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Death of a SalesmanStudent Guide

Name :_______________________

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The AmericanDream

Through a combination of hard work, courage and determination, prosperity can be achieved.

In the early 19th Century, it was possible to come across a fortune

with relative ease.

Many prospectors bought cheap land west

of the Rockies in the hope of finding gold.

The American dream was the driving force for the gold rush of

the 1800’s

Problems in Europe encouraged mass immigration to America in order to prosper from freedom and financial

security they heard existed in America.

As the 20th

century grew closer, vast corporations

began to

Control the fortunes that resulted from

industrialisation.

All that was needed to achieve the dream was intelligence, talent, and a willingness to work hard.

It’s called the American

Dream because you have to be

sleeping to believe it.

Some think that the American dream is

misleading.

Read each of the following statements before you read the play and rate the following:

1 - - - - - - - - - - 2 - - -- - - - - - - - 3 - -- - - - - - - - - 4 -- - - - - - - - - 5 - - - - - - - - -6

Agree strongly Disagree Strongly

1. Everyone lives a bit of an imaginary life. 2. Parents try to relive their lives through their children’s lives.3. It takes a lot of courage to face the truth about ourselves.4. Making a lot of money is the mark of a successful person.5. We need to set goals for ourselves in order to feel accomplished.6. You can be whatever you want.7. You can be poor and still be successful.8. Hard work and determination is all one needs in order to attain a successful future.9. When someone’s dreams cannot be reached, it can be disastrous.10. Suicide can be seen as a noble act.11. Love means ignoring someone’s mistakes even if they are destructive.12. Being popular is more important than being smart.13. Making money through luck is way better than making money through hard work and determination.14. Being well-liked is very important.

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Anticipation Guide

Answer the questions below to the best of your ability. You will not be asked to share the specifics of your responses.

1. Who are you?

2. What is your idea of success and how will you know if you have achieved success?

3. Who do you think wants your success more, you or your parents? Explain.

4. Does your idea of success differ from your parents’ idea of success (for you specifically)? If so, how?

5. Do you think your perception of yourself is accurate? (Ex. Do you see yourself the way others see you?) Explain.

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Success is…

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6. Do you believe that you have an accurate perception of the world around you? (Do you believe you see things are they really are, or are your perceptions skewed?)

7. Do you believe that happiness and success are the same thing? Explain.

8. Do you think that it’s important to be able to answer the above questions before beginning a quest for happiness? Explain.

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Act 1

1. Why has Willy come back home early at the beginning of the play?2. Describe Willy.3. Describe Linda and explain how she treats Willy.4. How does Willy describe his son, Biff?5. Why has Biff come home? What is bothering him?6. What advice from Willy caused Biff’s downfall in high school?7. What does Willy say about Bernard?8. Who is Ben and what does he epitomize to Willy?9. Who is Charley and what makes him admirable?10.Discuss the difference between Willy and his father.11.What does Linda tell her sons about Willy and what proof does she

present?12.What role does Bernard serve in the play?

Act 213.Who is Dave Singleman and what does he represent to Willy?14.What is the significance of the title?15.Why does Howard seem insensitive to Willy’s hardships?16.When does Willy fantasize about Ben?17.Does Mr. Oliver remember Biff and explain what happens during their

meeting?18.Why won’t Willy work for Charley?19.Why did Biff go to Boston? And, what does he discover there?20.Why does Willy think that Biff will be impressed with his funeral?21.How does Willy kill himself and what is his motivation for doing so?22.Describe Willy’s funeral.23.Explain the irony of Linda’s last speech.24.Explain the double meaning of the title.

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Thematic Comprehension Questions

Death of a Salesman is riddled with symbols and motifs and your job will be to track them. At the end of the unit, you will use the information below to help you develop the themes of the play.

A symbol is an object that can represent something else. For example, a heart can represent love, a dove can represent peace…

A symbol may appear only once in a work , but a motif is reoccurring and can be an element or idea that is repeated throughout the piece.

Complete the chart below as you are reading and remember to include page references. It would be a good idea to have this page at your side while reading.

SymbolsSymbols Page references SignificanceStockings

Car

Fountain Pen

Seeds\garden

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Motifs and Symbols

MotifsMotifs Page references SignificanceWell-liked

Stealing

Vital to New-England

Debts

Boxed-in

Time

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Isn’t that remarkable

Can’t get near him

The flute music

The color gold

The jungle

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Fill out the information below about the characters in the play in order to uncover their thematic significances.

Characters Description (physical, moral, psychological) Accurate view on reality? Explain. Successful?Willy

Linda

Biff

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Characterization

Happy

Bernard

Charley

Uncle Ben

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(Also called Harlem in certain editions)

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore--

And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over-- like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

By Langston Huges

Answer the following questions after having read the poem.

