bear reality, so he changes it • Flashbacks are not accurate, they are constructions. • Look for contradictions

  8. WILLY • “Willy is battling for his life, fighting to sustain a sense of himself that makes it worthwhile living at all in a world which seemingly offers ever less space for the individual” • Irony- meaning lies less in himself and those around him and more on societal myths • Denial and lack of self-awareness

  9. MILLER’S INTERPRETATIONS • “Its about the paradoxes of being alive in a technological society” • “A story about violence in the family” • “the suppression of the individual by placing him below the imperious needs of society” • “all those feelings of a society falling to pieces which I had” • “Love story between a man and his son, and in a crazy way between both and America.”

  10. CRITICS • Critics: “A time bomb under American capitalism” • Miller: “or at least under the bs of capitalism, this pseudo life that thought to touch the clouds by standing on top of a refrigerator, waving a paid-up mortgage at the moon, victorious at last”

  11. WHAT WILLY SELLS • Miller: “He sells what a salesman always has to sell, himself”

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