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Dramaturigal analysis
Dramaturigal analysis
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In David Mamet’s play, “Glengarry Glen Ross”, a group of sales representatives, Shelly Levene, Richard Roma, Dave Moss, and George Aaronow, are placed into a competition that sets all of them against each other. Their bosses challenge the four men to compete against one another in a sales competition where the winner with the most sales will receive a brand new Cadillac and the two people with the least sales will lose their job. With the ultimatum of losing their job, the men struggle to out due each other in hopes that they will come out on top (Mamet 21). Through dialogue and tone, Mamet presents the characters with a sense of desperation and determination; thus, he propels the story into countless affairs of deception and cheating, and ultimately shows how people are willing to do whatever it takes when driven to the edge and placed into a do-or-die situation.
The use of dialogue is essential to the representation of the characters and their conflicts in “Glengarry Glen Ross”. Language plays a dominant role in nearly all aspects of the play. Each individual in the play has their own unique way of communication, representing who they are as sales men. Take for instance, in Act I Scene I, Levene pleads to Williamson for better leads as Williamson is leaving the office. Although Williamson does not cooperate with Levene, Levene still stops Williamson several times and attempts to make bargains. “Fuck it…. Get on my side. Go with me. Let’s do something,” Levene tells Williamson in this scene (Mamet 23-24). This use of dialogue demonstrates the persistence and strong desire to succeed. Their conversation shows “speeches overlapping” and “thoughts unfinished”, thus emphasizing Levene’s persistence and determination to win over Will...
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...cters show how distressed they are when threatened with losing their job, allowing Mamet to portray the difficulties and struggles of what it takes to come out on top. The characters will do whatever it takes to survive. Their attempts to sale reflect society’s selfish ways of always trying to be the best. Moreover, it demonstrates the desperate side in all humans that awaken when threatened.
Works Cited
Browne, Terry. “An overview of Glengarry Glen Ross." Drama for Students”. Detroit: Gale.
Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 Mar. 2014.
Mamet, David. Glengarry Glen Ross. New York: Grove Press, 1983. Print.
Worster, David. "How to Do Things with Salesmen: David Mamet's Speech-Act Play." Modern Drama 37.3 (Fall 1994): 375-390. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Janet Witalec. Vol. 166. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Literature Resource Center. Web. 27 Mar. 2014.
... Death of a Salesman. New York: Penguin, 1996. Print. The. Sherk, James.
Cardullo, Bert . "Death of a Salesman and Death of a Salesman: The Swollen Legacy of Arthur Miller." Columbia University in the City of New York. The Columbia Journal of American Studies, n.d. Web. 20 Apr. 2014. .
One decision is all it takes in the life of a person to go from one path to another. The decision can be a good one and affect one’s life in a positive manner or a decision can be a poor one and result in negative effects. In Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible, Abigail Williams and John Proctor make life altering decisions. Willy Loman, the main character in The Death of a Salesman also written by Arthur Miller, makes a decision that will change his life. This paper will examine the life changing decisions made by the characters in these books, the reasons behind their decisions, and the consequences of their decisions for their lives.
Relations between fathers and the younger generation have been and continue to be an important theme for various literary genres (King Lear, Shakespeare; Fathers and Sons, Turgenev). For many famous writers the significance of fathers’ influence on their children forms a subject of particular interest. . In the play, Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller shows in a very striking manner that the father's influence can be either positive or fatal. The dispiriting story of the three generations of the Lomans family contrasts with the happy account of the life of their neighbors, Charley and his son Bernard.
Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman. Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Seventh Edition. X.J. Kennedy, and Dana Gioia. New York: Addison Wesley Longman, Inc., 1999
Oleanna by David Mamet The fast pace, repetition and interruptions evident in the interaction. between Carol and John are clear illustrations of the unwritten contest to have the last word and be right in act 1. The use of these dramatic and linguistic techniques are what make the interaction between the two characters, so fascinating. Both are constantly struggling to maintain their dignity and reputation.
