Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman

1915-2005

Background Info

• Born in NYC• First success in 1947

—All My Sons• Wrote Death of a

Salesman—1948• Married with two

children at the time

Background Info

• 1950—Fell in love with Marilyn Monroe (eventually married and then divorced)• 1953—Wrote The Crucible,

Tony Award winning play (witch hunts and McCarthy hearings…got him into some trouble!)• Wrote into the late 80s

Death of a Salesman

• First performed on Broadway in 1949• Immediate success with American

audiences•Won Pulitzer Prize and New York

Drama Critics Circle Award

Death of a Salesman

•Ran for 742 performances before it closed•One of the most performed and

adapted plays in American theatrical history• There has never been a time when D

of S was not being performed somewhere in the world!

Death of a Salesman

• Tackles universal questions about the nature of happiness•Questions the capitalist American

Dream myth•Protagonist’s struggle for success

resonates with all

Modern Tragedy

• "I think the tragic feeling is evoked in us when we are in the presence of a character who is ready to lay down his life, if need be, to secure one thing—his sense of personal dignity"

• “the underlying struggle is that of the individual attempting to gain his 'rightful' position in his society"

Modern Tragedy

• "It is time that we, who are without kings, took up this bright thread of our history and followed it to the only place it can possibly lead in our time-the heart and spirit of the average man."

What makes Death of a Salesman a modern tragedy?

Central Ideas

• Reality and Illusion• The American Dream• Family• Nature and Physical Pursuits

Examples?

Motifs

• The jungle/woods• Diamonds• The garden• Stockings

• Fall/falling/down• Stealing• Brand names

Realist Drama

• 19th century France• Everyday characters, situations and dilemmas• Language captures natural conversation• A ‘lifelike’ stage picture: contemporary

costuming and three-dimensional sets • Usually a critique of social problems• Realist dramatists: Henrik Ibsen (A Doll’s House),

George Bernard Shaw (Pygmalion)

John French Sloan,McSorley's Bar, 1912Detroit Institute of Arts

George BellowsDempsey and Firpo1924

Expressionist Drama

• Reaction to Realism—early 1900s.• Inner psychological reality of a character• Subjective vision of the world • as opposed to an objective representation

(Realism)

Expressionist Drama

“getting beneath reality, displaying more than reality, replacing reality with something more expressive”

Elmer Rice (Expressionist playwright)

• Ignores dramatic convention – plot, structure, characterization • Poetic dialogue• Lighting used to create atmosphere• Eugene O’Neill (Hairy Ape) and Thornton Wilder (Our Town) –

also influenced by Expressionism

Jane Frank, Crags and Crevices, 1961.

Willem De Kooning Woman V, 1952–1953.

Mark RothkoNo. 61 (Rust and Blue)

1953

Franz Kline, Painting Number 2, 1954,

Miller Goes for the Combo Deal!• Interested in Expressionism but didn’t want to

abandon the conventions of Realism. • Used a dramatic form that combined THE

SUBJECTIVITY OF EXPRESSIONISM with the ILLUSION OF OBJECTIVITY AFFORDED BY REALISM.

• What elements of Realism and Expressionism are present in the text?