Death of a Salesman Critical insights Essay

In a 2003 interview with his biographer. Christopher Bigsby. about the built-in construction of his dramas. Arthur Miller explained. “It’s all about the language” ( Bigsby. “Miller” ) . Miller’s declaration about the centrality of linguistic communication in the creative activity of play came at the terminal of his about seventy-year calling. He had completed his concluding drama. Completing the Picture. and a little more than a twelvemonth subsequently. he became sick and later died in February 2005. Thus Miller’s statement can be seen as a concluding avouchment about how linguistic communication operates in dramatic duologue. a concern that had obsessed him since the start of his calling when he wrote his first drama. No Villain. at the University of Michigan in 1935.

Despite Miller’s announcement. non plenty critical attending has been paid to the sophisticated usage of linguistic communication that pervades his duologue. Throughout his calling. Miller frequently was capable to reexamine in which critics largely excoriated him for what they judged as a failed usage of linguistic communication in his dramas. For illustration. in the Nation reappraisal of the original production of Death of a Salesman in 1949. Joseph Wood Krutch criticized the drama for “its failure to travel beyond actual significance and its insignificant duologue. Unlike Tennessee Williams. Miller does non hold a alone esthesia. new penetration. fresh imaginativeness or a gift for language” ( 283-84 ) . In 1964. Richard Gilman judged that After the Fall lacks structural focal point and contains obscure rhetoric. He concluded that Miller’s “verbal insufficiency [ has ] ne’er been more flagrantly exhibited” ( 6 ) . John Simon’s New York reappraisal of the 1994 Broadway production of Broken Glass opined that “Miller’s ultimate failure is his linguistic communication: Tone-deafness in a dramatist is merely a shadiness less bad than in a composer. ” In a June 2009 reappraisal of Christopher Bigsby’s authorized life of Miller. Terry Teachout judged that Miller “too frequently made the error of utilizing aureate. pseudo-poetic language” ( 72 ) .

These reappraisals illustrate how. as a linguistic communication stylist. Arthur Miller was underappreciated. excessively frequently overshadowed by his modern-day Tennessee Williams. whose major strength as a playwright for many critics prevarications in the “lyricism” of his dramas. As Arthur K. Oberg pointed out. “In the established image. Miller’s art is masculine and cragged ; Williams’ . poetic and delicate” ( 303 ) . Because Miller has so frequently been pigeonholed as a “social” playwright. most of the unfavorable judgment of his work focuses on the cultural relevancy of his dramas and ignores elaborate treatments of his language–especially of its poetic elements. Most critics are content to see his duologue as “colloquial. ” judging that Miller best used what Leonard Moss described as “the common man’s language” ( 52 ) to reflect the societal concerns of his characters. The premise is frequently made that the makers. salesmen. Puritan husbandmans. stevedores. homemakers. police officers. physicians. attorneies. executives. and bankers who compose the majority of Miller’s characters speak a realistic prose dialogue–a manner that is implicitly antithetical to poetic linguistic communication.

This prevalent sentiment of Miller as a playwright who simply uses the common man’s linguistic communication has been reinforced mostly by a deficiency of in-depth critical analyses of how nonliteral linguistic communication works in his canon. In his November 1998 reappraisal of the Chicago tally of the 50th anniversary production of Death of a Salesman. Ben Brantley noted that. “as recent Miller scholarship has suggested once more and once more. the play’s images and beats have the forms of poetry” ( E3 ) . In world. though. comparatively few critics have exhaustively examined this facet non merely of Salesman but besides of Miller’s full dramatic canon. 1 Thomas M. Tammaro Judgess “that critical attending to Miller’s play has been lured from textual analysis to such non-textual concerns as life and Miller as a societal dramatist” ( 10 ) . 2 Furthermore. schoolroom treatments of Miller’s chef-d’oeuvres Death of a Salesman and The Crucible ( 1953 ) largely focus on these biographical and societal concerns in add-on to word picture and thematic issues but seldom discuss linguistic communication and duologue. Five old ages after his passing. it is clip to acknowledge that Arthur Miller created a alone dramatic parlance that doubtless marks him as important linguistic communication stylist within twentieth- and twenty-first-century American and universe play. More readers and critics should see his duologue non entirely as prose but besides as poesy. what Gordon W. Couchman has called Miller’s “rare gift for the poetic in the colloquial” ( 206 ) .

Although Miller seems to work largely in a signifier of conversational prose. there are many minutes in his dramas when the duologue clearly elevates to poetry. Miller frequently takes what look to be the colloquialisms. cliches. and parlances of the common man’s linguistic communication and reveals them as poetic linguistic communication. particularly by switching words from their denotative to connotative significances. Furthermore. he significantly employs the nonliteral devices of metaphor. symbol. and imagination to give poetic significance to prose idiom. In add-on. in many texts Miller embeds series of metaphors–many are extended–that possess peculiar intensions within the societies of the single dramas. Most of import. these nonliteral devices significantly support the tragic struggles and societal subjects that are the focal point of every Miller drama. By dexterously blending these nonliteral devices of symbolism. imagination. and metaphor with conversational prose duologue. Miller combines prose and poetry to make a alone dramatic parlance. Most critics. readers. and audiences seem to overlook this facet of Miller’s work: the poesy is in the prose and the prose is in the poesy.

