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Arthur Miller English 2 H: Outcome B Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller Arthur Miller puts in question "death and betrayal and injustice and how we are to account for this little life of ours.” Rachel Galvin “Arthur Miller: Biography” http://www.neh.gov/whoweare/miller/biography.html Miller’s Early Life: * Born October 17, 1915. * Son of an illiterate Polish immigrant who became a wealthy coat salesman with his own factory. * Family lived on 110th. St. in Harlem, NY (then a select area overlooking the Park). * 1928- Family moves to Brooklyn. * 1929- Miller’s father goes bankrupt. Q. What does Miller's father's success and failure say to you about the nature of the "American Dream"? Arthur Miller (1915-2005) Genius: Awards and Honors • Pulitzer Prize before he was 35 years old • 7 Tony Awards & 2 Drama Critics Circle Awards • Obie • Olivier • John F. Kennedy Lifetime Achievement Award • Dorothy and Lillian Gish prize. Charming Married three times. Second wife was sex symbol Marilyn Monroe. Devoted He was married to his third wife, a photographer, from 1962 until she died in 2002 What’s in a Name? • Miller changed the title at one point to: Inside His Head. • Miller had intended for the set to look like a giant head. • Q. What themes, characters, or events can you guess will be in the play just from looking at the original title and the final title (Inside His Head and Death of a Salesman)? Good Times… • Miller wrote Death of a Salesman in 1949, a time declared as – the "American Century" – "good-times" – the best of all possible worlds • The play hit with such force in the Broadway theater that often at the final curtain there was silence; audience members, especially men, "bent forward covering their faces, and others openly weeping." • Q. What do these responses say about the play itself? OR Why do you think the play evoked such responses? MASTERMIND • Arthur Miller has written plays in every decade since the 1930's up to his death at 89 in 2005. • Miller is known as one of America's most prolific playwrights. • Top 100 Masterpieces of the Modern Stage (according to Britain's National Theatre survey): #2 Death of a Salesman … some lists put Death of a Salesman at #1 • Not a night goes by without a performance of Death of a Salesman somewhere in the world. Q. What do these facts say to you about the play you are about to read? Popularity • One of the most frequently read plays in U.S. high school and college English classes over the past six decades • Q. Why do you think this play is one of the most frequently read plays in high schools and colleges across America? • In what ways might this play: – reveal American’s dishonesty and corruption? – make its way deep into political conversations? – plant doubts, debate, and seeds of change? Man with a message His plays make audiences question the attainability of the American dream and what it means to be a hero. What Miller said about Death of a Salesman • “It is a kind of frontal attack on the conditions of this man's life, without any piddling around with techniques. The basic technique is very straightforward. It is told like a dream. In a dream, we are simply confronted with various loaded symbols, and where one is exhausted, it gives way to another. • In Salesman, there is the use of a past in the present. It has been mistakenly called flashbacks, but there are no flashbacks in that play. It is a concurrence of a past with the present, and that's a bit different.” March 2001 Humanities magazine William Ferris interview Reflection: Reflect on what Miller said about scenes of the past in the play. He said, “there is the use of a past in the present. … It is a concurrence of a past with the present.” What do you think that means? Surprise!! It is a tragedy!! Miller said, “The idea of tragedy is constantly changing” and “will never be finally defined.” http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/03/01/theater/201203-death-of-a-salesman-interactive.html What Miller said about the difference between tragedy and pathos. “To my mind the essential difference, and the precise difference, between tragedy and pathos is that tragedy brings us not only sadness, sympathy, identification and even fear; it also, unlike pathos, brings us knowledge or enlightenment.” From The New York Times. What Miller said about the tragic hero “As Aristotle said, the poet is greater than the historian because he presents not only things as they were, but foreshadows what they might have been. We forsake literature when we are content to chronicle disaster. Tragedy, therefore, is inseparable from a certain modest hope regarding the human animal. And it is the glimpse of this brighter possibility that raises sadness out of the pathetic toward the tragic” (Miller). Miller, Arthur. “The Name of Tragedy”. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/03/01/theater/201203-death-of-a-salesman-interactive. Miller said, “From Orestes to Hamlet, Medea to Macbeth, the underlying struggle is that of the individual attempting to gain his 'rightful' position in his society.” Miller considers the common man "as apt a subject for tragedy in its highest sense as kings were. … 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.” http://www.neh.gov/whoweare/miller/biography.html "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" (Miller). http://www.neh.gov/whoweare/miller/biography.html This tragedy comes complete with a tragic hero! Or is he? Critics debate whether Willy Loman is truly a tragic hero. We will join the discussion! Characteristics of a tragic hero: • Usually male (blame the Greek tragedians) • Usually of noble birth (like Oedipus) • Doomed from the start • Usually a king, a leader of men • His fate affects the welfare of a whole nation or number of people. Peasants do not inspire pity and fear. Great men do. • His sudden fall from greatness to nothing provides a sharp contrast. • Bears no responsibility for possessing his flaw • Yet is responsible for his actions • Discovers fate by his own actions not by what happens to him Tragic flaw – every tragic hero has one • Flaw often brings about a reversal of fortune • Usually leads to his downfall (often fatal) • Downfall usually due to excessive pride • Miller’s definition: a tragic hero is moved by “the compulsion to evaluate himself justly.” Kazan’s “Fundamental Statements” In his first set of director’s notes to Arthur Miller, Elia Kazan (director of the first production of Death of a Salesman) set down a series of ‘fundamental statements’ about the play: • Basic: This play is about Willy Loman. • Basic: This is a love story… the end of a tragic love story between Willy and Biff. • Basic: He built his life on his son… But he taught the son wrong. The result: the son crashes and he with him. • Basic: Without Biff loving Willy and Willy loving Biff, there is no conflict. • Basic: The whole play is about love… love and competition. • Basic: What the audience should feel at the end of this performance is only one thing: Pity, compassion and terror for Willy. Every dramatic value should serve this end. Your own feeling for your own father!” Artists created the posters that follow to capture the essence of Miller’s “Death of a Salesman”. Quick writes: as you examine each poster, take a moment to quickly write a reflection in your notebook. You may reflect on the questions that accompany the poster or simply reflect on what you think Miller’s message may be. Quick write: Reflect on the colors and lines used by the artist. Why red? Why red on the stairs? Why a briefcase? Why are the stairs inside the briefcase? What is he feeling? How do you know? Quick write: Reflect on the passageways. Have doors fallen off the hinges or are those rugs? Does it make a difference? Explain. What does the red M mean? The last door seems to open to a staircase, why? What is the mood? How is it established? “Death of a Salesman” • Q. Based on the original book jacket cover (shown here), what predictions can you make about the play or what emotions do you feel? Share some Quick Write reflections Quick write: Reflect on the art’s simplicity. Who is this man? Why is he hiding his face? Shame? Despair? What is he sitting upon? Who is Willy Loman? .
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