The “Introduction” provides us with the context necessary for getting a better understanding of the origins and mechanics of Arthur Miller’s classic play, Death of a Salesman (1949). While looking over the “Introduction,” then, we should be on the lookout for the elements of:
Area of Exploration 2: Space and Time
This AoE expresses the importance of context for both the composition and reception of a work. Relevant considerations here are:
Part One
- Work 2: Vocabulary List 1
- Historical Events
- Cultural Context
Part Two
- Work 2: Vocabulary List 2
- Relevant Biographical Information
- Mechanics of the Play
There are also two vocabulary lists I would like you to complete for the play.
It is exceedingly important that you explain each of these items until you are satisfied that YOU understand them—an understanding represented, say, by your ability to relay the information to someone else.
Work 2: Vocabulary List 1.
Also I would like if you would complete the following vocabulary list. Explain each of these items until you are satisfied YOU understand them:
Irony: A situation in which something should have had a certain result, butit ended up having the opposite result
Stage Direction: instructions on how the stage should be organised
National psyche: the way the people think nationaly, the national mind
Scene Change: the change between 2 scenes in a play, sometimes followed by a change in decor
Disillusionment: disappointed after being let down by something you thought was going to be better
Regret: something you have when you did something you rather have not done
Idyll: peacefull
Myth: a tale from a long time ago describing ancient beings or stories that aren’t possible with the things we believe are possible
Tragedy: something with a sad element weaved into it
Comedy: something with humour
Hubris: excessive pride
Nemesis: your oppononet/enemy
Tragic Flaw: a flaw that has tragic consequences.
Monologue: a long piece of text for someone.
Soliloquy: a thing that represents something else
Anti-Hero: A hero that does his heroing business by doing some doubtfull things
Symbol: something that stands for something else
Motif: a returning thing, like the flute in the play ‘death of a salesman’
Theme: the underlying general topic
Historical Events
The “Introduction” discusses several of the following historical events which are important for understanding the context in which Death of the Salesman (1949). Explain each of these items until you are satisfied YOU understand them:
- What happened in “The Depression of the 1930s?”
The great depression was the worldwide economic crisis that happened in the 1930s and began in the USA. Ir started when the prices of the stockmarket fell tremendously. This lead to banks going bankrupt and people losing their money and jobs.
- What does “the Stock Market Crash of 1929” refer to?
The stockmarket crash refers to to the crash of the stockmarket that lead to the great depression. There where a lot of factors that lead to this crash, but one of the most important one was this one. People where making up fake companies and selling stocks for that companie with a list of the certain amount of assets that they claimed to have, but didn’t really have. With the money they made from selling stocks they would actually buy the assets and afterwards sell the companie for profit. This however went wrong in the 1929 due to some other factors playing a role. One of them was the farmers who bought extra land after the first world war to provide Europe with food. The farmers bought this with money lend from the banks. But after Europe was able to provide for themselves the farmers had this aces of land that they couldn’t use and a loan they couldn’t repay. Because of this the banks where already put in a bad situation.
- What does the “roaring 20s” refer to?
The roaring 20s refers to the time of economic prosperity in the 1920s. It is somey=times also referred to as the crazy times as different cultures washed onto Americas shores. Jazz for example became very popular and stores flourished as people had more money to spend. Everything together lead to a manger change in lifestyle for most people.
- Describe several elements that describe Post-War America:
Several elements to describe post war America are for example prosperous, penny pinching and disastrous. These words provide very big contrasts, but so did America in the time after the first world war. They where prosperous in the 1920s and wealth grew enormously. The element penny pinching refers to American farmers trying to profit from the war and lending money to buy more land, which eventually caused the banks and stock market to crash. This brings us to the next element, disastrous. This ofcourse refers to the great depression in which people lost all their money, their jobs and some even their lives.
Cultural Context
- What does “Manifest Destiny” refer to?
Manifest destiny was a widely held belief in the 19th-century United states that its settlers were destined to expand across North America.
- Explain Bigsby’s statement: “In an immigrant society, which has, by definition, chosen to reject the past, faith in the future is not a matter of choice.” (p. vii)
This means that people in an immigrant society don’t have the choice to have faith in the future, they have to have. Because they rejected their past they don’t have anything else to believe in.
- Explain the phrase “the business of America is business.” Who said it and what does it mean?
The man who said it was president Warren G. Harding. It means that the thing America provides, what it is providing for the whole world, is business. The amount of jobs in America is Americas business. Their business is in that context, business.
- What does the idea of “the American Dream” refer to? (Here’s a little help: American Dream video with some help. Here is some general information: wikipedia)
America was the land of freedom and the American dream was the set of ideals in which that freedom includes the opportunity for success and prosperity.
- Bigsby writes about Willy Loman: “His vulnerability comes from the fact that he is a true believer.” (p. xviii). What is he a true believer about? What does this mean from the context?
The true believer part means that willy truly believes in the American dream and that the only thing he is missing is just a bit of luck, but he believes that that luck will come to him.
Work 2: Vocabulary List 2.