Indeed. poetic elements pervade most of Miller’s dramas. For illustration. in All My Sons. spiritual allusions. symbols. and images place the subjects of forfeit and salvation in a Christian context. In Death of a Salesman. the drawn-out metaphors of athleticss and trees convey Willy Loman’s battle to accomplish the American Dream. In The Crucible. the poetic linguistic communication illustrates the struggles that polarize the Salem community as a series of opposing images–heat and cold. white and black. visible radiation and dark. soft and hard–signify the Salemites’ Manichaean position of the universe. In A Position from the Bridge. metaphors of pureness and artlessness give mythic importance to Eddie Carbone’s sexual. psychological. and moral battles. After the Fall uses drawn-out metaphors of childhood and faith to back up Quentin’s psychological pursuit for salvation. The Ride Down Mt. Morgan connects metaphors of transit and travel to Lyman Felt’s actual and nonliteral autumn. and Broken Glass uses images of mirrors and glass to associate the universe of the European Jew at the beginning of the Holocaust to Sylvia and Phillip Gellburg’s shattered sexual universe.

That most critics continue to neglect to acknowledge Miller’s sophisticated usage of poetic elements is striking. for it is this really installation for which many other dramatists are praised. and the history of play is closely intertwined with the history of poesy. For most of Western dramatic history. dramas were written in poetry: the ancient Greek dramatists of the 5th century b. c. e. composed their calamities in a poetry often accompanied by music ; the riming pairs of the Everyman playwright were the de rigueur mediaeval signifier ; and English Renaissance dramas were poetic chef-d’oeuvres. Shakespeare’s domination as a playwright lies in his version of the early modern English linguistic communication into a dramatic duologue that combines prose and poesy. For illustration. Hamlet’s “quintessence of dust” address is lyrical prose. In the 20th century. critics praised the poetry dramas of T. S. Eliot. Maxwell Anderson. Christopher Isherwood. and W. H. Auden.

Even more perplexing about this critical disregard is that Miller readily acknowledged his attractive force to poetry and dramatic poetry. His positions on linguistic communication. peculiarly poetic linguistic communication. are apparent in the colossal figure of essays he produced throughout his calling. Criticism has largely ignored this big organic structure of nonfiction authorship in which Miller often expounds on the nature of linguistic communication and duologue. the tenseness between realistic prose and poetic linguistic communication in twentieth-century play. and the complex development of poetic linguistic communication throughout his dramas. 3 For illustration. in his 1993 essay “About Theatre Language” he writes:

It was inevitable that I had to face the job of dramatic linguistic communication. . . . I bit by bit came to inquire if the indispensable force per unit area toward poetic dramatic language–if non of stylisation itself–came from the inclusion of society as a major component in the play’s narrative or vision. Obviously. prose pragmatism was the linguistic communication of the single and private life. poetry the linguistic communication of adult male in crowds. in society. Put another manner. prose is the linguistic communication of household dealingss ; it is the inclusion of the larger universe beyond that of course opens a drama to the poetic.

. . . How to happen a manner that would at one and the same clip deeply prosecute an American audience. which insisted on a recognizable world of characters. venues. and subjects. while opening the phase to considerations of public morality and the mythic societal fates–in short. the unseeable? ( 82 )

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Miller’s attractive force to poetic dramatic duologue can be traced back to his development as a dramatist. peculiarly his clip as a pupil at the University of Michigan in the mid-1930s and the early old ages of his great successes in the 1940s and 1950s. when his positions on dramatic signifier. construction. aesthetics. and linguistic communication were germinating. Miller knew small about the theatre when he arrived in Ann Arbor from his place in Brooklyn. but during these formative college old ages. he became cognizant of German expressionism. and he read August Strindberg and Henrik Ibsen. whom he frequently acknowledged as major influences on him. Christopher Bigsby has pointed out that Miller ever remembered the consequence that reading Greek and Elizabethan dramatists at college had on him ( Critical Study 419 ) . However. Miller was markedly affected by the social-protest work of Clifford Odets. In his autobiography. Timebends ( 1987 ) . Miller describes how Odets’s 1930s dramas Waiting for Lefty ( 1935 ) . Awake and Sing ( 1935 ) . and Golden Boy ( 1937 ) had “sprung away a new phenomenon. a left-of-center challenge to the system. the poet all of a sudden jumping onto the phase and disposing of middle-class breeding. shriek and shouting and cussing like person off the Manhattan streets” ( 229 ) . Most of import for Miller. Odets brought to American play a concern for linguistic communication: “For the really first clip in America. linguistic communication itself had marked a dramatist as unique” ( 229 ) . To Miller. Odets was “The merely poet. I thought. non merely in the societal protest theatre. but in all of New York” ( 212 ) .

After Miller won his first Avery Hopwood Award at Michigan. he was sent to Professor Kenneth Rowe. whose main part to Miller’s development was cultivating his involvement in the kineticss of drama building. Odets and Rowe clearly were well strong influences on Miller as he developed his concern with linguistic communication and his signifier broke out of what he termed the “dusty realistic wont ” ( Timebends 228 ) of Broadway. but other influences would besides oblige him to compose dramatic poetry. The work of Thornton Wilder. peculiarly Our Town ( 1938 ) . spoke to him. and in Timebends Miller acknowledges that Our Town was the nearest of the 1930s dramas in “reaching for lyricism” ( 229 ) . Tennessee Williams is another dramatist whom Miller often credited with act uponing his art and the trade of his linguistic communication. He credited the newness of The Glass Menagerie ( 1944 ) to the play’s “poetic lift” ( Timebends 244 ) and was peculiarly struck by A Streetcar Named Desire ( 1947 ) . proclaiming that Williams had given him licence to talk in dramatic linguistic communication “at full throat” ( Timebends 182 ) .

