1. Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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!

6. 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

7. 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"

8. What makes Death of a Salesman a 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?

9. Central Ideas Reality and Illusion The American Dream Family
Nature and Physical Pursuits
Examples?

10. Motifs The jungle/woods Fall/falling/down Diamonds Stealing The garden
Brand names
Stockings

11. 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)

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

13. George Bellows
Dempsey
and Firpo
1924

14. 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)

15. Elmer Rice (Expressionist playwright)
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

16. Jane Frank, Crags and Crevices, 1961.

17. Willem De Kooning Woman V, 1952–1953.

18. Mark Rothko No. 61 (Rust and Blue) 1953

19. Franz Kline, Painting Number 2, 1954,

20. 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?