1. According to the poem, what happens to a dream put on hold?

2. How does this poem apply to the play and to the characters specifically?

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A Dream Deffered

All discussions of "tragedy" begin with the rules laid down by Aristotle for works of literature to be presented on the stage. His definition is, "tragedy is in imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language, embellished with each kind of artistic ornaments; in the form of action, not of narrative; through pity and fear affecting the proper purgation of these emotions.” If we elaborate this definition, we discover that "tragedy" is the performance representation of a serious chain of events (real or imaginary) which starts with certain causes and ends with ultimate conclusions, and which is important for its place in history or for the lesson which it teaches. The events should be related in the highest and most artistic form of language, which, Aristotle concludes, is dramatic poetry. Finally, when a person beholds this representation, he should experience pity or fear (or both) in sympathy with the characters in the story. It was Aristotle's theory that if the audience were subjected to a representation of events which would create pity or fear, these emotions would be "purged" from their own lives and their lives would be better for the experience. Going to the theater then, in Aristotle's opinion, cleansed the mind and made it able to cope with the problems of daily life, and any play which left its hearers in a morbid frame of mind or which merely amused to them was quite useless and certainly not "tragedy".

In an Aristotelian in tragedy, there must be a "hero" or "protagonist". We will use the latter term because of the unfortunate modern association of the word "hero" with "good guy". To Aristotle, it was quite possible to have an evil protagonist, and there was no villain in the modern sense. It might be the same person as the hero. The protagonist should be a very important person (a king, famous soldier, etc.) at the full height of his power and strength.

The protagonist must come into conflict with a force directly opposed to what he should want (with the antagonist). He must struggle with that force, which might be Fate, or the gods, hostile human forces or a fault in his own character, and the outcome might be one of three things:

A) he might win 

B) he might make a deal with the hostile forces and retain some of his power

C) he might die after having made a tremendous struggle against superhuman odds and having changed the world in some way by his life.

(A) and (B) are interesting and often instructive, according to Aristotle, but only (C) is the true stuff of "tragedy".

It will be seen then, that those many sad and pitiable events which happen in everyday life, the loss of loved ones, the loss of home, death on the highways

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Tragedy

and so on, are not tragic in the original sense of the word. We have corrupted the word when we apply it to such events.  It is our prerogative to do so if we wish, but we should know what we are doing.

Aristotle is modern in the sense that he believed in retribution or present punishment for sins. He was a Greek, and the Greeks had hundreds of gods who were a whimsical lot, doing as they pleased without regard for justice or human suffering, yet he sensed that there was a universal justice which rewarded to the virtuous and punish the guilty. He called it "Nemesis" and insisted that every tragedy should show it working to restore the balance of natural justice and to bring the protagonist to his downfall. It might function through a certain person or it might simply be the product of a chain of events, but it must be there.

Finally, Aristotle insisted that every tragedy must contain six parts: plot, character, diction, thought, spectacle, and song.

Death of a salesman – the modern tragedy– A drama in prose or verse, which recounts an important and casually related series of events in the life of a person of significance, such events culminating in an unhappy catastrophe; the whole treated with great dignity and seriousness.

– If a generalization can be made about tragedy, it is probably the tragedy treats man in terms of god – like potential, of his transcendent ideals of the part of himself that is in rebellion against not only the universe, but the frailty of his own flesh and will. 

– In its own way, Death of a Salesman is fully serious and as dignified for our world as Hamlet was for Elizabethan England, although it is a lesser play.

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Does Miller’s Death of a Salesman fit the bill?Using the information in your notes about tragedy, fill out the information below using the information from the play to determine if this work would have been considered a good tragedy according to Aristotle.

A tragedy occurred to a great person who had a potential for "great" and who was defeated.

Protagonist: ___________________________________________________________________

Was he great? Explain. ________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________________

Was the protagonist “defeated”? If so, how? ____________________________________

________________________________________________________________________________

(According to modern times: a tragedy is anyone who has the potential for "great" and who is destroyed (does not necessarily include death). )

– Example – a great skater has cancer and gets his leg amputated

– Therefore, Miller is the first dramatist to go against Aristotle's classic definition

– In Death of a Salesman, Miller chooses ordinary man as his tragic hero.

 -The theme is also ordinary: we meet a failure and through him, we try to determine what's a successful human being?

Sources: Miller, Arthur. "Death of a salesman", The Viking Critical Library. New York: the Viking press, 1967. 

Aristotle. Aristotle: Poetics. Classical Literary Criticism. Ed. D.A Russel and M. Winterbottom.Oxford University Press: New York. 1989.

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Major themes in the play:

Success Appearance vs. reality Individual vs. society The American Dream (Remember you have notes on this)

A theme is a message the author has for his audience about the world around us. It’s important to remember this when developing a theme. A theme is a message. For example, just because a lot of people die in Shakespeare’s tragedy, unless the deaths have a larger meaning, death would not be a theme.

For each of the themes above, brainstorm all of the examples concerning the theme and then uncover what you think the author’s message is about that theme.

Ex. Success

1) Write down examples you remember reading about success from your play.

2) What does success mean in the play?

3) Based on the above information, what do you think the author is trying to teach us about success?

Now do the same for the other themes.

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Play Review