Furthermore. Miller practiced what he had learned and espoused. In fact. he reported that when he was foremost get downing his calling he was “up to [ his ] neck” in composing many of his full-length and wireless dramas in poetry ( “Interview” 98 ) . When he graduated from Michigan and started his work with the Federal Theatre Project in 1938. he wrote The Golden Years. a verse drama about Montezuma. In a missive to Professor Rowe. he reported that he found composing verse much easier than composing prose: “I made the find that in poetry you are forced to be brief and to the point. Verse squeezes out fat and you’re left with the existent significance of the language” ( Bigsby. Arthur Miller 155 ) . Besides. he explained that much of Death of a Salesman and all of The Crucible were originally written in poetry ; the one-act version of A View from the Bridge ( 1955 ) was written in an challenging mixture of poetry and prose. and Miller regretted his failure to make the same in The American Clock ( 1980 ) ( Bigsby. Critical Introduction 136 ) .

However. Miller found an American theatre hostile to the poetic signifier. Miller himself pointed out that the United States had no tradition of dramatic poetry ( “Interview” 98 ) as compared to Europe. In the 1930s. Maxwell Anderson was one of the few American dramatists integrating clean poetry into his dramas. and the English theatre witnessed some involvement in poetic play in the 1940s and 1950s. most notably with Christopher Fry and T. S. Eliot. In world. dramatic poetry had been in crisp diminution since the late 19th century. when the realistic prose duologue used by Henrik Ibsen in Norway was adopted by George Bernard Shaw in England and so subsequently employed by Eugene O’Neill in the United States. Miller besides judged that American histrions had trouble talking the verse line ( “Interview” 98 ) . Further. Miller came of age at a clip when American audiences were demanding pragmatism. the musical comedy was deriving in laterality. and commercial Broadway manufacturers were disinterested in verse play.

Christopher Bigsby has pointed out that Miller was “in his ain head. an basically poetic. deeply metaphoric author who had found himself in a theatre resistant to such. peculiarly on Broadway. which he continued to believe of as his natural place. despite its many deficiencies” ( Critical Study 358 ) . Fighting with how to accept this world. Miller accommodated his natural disposition to versify by developing a dramatic parlance that reconciled his poetic impulse with the pragmatism demanded by the aesthetics of the American phase. Therefore he infused poetic linguistic communication into his prose duologue.

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Let’s analyze how some of these poetic devices–symbolism. imagination. and metaphor– operate in Miller’s chef-d’oeuvre. Death of a Salesman. From the beginning of the drama. Miller makes trees and athleticss into metaphors meaning Willy Loman’s battle to accomplish the American Dream within the competitory American concern universe. Trees symbolize Willy’s dreams. athleticss the competition for economic success. 4 Miller sustains these metaphors throughout the full text with images of packaging. combustion. wood. nature. and contending to do them into important consolidative constructions. In add-on. Miller’s preference for juxtaposing the actual and nonliteral significances of words is peculiarly apparent in Salesman as the abstract constructs of competition and dreaming are vivified by concrete objects and actions such as pugilism. fists. timber. and ashes.

Trees are an first-class illustration of how Miller uses actual and nonliteral significances. Two mentions in act 1. scene 1. instantly set up their importance in the drama. When Willy out of the blue arrives place. he explains that he was unable to drive to Portland for his gross revenues call because he kept going absorbed in the countryside scenery. where “the trees are so thick. and the Sun is warm” ( 14 ) . Although these trees simply seem to deflect Willy from driving. he besides indicates their connexion to dreaming. He tells Linda: “I perfectly forgot I was driving. If I’d’ve gone the other manner over the white line I might’ve killed person. So I went on again–and five proceedingss subsequently I’m dreamin’ again” ( 14 ) . Willy’s inability to concentrate on driving indicates an emotional struggle larger than mere woolgathering. The drama reveals how Willy frequently exists in dreams instead than reality–dreams of being good liked. of success for his boy Biff. of his “imaginings. ” All of these dreams closely connect to Willy’s confrontation with his failure to accomplish the touchable facets of the American Dream. He is a going salesman. and his inability to drive typify his inability to sell. which guarantees that he will neglect in the competition to be a “hot-shot salesman. ” The action of the drama depicts the last twenty-four hours of Willy’s life and how Willy is progressively get awaying the world of his failure in reveries of the yesteryear. to the point where he frequently can non distinguish between world and semblance.

The repeat of the reference of trees in Willy’s 2nd address in scene 1 cements the importance of trees in the drama as a metaphor for these dreams. He complains to Linda about the flat houses environing the Loman place: “They should’ve had a jurisprudence against flat houses. Remember those two beautiful elm trees out at that place? When Biff and I hung the swing between them? ” ( 17 ) . However. these trees are non the trees of the existent clip of the drama ; instead. they exist in Willy’s yesteryear and. more of import. in the “imaginings” of his head. the topographic point where the more of import dramatic action of the drama takes topographic point.

Miller’s working rubric for Death of a Salesman was “The Inside of His Head. ” and surely Willy’s hankering for the trees of the past illustrates how dreaming plants in his head. Throughout the full drama. trees–and all the other images connected to them–are complicated symbols of an idyllic yesteryear for which Willy longs in his dreams. a universe where Biff and Hap are immature. where Willy can believe himself a hot-shot salesman. where Brooklyn seems an good wilderness. The sarcasm is that. in world. the yesteryear was non every bit idyllic as Willy recalls. and the drama bit by bit unfolds the world of Willy’s failures. The metaphor of trees besides supports Willy’s unresolved battle with his boy Biff. Willy’s memory of Biff and himself hanging a knoll between the elms is dry as the two beautiful trees’ absence in the present symbolizes Willy’s failed dreams for Biff.

