Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman is a realist play which criticizes modern society; Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party is an absurdist play that examines human existence and language through deformed realism. There is apparently nothing common between the two plays; however, there is a similarity: contradiction and ambiguity are shown in the language of both plays. As I look into this issue, differences in the features and purposes of contradiction and ambiguity are found.
By contradiction and ambiguity, I mean that many details in the plays are contradicting according to different conversations in different scenes. As a result, no real happening can be obtained.
In Death of a Salesman, we cannot determine if Willy Loman was once a successful salesman or not. In Willy’s imaginary past, he described himself as a well-liked salesman who had opened up the market in New England. Later, when he talks with Howard, he claims that he averaged one hundred and seventy dollars a week in 1928, but Howard says that he never achieved that. Both of them are unreliable since Willy lives in dreams whereas Howard just wants to walk through the conversation, leaving an unclear answer to the question. Linda affirms Willy’s words by telling her sons that when Willy was young, his buyers were glad to see him and he was a pioneer of new territories for the company. Yet, her words are as well not trustworthy because Linda always backs up Willy’s fantasies. Just as she admits to Biff, she will do everything to keep Willy happy and bright.
There are even more equivocal points in The Birthday Party. As stated by Dukore (1962), “each piece of knowledge is a half-knowledge” (p. 44). McBride (2012) also observes that “the only truth of The Birthday Party...
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Koprince, S. (2012). The secret life of Willy Loman: A Miller-Thurber connection. The Midwest Quarterly, 53(4), 317-328. Retrieved from https://iln.hksyu.edu.hk/ILN/DownloadFileAction.do?Flag=Module_File_Operation&folderAccountType=M&folderAccount=7422&folderID=102887&folderName=Death+of+a+Salesman&viewOption=NoIcon&moduleID=7422&fileID=618618&fileName=Koprince.pdf
McBride, M. R. (2012). The Birthday Party bibliography. Retrieved December 29, 2013, from http://www.gradesaver.com /the-birthday-party /study-guide /bibliography/
Murphy, B. (1999). “Personality wins the day”: Death of a Salesman and popular sales advice literature. South Atlantic Review, 64(1), 1-10. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3201741
The play, “Death of a Salesman” written by Arthur Miller, presents Willy Loman, as a salesman, who fails to earn a living and slowly loses his mind. Willy continuously seeks the past to find out where he went wrong. During his years in life, Willy wanted his two sons, Biff and Happy to become someone they’re not; Willy wanted them to become a salesman like him. However, because of his obsession in the American Dream of easy success and wealth, he created a life full of lies for himself and his sons. In the end because of “his misconception of himself as someone capable of greatness” leads to his downfall and the end of his life (Death of a Salesman).”
Willy Loman had the, “wrong dreams,” for his sons to become well-liked salesmen. Due to his own lack of popularity and success as a salesman, Willy forced Biff to try and become the salesman that he never was. However, Biff was an independent thinker unlike Happy and knew that he wanted nothing to do with corporate America. Still, Biff had more than just one reason why he did not want to be like his father which the reader discovers in the flashbacks throughout the story. In the story, Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller’s unique use of flashbacks illustrates how Willy and his torn relationship with his sons was affected by his past failures as a parent.
Porter, Thomas E. “Willy Loman and the American Dream.” Readings on Death of a Salesman. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, Inc., 1999.
Arthur Miller’s play, Death of a Salesman, portrays the cost of selling oneself to the American Dream. Willy Loman, the central character, is madly determined to achieve affluence that he overlooks the value of his family and himself in the process. He instills in his sons, Biff and Happy Loman, that being charismatic will hand them a prosperous lifestyle. Happy trusts in his father’s ideology while Biff’s beliefs contradict them. Biff deems that success is a product of happiness and contentment, not a paycheck. Out of all the sociological theories, social conflict best emphasizes the author’s perspective of how conflict, through class and family, can deteriorate the American dream. By analyzing the play’s themes- social class and family- through the sociological perspectives: structural-functional, social conflict, and symbolic interactionist, we can predict what drives these characters to behave and perceive things the way they do.
Arthur Miller’s play “Death of a Salesman”, primarily focuses on the flaws and failures of Willy Loman, Millers’ main character in this story. Willy’s distorted and backward views of the American Dream, paired with his inability to let go of the past lead him down a road of regret and in the end his biggest failure which was his wasted life.
The play “Death of the Salesman” by Arthur Miller, introduced the dramatic story of Willy Loman, a salesman who has reached the end of the road. Willy Loman is a washed-up salesman who is facing hard times. In “Death of a Salesmen,” Willy Loman has been deluding himself over the years to the point he cannot understand what is wrong with him. This leads to the problems with is sons, wife, and career; it ultimately is what ends his life. I believed that the character of Willy 's delusion caused him to fall. While there were many contributing factors to Willy 's demise, his failure to cope with such circumstances and to become trapped in his own delusion is what tears Willy apart from himself and his family. Rather than facing the reality, Willy
When a wife surprises her husband on his birthday, an ironic turn of events occurs. Katherine Brush’s “The Birthday Party” is a short story about relationships, told from the perspective of a nearby observer. Brush uses the words and actions of the married couple to assert that a relationship based on selfishness is weak.