Explain each of these items until you are satisfied YOU understand them:
Aside: apart from
Apostrophe: it’s a tectual device to link two sentences together ,
Colloquialism: words used in an informal situation
Climax: the highest point of interest ,like a plot-twist
Allegory: something with a hidden meaning, like a piece of text
Didactic: the goal of teaching other people
Parody: a mostly comedic play on something
Protagonist: the main character of a story
Roman-à-clef: a story about real life with a façade of fiction
Subtext: a subtext of a text is the non-written definition
Hyperbole: an exaggeration
Relevant Biographical Information
We learn a good deal of relevant biographical information from Miller’s autobiography, as reported by Bigsby. In particular, we learn that much of the representation of the dynamics in the Lohman family were modeled from the Newman family: Manny Newman, Buddy Newman, friends of the Miller family.
- Miller describes Manny Newman as the model for the character of Willy Loman: “a competitor, at all times, in all things, and at every moment.” (p. viii) And it is this sense of competition that is “a perfection of America” (p. viii) What do you think this means? Connect your answer with something you found in the historical events or cultural context sections you completed above.
This sense of competition refers to business people before the roaring 20s seeing everything very competitive and trying to get higher up in the ranks, making them richer
- Miller describes the scene of an encounter (reported p. ix) with Manny years later, after the successful debut of his play All My Sons: “We confronted one another. And he said, referring to his eldest son—out of the blue, now mind you I haven’t seen this man in all those years—he said, ‘Bobby is doing very well.’” What do you think this encounter says about the character of Manny? And what does it say about Willy Loman, the character?
This shows us that many is still very competitive ans that he is showing of with his sons success. This says the same about the character of willy loman, he wants to have successful sons too so he can tell other people, even of they haven’t met eachother in years, that his son is better.
- Miller describes Manny’s wife as someone who “bore the cross of reality for them all” (p. viii). In particular, in supporting her husband, Miller says she was always “keeping up her calm, enthusiastic smile lest he feel he was not being appreciated” (p. viii). How does this characterization compare to Linda? Find one example from Act One which seems to bear this point out.
Linda is also very supportive of willy, she protects him even when she knows he is trying to kill himself because she doesn’t want him to feel ashamed.
- Like Biff, Miller himself was an athlete in his youth. A sports injury, however, precluded Miller’s participation in WWII. We are never told whether the sons in the play, Biff and Happy, were participants in WWII. Do you think either of the sons were participants in WWII? How might their involvement or non-involvement explain the behavior of either of the characters in the play?
No, I don’t think any of them where participants in the second world war, as they are too childlike to be soldiers. People eho come out of the army tend to be super disciplined andare not childlike at all. This is exactly what you see in the play, they are talking about girls and he is standing up against his father, which a disciplined soldier wouldn’t do.
Mechanics of the Play
Miller’s Death of a Salesman is particularly well-known for integrating a number of peculiar stage elements including flashbacks in which characters play their past selves, conversations with characters only the audience and Willy Loman see as concocted from within his delusional mind.
- According to Bigsby, Miller described the structure of the play as having “geological strata” (p. x). What does he mean by that? Provide an example from Act One of the play to support your answer.
What he means with this is how he plays with the set in his play. Strata means layers and with geological I presume he is referring the the stage of the play itself. An example of this is the shown in the beginning of act 1. First we see Bill and happy up in their rooms, but a second later when we switch to the dialogue of willy we see that they are running around the kitchen in childlike cloths. The strata here refers to the hidden meaning behind that scene.
- The play takes place within a single twenty-four hour cycle; however, suggests that this is only one kind of time in the play. There are also “social” and “psychic” times (p. xif.). What is meant by each of these different “times?”
The pshycic time refers to the time it is in the flashbacks from willy, because those are different days every time.
The social time is the amount of time they are actually talking to eachother, so the time of the play itself.
- Bigsby states: “For the very structure of the play reflects his anxious search for the moment his life took a wrong turn, for the moment of betrayal that undermined his relationship to his wife and destroyed his relationship with a son who was to have embodied his own faith in the American dream.” (p. xi) Describe why Willy Loman might be looking for the moment his life took a “wrong turn,” especially given what you said about the American dream above.
He is looking for a wrong turn, because he thinks he has been living his life the best he could to furfill the American dream, this is what he should have done. But now he looks back and tries to find a flaw in one single piece of his life but he doesn’t look back at the time he chose for the American dream as the flaw, because he doesn’t think that it the flaw.
- Bigsby describes Willy Loman’s problem as “he has so completely internalized the values of his society that he judges himself by standards rooted in social myths rather than human necessities” (p. xviii). What might some of those social myths rather than human necessities be? Give an example from the play.
One of the social myths is his brother that he sees in his flashbacks. His brother keeps saying that he walked into a jungle and when he walked out, he was rich. Willy ofcourse believes this and sets his brother as an example and wants to live up to that rather then focusing on his own life when he drives back from work for example.
- Bisby writes about Willy Loman: “Meaning is deferred until some indefinite future. Meanwhile he is a salesman, traveling but never arriving.” (p. xiii) What might this statement mean?
The statement means that meaning is delayed until some indefinite future. You don’t know when your life will get meaning, but eventually it will. Willy is a salesman that does travel, but never arrives. He doesn’t have meaning, but he thinks he does as he is traveling. The fact that he never arrives I the clue to him not having meaning.
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