Throughout the drama. Miller significantly expands upon the nonliteral significance of trees. For illustration. in act 1. scene 4. Willy responds to Hap’s claims that he will retire Willy for life by noting:

You’ll retire me for life on 70 goddam dollars a hebdomad? And your adult females and your auto and your flat. and you’ll retire me for life! Christ’s sake I couldn’t acquire past Yonkers today! Where are you cats. where are you? The forests are firing! I can’t drive a auto! ( 41 )

Willy’s warning that “the forests are burning” extends the tree metaphor by presenting an of import sense of devastation to the trees of Willy’s idyllic universe of the yesteryear. Since the trees are so identified with Willy’s dreams. the image implies that his dreams are firing too–his dreams for himself as a successful salesman and his dreams for Biff and Hap. The images of combustion and devastation are important in the drama. particularly when Linda reveals Willy’s self-destruction attempts–his ain signifier of devastation. which he enacts at play’s terminal. We realize that since Willy is so associated with his dreams. he will decease when they burn. In fact. Willy repeats this same exact line in act 2 when he arrives at Frank’s Chop House and announces his fire to Hap and Biff. He says: “I’m non interested in narratives about the past or any dirt of that sort because the forests are firing. male childs. you understand? There’s a large blazing traveling on all around. I was fired today” ( 107 ) . This line non merely repeats Willy’s warning call from act 1 but besides foreshadows Biff’s climactic supplication to Willy to “take that bogus dream and burn it” ( 133 ) . The combustion metaphor–now ironic–also appears in Willy’s imagining in the Boston hotel room. As Willy continues to disregard Biff’s strike hard on the door. the adult female says. “Maybe the hotel’s on fire. ” Willy answers. “It’s a error. there’s no fire” ( 116 ) . Of class. nil is threatened by a actual fire–only by the nonliteral blazing inside Willy’s caput.

Once cognizant of how tree images operate in the drama. a reader ( or lament playgoer ) can observe the blare of other mentions that sustain the metaphor in other scenes. For illustration. Willy wants Biff to assist pare the tree subdivision that threatens to fall on the Loman house ; Biff and Hap steal timber ; Willy plaintively remembers his male parent carving flutes ; Willy tells Ben that Biff can “fell trees” ; Willy mocks Biff for desiring to be a carpenter and likewise mocks Charley and his boy Bernard because they “can’t hammer a nail” ; Ben buys forest in Alaska ; Biff burns his gym shoes in the furnace ; Willy speculates about his demand for a “little lumber” ( 72 ) to construct a invitee house for the male childs when they get married ; Willy is proud of enduring a twenty-five-year mortgage with “all the cement. the lumber” ( 74 ) he has put into the house ; Willy explains to Ben that “I am constructing something with this house. ” something “you can’t feel. . . with your manus like timber” ( 86 ) . Finally. there are “the foliages of twenty-four hours looking over everything” in the cemetery in “Requiem” ( 136 ) .

Miller similarly utilizations packaging in actual and nonliteral ways throughout the drama. In act 1. scene 2. Biff suggests to Happen that they buy a spread to “use our musculuss. Work force built like we are should be working out in the open” ( 24 ) . Hap responds to Pummel with the first athleticss mention in the text: “That’s what I dream about. Biff. Sometimes I want to merely rend my apparels off in the center of the shop and outbox that blasted ware director. I mean I can outbox. outrun. and outlift anybody in that store” ( 24 ) . As an jock. Biff. it seems. should present the athleticss metaphor. but. ironically. the athletics with which he is identified–football–is non used in any extended metaphoric manner in the drama. 5 Alternatively. packaging becomes the drawn-out athleticss metaphor of the text. and it is non introduced by Biff but instead by Hap. who reinforces it throughout the drama to demo how Willy has prepared him and Biff merely for physical competition. non concern or economic competition. Thus Hap expresses his defeat at being a mediocre worker by emphasizing his physical high quality over his directors. Unable to win in economic competition. he longs to crush his coworkers in a physical lucifer. and it is this contrast between economic and physical competition that intensifies the dramatic interplay between the actual and the nonliteral linguistic communication of the drama.

In fact. the really fight of the American economic system in which Willy and Hap work. and that Biff hatreds. is systematically put on physical footings in the drama. A failure in the competitory workplace. Hap uses the metaphor of physical competition–boxing adult male to man–yet the drama inside informations how Hap was considered less physically impressive than Biff when the two were male childs. As an grownup. Hap competes in the lone physical competition he can win–sex. He even uses the imagination of competition when speaking about his sexual conquerings of the shop managers’ girlfriends: “Maybe I merely have an overdeveloped sense of competition or something” ( 25 ) . Possibly cognizing that they can non win. the Lomans resort to a important sum of rip offing in competition: Willy condones Biff’s larceny of a football. Biff darnels on his test. Hap takes payoffs. and Willy darnels on Linda. All of this cheating signifies the Lomans’ moral weaknesss every bit good.

The pugilism metaphor besides illustrates the contrast between Biff and Hap. Boxing as a athleticss metaphor is rather different from the expected football metaphor: a pugilist relies wholly on personal physical strength while contending a individual opposition. whereas in football. a squad athletics. the participants rely on group attempt and group tactics. Thus the difference between Biff and Hap–Hap as evoker of the pugilism metaphor and Biff as a participant of a squad sport–is emphasized throughout the text. Furthermore. the action of the drama relies on the clang of dreams between Biff and Willy. Biff is Willy’s favourite boy. and Willy’s ain dreams and letdowns are tied to him. Yet Hap. the mediocre boy. the mediocre physical specimen. the mediocre worker. is the boy who is most similar Willy in profession. bluster. and sexual swagman. Ultimately. at the play’s terminal. in “Requiem. ” the pugilism metaphor ironically points out Hap’s significance as the existent rival for Willy’s dream. for he decides to remain in the metropolis because Willy “fought it out here and this is where I’m gon na win it for him” ( 139 ) .