Deception is present in Tennessee Williams’s drama ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’, William Shakespeare’s Tragedy ‘Othello’ and L. P. Hartley’s novel ‘The Go-Between’; the writers choose to use characterisation to explore the theme in depth. Often the protagonists of each text are the primary offenders of deceit, though some supporting characters mislead as well; although Iago is the antagonist of ‘Othello’, he is incomparably the most deceitful character in the entire play. Similarly, Williams uses Blanche to develop the plot by misleading the other characters and even herself at times, though arguably, unlike Iago, Blanche is presented as a character who lacks the motivation to hurt anyone. Conversely Leo, although the protagonist and narrator of the novel, is not the most deceitful character – Ted Burgess and Marian Maudsley not only coerce him into the deceit, but they themselves are presented as masters of the game they play, however, this essay will focus on Leo as he is a unique symbol of deceit; he is unaware of the consequences of his actions.
Willy Loman equates success as a human being with success in the business world. When Willy was a young man, he heard of a salesman who could "pick up his phone and call the buyers, and without ever leaving his room, at the age of eighty-four, make his living." (81) This salesman is Willy's inspiration; someday to be so respected and so well known that he can still provide for his family, even at an old age. Of course, Willy is no good at being a salesman because his heart isn't in it. The only time Willy puts his heart into anything is when he works with his hands, and his son, Biff, comes to realize this. "There's more of him in that front stoop than in all the sales he ever made." (138) Willy never comes to the realization that it is not being a salesman that he cares about, but rather being well known and, perhaps more importan...
Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman follows protagonist Willy Loman in his search to better his and his family’s lives. Throughout Willy Loman’s career, his mind starts to wear down, causing predicaments between his wife, two sons and close friends. Willy’s descent into insanity is slowly but surely is taking its toll on him, his job and his family. They cannot understand why the man they have trusted for support all these years is suddenly losing his mind. Along with his slope into insanity, Willy’s actions become more aggressive and odd as the play goes on. Despite Willy and Biff’s “family feud”, his two sons Happy and Biff truly worry about their father’s transformation, Happy saying: “He just wants you to make good, that’s all. I wanted to talk to you about dad for a long time, Biff. Something’s – happening to him. He – talks to himself” (Miller 21). Willy, as a father, cares about his children but he wishes they would do better. He believes Biff should have been an athlete. According to Harrington, “Even figuratively, Willy is haunted, and particularly in Biff’s failure to achieve success as a sports figure” (108). This haunting is part of what led to Willy’s slow plunge into madness. As Willy’s career in sales fails, he also fails, even failing his family. Heyen adds: “He didn’t have anything of real value to give to his family, or if he did, he didn’t know what it was” (48). His debilitating flashbacks and delusional hallucinations with Uncle Ben cement his horrifying realizations that he has let down his family. Willy Loman blames the economy for his downfall in his career. In one of his more extreme outbursts he exclaims, “There’s more people! That’s what’s ruining this country! Population is getting out of control. ...
Although the characters are not of noble birth nor possess a heroic nature nor experience a reversal of fortune, many of the elements in "Death of A Salesman" fulfill the criteria of a classic tragedy. The downfall and crisis points in the play are directly linked to the Loman family's combined harmartias, or personal flaws. The Loman's have unrealistic ideas regarding the meaning of success. To Willy, the foundation of success is not education or hard work, but rather "who you know and the smile on your face." Moreover, Willy ridicules the education Bernard has earned, declaring that his sons, Biff and Hap, will get further ahead in the business world because "the man who makes an appearance in the business world, the man who creates personal interest, is the man who gets ahead. Be liked, and you will never want." Willy idolizes two men: his brother, Ben, who walked out of an African jungle a rich man, and an 84-year-old salesman who could "pick a phone in twenty or thirty cities and be remembered and loved, and finally honored by hundred of mourners at his funeral." To Linda, success is paying off a 25...
Death of a Salesman is one of America’s most tragic plays, because it tells of disappointment, failure, and death. Ultimately, Willy wastes his adult years trying- unsuccessfully- to prove his worth. He has a misguided philosophy that he passes on to his two children, and can no longer distinguish between reality and illusion. The story of Willy Loman will remain popular because it serves as a warning to all: the question to be asked upon retiring from an occupation is not, “What does the person know?” but rather, “What has the person
“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.
In the writing world today, there are many definitions for technical terms that are used to describe certain genres of theatre, music and literature. There are romantic novels, musical dramas, and tragic plays. Tragedy is a difficult genre to pinpoint and label. The title ‘tragedy’ can be placed on virtually any piece of writing that involves a death. But it also is up to the individual as to what they believe a tragedy is defined as. The play, Death of a Salesman is not tragedy in the traditional sense of the word. This essay will discuss this idea, define tragedy hero according to historians, and broaden the definition of tragedy to fit a modern society.
...ne else in the play the power of language to alter reality, and the issues of conscious or unconscious deceit.