Analysis of A Tragic Character of Death of a Salesman
INRODUCTION
As is known to all, one’s personal experience of life and social environment undoubtedly will affect his views towards life and his notions of art. As Arthur Miller’嗜好的意思s explained, 发誓英文“The writer who wants to describe life must describe his own experience(5).”人教版八年级上册英语单词 In addition, “the best work that anybody ever writes is the work that is on the verge of embarrassing him---where he puts himlf on the line(6).” According to Walden, Arthur Millerspeechless什么意思’s social conscience stemmed from the economic effects of the Depression which he experienced when he was a young man(189). Therefore, it is basic and necessary to know about his growing background and his works before introduction and analysis of Death of a Salesman.
Arthur Miller was a prolific American playwright, essayist, and prominent figure in twentieth-century American theater, born in New York City on October 17, 1915. He was the son of Isidore Miller who was a Jewish businessman migrated from Austria, and spent his first four
teen years of life in Harlem, a middle-class neighborhood of mixed ethic people. Miller’s childhood was comfortable, but the Great Depression of 1929 inevitably had great impact on his views about life. His career as a playwright began while he was a student at the University of Michigan. His successful plays include All My Sons, Death of Salesman, The Crucible, A View from the Bridge, After the Fall, Broken Glass and so on, among which Death of Salesman is the most successful one. Since its premiere in 1949, it has been widely acclaimed and won the Pulitzer Prize. Many critics described Death of Salesman as the first great American tragedy, and Miller gained eminence as a man who understood the deep esnce of the United States.
The story of shows Death of Salesman the last twenty-four hour about the life of Willy Loman, an diligent traveling salesman, who values, ideas and vanity is smashed into pieces by the fact that he is a total failure both in his family and the society. The postwar economic boom has shaken up his life, which caus that he is eventually fired and begins to hallucinate about significant events from his past. Linda, Willy’s loyal, loving wife, suffers through Willy’s grandio dreams and lf-delusions. She has nurtured the f
amily through all of Willy’s misguided attempts at success, and her emotional strength and perverance support Willy until his collap. Biff Loman, Willy’s thirty-four-year-old elder son, reprents Willy’s vulnerable, poetic and tragic side. He cannot ignore his instincts, which tell him to abandon Willy’s paralyzing dreams and move out West to work with his hands. However, he ultimately fails to reconcile his life with Willy’s expectations of him. Happy Loman, Willy’s thirty-two-year- old younger son, reprents Willy4级多少分过’s n of lf-importance, ambition and blind rvitude to societal expectations. Happy has lived in Biffmicrostep’s shadow all of his life, but he compensates by nurturing his relentless x drive and professional ambition.
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Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work. In the book Death of Salesman, there exists three themes. First, there is no doubt that one of themes is the American Dream. Willy believes absorbedly in what the promi of the American Dream that aspiration, hard work and individual enterpri will be rewarded with prosperity, regardless of family background. Unfortunately, Willy clings to the superficial qualities of attractiveness and popularity, which is at odds with a more gritty, m
ore rewarding understanding of the American Dream that identifies hard work without complaints as the key to success. Willy’s blind faith in his distorted version of the American Dream leads to his rapid psychological decline when he is unable to accept the disparity between the Dream and his own life. Second, it refers to abandonment. Willy’s life charts a cour from one abandonment to the next, leaving him in greater despair each time. When Willy is very young, his father leaves him neither a tangible money nor an intangible legacy. Then his brother departs for Alaska, leaving his to lo himlf in a stunted version of American Dream. Through the experience, Willy develops a fear of abandonment. However, when his son Biff fins out about his adultery, Biff also drops Willy. Third, it长颈鹿的英语’八年级下册英语课本s about betrayal. Willy’s primary obssion throughout the play is what he considers to be Biff’s betrayal of his ambitions for him. However, Biff’s betrayal stems from Biff’s discovery of Willy’s affairs with The Woman---a betrayal of Linda’s love. Besides, there is another betrayal that Willy has betrayed him with his unending stream of ego-stroking lies.
In Death of Salesman, Miller creates a colorful and vivid world and depict a society full of
problems, which are all the reflection of life and the playwright’s questioning of the prent social value.
Analysis of A Tragic Character
The whole play is written both in time quence and in accordance with the protagonist’s psychological movement. The structure of events is the direction reflection of Willy’s view on his life and lives in his own world full of contradictions. “Young Biff and Young Happy appear from the direction Willy was addressing(Miller 68).” “Charley has appeared in the doorway (Miller 120).” Like the examples, past and prent flow into one another perfectly. So in Death of Salesman, Miller not only depicts what happened in an 24 hours about the life of Willy Loman, but also describes the whole life of Willy. Besides, from depicting past, we can e that the purpo is to escape the depressing prent.
At the beginning of the play, Willy suffers from crippling lf-delusion. His consciousness is so fractured that he cannot maintain a consistent fantasy. In one moment, he calls Biff, “Biff is a lazy bum (Miller 22).” In the next, he says, “There’s one thing about Biff---he起伏的意思’s no
t lazy (Miller 23).” his later estimate of his car is at odds---one moment he calls it a piece of trash, the next “the greatest car ever built (Miller 91).” Willy changes his interpretation of reality according to his psychological needs at the moment. Labeling Biff a lazy bum allows Willy to deflect Linda’s criticism of his harangue against Biff’s lack of material success, ambition and focus. Besides, denying Biff’s laziness enables Willy to hold onto the hope that Biff will someday fulfill his expectations of him in some capacity. This kind of satire fully shows Willy’s lf-delusion and failure.