Biff’s packaging contrasts aggressively with Hap’s. For illustration. Biff ironically performs a actual pugilism competition with Ben. which juxtaposes with the nonliteral competition of the drama. The pugilism reinforces the accent that has been placed on Biff as the most physically prepared “specimen” of the male childs. Yet Biff is defeated by Ben ; in world he is badly prepared to contend a pugilism lucifer because it is a man-to-man competition. unlike football. the squad athletics at which he excelled. He is particularly sick prepared for Uncle Ben’s sort of packaging lucifer because it is non a just lucifer conducted on a flat playing field. As Ben says: “Never fight just with a alien. male child. You’ll ne’er acquire out of the jungle that way” ( 49 ) . Thus the actual act of packaging possesses nonliteral significance. Willy has non conditioned Biff ( or. by extension. Hap ) for any fight–fair or unfair–in the larger nonliteral “jungle” of the drama: the workplace of the American economic system.

Willy. excessively. uses a important sum of packaging imagination. much of it rather violent. In the first imagining in act 1. Biff asks Willy about his recent gross revenues trip. “Did you knock them dead. Pop? ” and Willy responds. “Knocked ’em cold in Providence. slaughtered ’em in Boston” ( 33 ) ; when he relates to Linda how another salesman at F. H. Stewarts insulted him. Willy claims he “cracked him right across the face” ( 37 ) . the same physical menace that he will subsequently do against Charley in act 2 on the twenty-four hours of the Ebbets Field game. Willy wants to package Charley. disputing him. “Put up your custodies. Goddam you. set up your hands” ( 68 ) . Willy besides says. “I’m gon na strike hard Howard for a loop” ( 74 ) . Willy uses these violent physical footings against work forces he perceives as rivals and rivals.

As with the tree metaphor. this one is sustained throughout the scenes with a overplus of packaging mentions: a punching bag is inscribed with Gene Tunney’s name ; Hap challenges Bernard to package ; Willy explains to Linda that the male childs gathered in the cellar obey Biff because. “Well. that’s the preparation. the training” ; Biff feebly attempts to package with Uncle Ben ; Bernard comments to Willy that Biff “never trained himself for anything” ( 92 ) ; Charley cheers on his boy with a “Knock ’em dead. Bernard” ( 95 ) as Bernard leaves to reason a instance in forepart of the Supreme Court ; Willy. showing to Bernard his defeat that Biff has done nil with his life. says. “Why did he put down? ” ( 93 ) . This last pugilism mention. associated with taking a honkytonk. is a unusually imagistic manner of depicting how Biff ab initio cut
down his life out of malice after detecting Willy’s unfaithfulness.

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Miller besides uses images. symbols. and metaphors as cardinal or consolidative devices by using repeat and recurrence–one of the cardinal dogmas of alleged bunch unfavorable judgment. which was pioneered in the 1930s and 1940s. 6 In short. bunch unfavorable judgment argues that the calculated repeat of words. images. symbols. and metaphors contributes to the integrity of the work merely every bit significantly as bash secret plan. character. and subject. These bunchs of words can run both literally and figuratively in a text–as I. A. Richards notes in The Philosophy of Rhetoric–and. therefore. lend significantly to the overall aesthetic and thematic impact. For illustration. in Arthur Miller. Dramatist. Edward Murray traces word repeat in The Crucible. analyzing how Miller. “in a really elusive mode. uses cardinal words to knit together the texture of action and subject. ” He notes. for illustration. the recurrent usage of the word “soft” in the text ( 64 ) . My ain old work on The Crucible has examined how the ten-fold repeat of the word “weight” supports one of the play’s important subjects: how an individual’s battle for truth frequently conflicts with society.

Let’s examine an challenging illustration of word repeat from Death of a Salesman. 7 The words “paint” and “painting” appear five important times in the drama. The first is a actual usage: at the terminal of act 1. Willy tells Biff during their statement. “If you acquire tired of hanging about tomorrow. paint the ceiling I put up in the life room” ( 45 ) . This line echoes Willy’s old jeer of Charley for non cognizing how to set up a ceiling: “A adult male who can’t grip tools is non a man” ( 30 ) . In both cases. Willy is asseverating his high quality on the footing of his physical art. a point that is systematically emphasized in the drama.

The 2nd clip “paint” appears is in act 2. when Biff and Hap abandon Willy in Frank’s Chop House to go forth with Letta and Miss Forsythe. Hap says to Letta: “No. that’s non my male parent. He’s merely a cat. Come on. we’ll gimmick Biff. and honey we’re traveling to paint this town! ” ( 91 ) . Of class in this line Miller uses the cliche “Paint the town red” for its well-known significance of holding a wild dark of partying and dissolution–although it is noteworthy that Miller uses a abbreviated signifier of the phrase. Nevertheless. here the cliche takes on new significance in the context of the drama. Willy defines maleness by painting a ceiling. but Hap defines it by painting the town with sexual orgy and revelry. lording his physical high quality and his sexual conquerings over other work forces.