Gioia, Dana, and X.J. Kennedy. "Death of a Salesman" Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing, Compact Edition, Interactive Edition. 5th ed. New York: Pearson; Longman Publishing, 2007. 1212-1280. Print.
In post-Depression America, the United States endured internal battles in political ideologies between capitalists and Marxists, which is the focus of Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman. According to Helge Normann Nilsen, author of “From Honors At Dawn to Death of a Salesman: Marxism and the Early Plays of Arthur Miller,” the Great Depression had a profound impact in forming the political identity of Arthur Miller: “The Great Depression created in him a lasting and traumatic impression of the devastating power of economic forces in the shaping of peoples’ lives” (146). This lasting effect on Miller is embodied in the character of Willy Loman, an unsuccessful salesman whose life collapses from the strain of his competition for wealth, demonstrated by Nilsen as she claims the fault lies in the “Impairment of [Willy’s] conscience and sanity by intolerable economic pressures” (155). Because of his focus on material success, which Marxists view as a critical flaw in capitalism, Willy loses his sanity battling the corruption within himself and the American free market system. I believe, however, that while Miller embraced and promoted Marxist values and that the messages in Death of a Salesman are directed at capitalists, Miller was not condemning all aspects of capitalism. Although his portrayal of Willy may seem politically biased, Miller’s portrayal of Charley as a generous and kind man contradicts the notion that Death of a Salesman is purely Marxist propaganda. Miller, therefore, was not denouncing capitalism, but calling instead for reforms within the existing system.
In 1949, the pinnacle of contemporary American playwright, Arthur Miller, published his works “Death of a Salesman”. After the advent of this play, not only caused a sensation in the theaters in the United States, but also became the Western model of modern tragedy as one of the most important drama after America's World War II. Miller was twice won the “New York Drama Critics Award” and also awarded the “Pulitzer Prize.”[
Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman. Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Seventh Edition. X.J. Kennedy, and Dana Gioia. New York: Addison Wesley Longman, Inc., 1999. 1636-1707.
“Death of a Salesman” written by Arthur Miller in 1948 attempts to give the audience an unusual glimpse into the mind of a Willy Loman, a mercurial 60-year-old salesman, who through his endeavor to be “worth something”, finds himself struggling to endure the competitive capitalist world in which he is engulfed. Arthur Miller uses various theatrical techniques to gradually strip the protagonist down one layer at a time, each layer revealing another truth about his distorted past. By doing this, Miller succeeds in finally exposing a reasonable justification for Willy’s current state of mind. These techniques are essential to the play, as it is only through this development that Willy can realistically be driven to motives of suicide.
The play Death of a Salesman, written by Arthur Miller, is about an average salesman living in Brooklyn, New York in the 1940’s named Willy Loman. Willy firmly believes in the American dream and is living his life aspiring to gain the wealth and materials associated with those of higher status in society. This American dream tears apart his family, and the end result is his own demise. Glengarry Glen Ross, by David Mamet, has a plot similar to Death of a Salesman in that it is about salesmen and it shows the effects of capitalism on people and society. A difference between the two, however, is that Glengarry Glen Ross includes a group of salesmen working at a firm who are trying to win a sales contest in which the first prize is a Cadillac, the second prize is a set of steak knives, and the remaining salesmen will be fired.
Glengarry Glen Ross deals with a group of men, in their forties and fifties, who work together as salesman in a real estate office. One would think these men were all friends and there were no problems. But in reality these men are sneaky and conniving and are competing with each other to be top salesman. What’s at stake? Top salesman receives a new car and the loser gets fired. In this play, I do believe there are some victims, to an extent.
Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman; Certain Private Conversations in Two Acts and a Requiem. New York: Viking, 1949. Print.
"SparkNotes: Death of a Salesman: important quotations Explained ." SparkNotes . N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Apr. 2014. .