The 3rd. 4th. and 5th repeats occur in act 2 during the imagining in the hotel room when Biff discovers Willy with the adult female. When the adult female comes out of the bathroom. Willy says: “Ah–you better travel back to your room. They must be finished painting by now. They’re painting her room so I let her take a shower here” ( 119 ) . When she leaves. Willy attempts to convert Biff that “she lives down the hall–they’re picture. You don’t imagine–” ( 120 ) . Here. picture is at the same time actual and metaphorical because of its old use in the play–but with a high grade of sarcasm. Willy’s lame account that Miss Francis’s room is literally being painted is a cover-up for the world that Willy himself has painted the town in Boston. Biff discovers that Willy’s manhood is defined by sexual infidelity–ultimately specifying him as a “phony small sham. ”

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Another comparatively undiscovered facet of Miller’s linguistic communication is the names of his characters. Miller chooses his characters’ names for their metaphorical associations in most of his dramatic canon. Justin Kaplan and Anne Bernays’s 1997 text The Language of Names revived some involvement in this technique. which is known as literary onomastics and is considered a slightly minor portion of modern-day literary unfavorable judgment. Kaplan and Bernays examine the connotative value of names that function in texts as “symbolic. metaphoric. or allegorical discourse” ( 175 ) . Although some bookmans have discussed the usage of this technique in single Miller dramas. most readers familiar with the organic structure of Miller’s work notice how systematically he chooses the names of his characters to make symbols. sarcasm. and points of contrast.

For illustration. readers and critics who are familiar merely with Death of a Salesman among Miller’s plants have long noted that Willy’s last name literally marks him as a “low adult male. ” although Miller himself chuckled at the overemphasis placed on this wordplay. He really derived the name from a film he had seen. The Testament of Dr. Mabuse. in which a wholly huffy character at the terminal of the movie shriek. “Lohman. Lohman. acquire me Lohman” ( Timebends 177-79 ) . To Miller. the man’s call signified the craze he wanted to make in his salesman. Willy Loman. Many critics besides have noted the significance of the name of Dave “Singleman. ” the eighty-year-old salesman who stands entirely as Willy’s ideal.

Despite Miller’s consistent downplaying in interviews of the significance of his characters’ names. an scrutiny of his technique reveals how extensively he connects his characters’ names to the larger societal issues at the nucleus of every drama. For illustration. the last name of All My Sons’ Joe Keller. who manufactures faulty aeroplane parts and is indirectly responsible for the deceases of 21 pilots. resembles “killer. ” In old work on the drama. I have noted the comparing of the Kellers to the Holy Family. and how. hence. the names of Joe and his boy. Chris. take on spiritual significance. Susan C. W. Abbotson has noted how the first name of The Ride Down Mt. Morgan’s Lyman Felt suggests the prevarication he has lived out. She besides has analyzed the similarities between Loman and Lyman. and has argued that Lyman is a sort of alter self-importance to Willy some 40 old ages subsequently. Frank Ardolino has besides examined how Miller employs Egyptian mythology in calling and picturing Hap ( “Mythological” ) .

An challenging characteristic of Miller’s usage of names is his repeat of the same name. or signifier of the same name. in his dramas. It is striking how in Salesman Miller uses the name “Frank. ” or fluctuations of it. five times for five different characters. a extremely unusual happening. 8 In act 1. during Willy’s foremost conceive ofing. when Linda complains to Pummel that there is a cellar full of male childs in the Loman house who do non cognize what to make with themselves. Frank is one of the male childs whom Biff gets to clean up the furnace room. Not long after. at the terminal of the imagining. Frank is the name of the machinist who fixes the carburettor of Willy’s Chevrolet. In act 2. in the traveling scene in which Howard efficaciously fires Willy and Willy is left entirely in the office. Willy cries out three times for “Frank. ” seemingly Howard’s male parent and the original proprietor of the company. who. Willy claims. asked Willy to “name” Howard. Willy besides meets the male childs in Frank’s Chop House and. in the important find scene in the Boston hotel room. Willy introduces the adult female to Biff as Miss Francis. “Frank” frequently being a moniker for Francis.

There are important nonliteral utilizations of “Frank” excessively. for. although the word means “honest” or “candid. ” all of the Franks in Salesman are clearly associated with work that is non wholly honest. Biff uses the male child Frank and his comrades to clean the furnace room and hang up the wash–chores that he should be making himself. Willy somewhat inquiries the fix occupation that the mechanic Frank does on “that blasted Chevrolet. ” Despite Willy’s idolizing of his foreman. Frank Wagner. Linda indicates that Frank. possibly. promised Willy a partnership as a member of the house. a promise that kept Willy from fall ining Ben in Alaska and that was ne’er made good on by either Frank or his boy. Howard. Miss Francis promises to set Willy through to the purchasers in exchange for stockings and her sexual favours. but it is unsure whether she holds up her terminal of the trade. since Willy surely has ne’er been a “hot-shot” salesman. And. of class. Frank’s Chop House is the topographic point where Stanley tells Hap that the foreman. presumptively Frank. is traveling brainsick over the “leak in the hard currency registry. ” Thus Miller clearly uses the name Frank with a high grade of sarcasm. an of import facet of his usage of nonliteral linguistic communication in his canon. Of class. all this concern dishonesty emphasizes how Salesman challenges the unity of the American work ethic.

Miller’s careful choice of names shows that he possibly considered the names of his characters as portion of each play’s web of nonliteral linguistic communication. As Kaplan and Bernays note. “Names of characters. . . convey what their Godheads may already cognize and experience about them and how they want their readers to respond” ( 174 ) . Therefore. in his pick of names. Arthur Miller may really good be pull stringsing his audience before the drape rises. as they sit and read the dramatis personae of characters in their playbills.

Finally. being cognizant of Miller’s usage of poetic linguistic communication is important for nevertheless we encounter his plays–as readers who analyze play as text or as audience members in melody with the sound of the duologue. It is. so. “all about the language”–the linguistic communication we read in the text and the linguistic communication we hear on the phase.

Notes

1. Although some critics have examined Miller’s conversational prose. merely a few have conducted surveies of how poetic devices work in his duologue. Leonard Moss. in his book-length survey Arthur Miller. analyzes Miller’s linguistic communication in a chapter on Death of a Salesman. a subdivision of which is titled “Verbal and Symbolic Technique. ” In an article titled “Death of a Salesman and Arthur Miller’s Search for Style. ” Arthur K. Oberg considers Miller’s battle with set uping a dramatic parlance. Oberg Judgess that Miller finally “arrives at something that approaches an American parlance to the extent that it exposes a colloquialism characterized by unusual image. specious lyricality. and close-ended cliche” ( 305 ) . He concludes that “the play’s text. although far from `bad poesy. ’ tellingly moves toward the position of poesy without of all time acquiring there” ( 310-11 ) . My 2002 work A Language Study of Arthur Miller’s Plays: The Poetic in the Colloquial hints Miller’s consistent usage of nonliteral linguistic communication from All My Sons to Broken Glass.

In other surveies discoursing single dramas. some critics have noted poetic niceties in Miller’s linguistic communication. In “Setting. Language. and the Force of Evil in The Crucible. ” Penelope Curtis maintains that the linguistic communication of the drama is marked by what she calls “half-metaphor” ( 69 ) . which Miller employs to propose the play’s subjects. In an article published in Notes on Contemporary Literature. John D. Engle explains the metaphor of jurisprudence used by the attorney Quentin in After the Fall. Lawrence Rosinger. in a brief Explicator article. traces the metaphors of royalty that appear in Death of a Salesman.

2. Thomas M. Tammaro besides points out that the lessened prestigiousness of linguistic communication surveies since the tallness of New Criticism may account for the deficiency of a sustained scrutiny of imagination and symbolism in Miller’s work. Furthermore. Tammaro notes that Miller’s dramas were non subjected to New Critical theory even when linguistic communication surveies were outstanding ( 10 ) . In his new authorized life Arthur Miller: 1915-1962. Christopher Bigsby clearly recognizes Miller’s efforts to compose verse play. but this work is mostly a critical life and cultural survey. non a close textual analysis.

3. Most noteworthy among these plants are the undermentioned: “The Family in Modern Drama. ” which foremost appeared in The Atlantic Monthly in 1956 ; “On Social Plays. ” which appeared as the original debut to the one-act edition of A View from the Bridge and A Memory of Two Mondays ; the debut to his 1957 Collected Plays ; “The American Writer: The American Theater. ” foremost published in the Michigan Quarterly Review in 1982 ; “On Screenwriting and Language: Introduction to Everybody Wins. ” foremost published in 1990 ; his 1993 essay “About Theatre Language. ” which foremost appeared as an afterword to the published edition of The Last Yankee ; and his March 1999 Harper’s article “On Broadway: Notes on the Past and Future of American Theater. ”

4. For a more elaborate treatment of these metaphors. see “Death of a Salesman: Unlocking the Rhetoric of Poetic Power” in my 2002 volume A Language Study of Arthur Miller’s Plays. Besides. in “Figuring Our Past and Present in Wood: Wood Imagery in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman and The Crucible. ” Will Smith hints what he describes as a “wood trope” in the dramas.

5. When Biff discovers Willy with the adult female in the hotel room in act 2. she refers to herself as a football ( 119-20 ) to bespeak her mortifying intervention by Willy and. possibly. all work forces.

6. Frederick Charles Kolbe. Caroline F. E. Spurgeon. and Kenneth Burke pioneered much of this unfavorable judgment. For illustration. Spurgeon did groundbreaking work in detecting the apparels imagination and the image of the baby in Macbeth. Kenneth Burke. in The Doctrine of Literary Form. examines Clifford Odets’s Golden Boy as a drama that uses linguistic communication bunchs. peculiarly the images of the “prizefight” and the “violin. ” that operate both literally and symbolically in the text ( 33-35 ) .

7. In his work Arthur Miller. Leonard Moss inside informations the frequent repeats of words in the text. such as “man. ” “boy. ” and “kid. ” He notes that signifiers of the verb “make” occur 45 times in 33 different uses. runing from Standard English to slang looks. among them “make mountains out of molehills. ” “makin a hit. ” “makin my hereafter. ” “make me laugh. ” and “make a train. ” He besides notes the nine-time repeat of “make money” ( 48 ) . Moss connects these looks to Miller’s thematic purpose: illustrating how the American work ethic dominates Willy’s life.

8. In “`I’m Not a Dime a Dozen! I Am Willy Loman! ’ : The Significance of Names and Numbers in Death of a Salesman. ” Frank Ardolino takes a chiefly psychological attack to the linguistic communication of the drama. He maintains that “Miller’s system of onomastic and numerical images and reverberations forms a complex web which delineates Willy’s insanity and its effects on his household and job” ( 174 ) . Ardolino explains that the name imagination reveals Biff’s and Willy’s failures. He sees the repeat of “Frank” as portion of Miller’s usage of geographical. personal. and concern names that frequently begin with B. F. P. or S. Thus the names get downing with F “convey a struggle between benevolence and protection on the one manus and dismissal and debasement on the other” ( 177 ) . Benevolent Franks are Willy’s foreman. the male child Frank who cleans up. and the maintenance man Frank. Degrading Franks are Miss Francis and Frank’s Chop House. which contains the actual and psychological lavatory where Willy has his climactic imagining of the hotel room in Boston.

Plants Cited
Abbotson. Susan C. W. “From Loman to Lyman: The Salesman Forty Years On. ” “The Salesman Has a Birthday” : Essaies Observing the Fiftieth Anniversary of Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman. ” Ed. Stephen A. Marino. Lanham. MD: University Press of America. 2000.

Ardolino. Frank. “`I’m Not a Dime a Dozen! I Am Willy Loman! ’ : The Significance of Names and Numbers in Death of a Salesman. ” Journal of Evolutionary Psychology ( August 2002 ) : 174-84.

____________ . “The Fabulous Significance of Happy in Death of a
Salesman. ” The Arthur Miller Journal 4. 1 ( Spring 2009 ) : 29-33.

Bigsby. Christopher. Arthur Miller: A Critical Study. New York: Cambridge UP. 2005.

____________ . Arthur Miller: 1915-1962. London: Weidenfeld & A ; Nicolson. 2008.

____________ . A Critical Introduction to Twentieth-Century American Drama. Volume Two: Volunteer state Williams. Arthur Miller. Edward Albee. New York: Cambridge UP. 1984.

____________ . “Miller and Middle America. ” Keynote reference. Eighth International Arthur Miller Society Conference. Nicolet College. Rhinelander. WI. 3 Oct. 2003.

Brantley. Ben. “A Dark New Production Illuminates Salesman. ” New York Times 3 Nov. 1998: E1.

Burke. Kenneth. The Doctrine of Literary Form. 2d erectile dysfunction. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP. 1967.

Couchman. Gordon W. “Arthur Miller’s Tragedy of Babbit. ” Educational Theatre Journal 7 ( 1955 ) : 206-11.

Curtis. Penelope. “Setting. Language. and the Force of Evil in The Crucible. ” Twentieth Century Interpretations of “The Crucible. ” Ed. John H. Ferres. Englewood Cliffs. New jersey: Prentice-Hall. 1972.

Engle. John D. “The Metaphor of Law in After the Fall. ” Notes on Contemporary Literature 9 ( 1979 ) : 11-12.

Gilman. Richard. “Getting It Off His Chest. But Is It Art? ” Chicago Sun Book Week 8 Mar. 1964: 6. 13.

Kaplan. Justin. and Anne Bernays. The Language of Names. New York: Simon & A ;
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Krutch. Joseph Wood. “Drama. ” State 163 ( 1949 ) : 283-84.

Marino. Stephen. “Arthur Miller’s `Weight of Truth’ in The Crucible. ” Modern Drama 38 ( 1995 ) : 488-95.

____________ . A Language Study of Arthur Miller’s Plays: The Poetic in the Colloquial. New York: Edwin Mellen Press. 2002.

____________ . “Religious Language in Arthur Miller’s All My Sons. ” Journal of Imagism 3 ( 1998 ) : 9-28.

Miller. Arthur. “About Theatre Language. ” The Last Yankee. New York: Penguin. 1993.

____________ . “The American Writer: The American Theater. ” The Theatre Essays of Arthur Miller. Ed. Robert A. Martin and Steven R. Centola. New York: Da Capo Press. 1996.

____________ . “Arthur Miller: An Interview. ” Interview with Olga Carlisle and Rose Styron. 1966. Conversations with Arthur Miller. Ed. Matthew C. Roudane . Jackson: UP of Mississippi. 1987. 85-111.

____________ . “Death of a Salesman” : Text and Criticism. Ed. Gerald Weales. New York: Penguin Books. 1967.

____________ . “The Family in Modern Drama. ” The Theatre Essays of Arthur Miller. Ed. Robert A. Martin. New York: Viking Press. 1978.

____________ . “Introduction to the Collected Plays. ” The Theatre Essays of Arthur Miller. Ed. Robert A. Martin. New York: Viking Press. 1978.

____________ . “On Broadway: Notes on the Past and Future of American Theater. ” Harper’s Mar. 1999: 37-47.

____________ . “On Screenwriting and Language: Introduction to Everybody Wins. ” The Theatre Essays of Arthur Miller. Ed. Robert A. Martin and Steven R. Centola. New York: Da Capo Press. 1996.

____________ . “On Social Plays. ” The Theatre Essays of Arthur Miller. Ed. Robert A. Martin. New York: Viking Press. 1978.

____________ . Timebends: A Life. New York: Grove Press. 1987.

Moss. Leonard. Arthur Miller. New Haven. CT: College and University Press. 1967.

____________ . “Arthur Miller and the Common Man’s Language. ” Modern Drama 7 ( 1964 ) : 52-59.

Murray. Edward. Arthur Miller. Dramatist. New York: Frederick Ungar. 1967.

Oberg. Arthur K. “Death of a Salesman and Arthur Miller’s Search for Style. ” Criticism 9 ( 1967 ) : 303-11.

Otten. Terry. The Temptation of Innocence in the Dramas of Arthur Miller. Columbia: Uracil of Missouri P. 2002.

Richards. I. A. Richards on Rhetoric: I. A. Richards–Selected Essays. 1929-1974. Ed. Ann E. Berthoff. New York: Oxford UP. 1991.

Rosinger. Lawrence. “Miller’s Death of a Salesman. ” Explicator 45. 2 ( Winter 1987 ) : 55-56.

Simon. John. “Whose Paralysis Is It. Anyhow? ” New York 9 May 1994.

Smith. Will. “Figuring Our Past and Present in Wood: Wood Imagery in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman and The Crucible. ” Miller and Middle America: Essaies on Arthur Miller and the American Experience. Ed. Paula T. Langteau.
Lanham. MD: University Press of America. 2007.

Spurgeon. Caroline F. E. Leading Motivations in the Imagery of Shakespeare’s Tragedies. 1930. New York: Haskell House. 1970.

Tammaro. Thomas M. “Introduction. ” Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams: Research Opportunities and Dissertation Abstracts. Ed. Tetsumaro Hayashi. Jefferson. North carolina: McFarland. 1983.

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