Arthur Miller College Essays Samples For Students

The aim of this essay is to present you with a theatrical analysis of the play ‘Death of a Salesman’, written by Arthur Miller in 1949. This analysis will present you with the look of a hypothetical producer. Therefore, it will focus on the summary of the play, the world it represents and the wider cultural background within which it was first produced. Finally, it will emphasize on all the details concerning a production set nowadays. The essay will give the overall look of the hypothetical producer, focusing on the aspects which are to be taken into consideration in this particular hypothetical production.
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The drama, “Death of a Salesman”, written by Arthur Miller has been claimed as the “first true American tragedy.” It narrates the story of Willy, an American salesman, who lives in the myth that people are very fond of him, and he is indispensable at the organization he works for. His illusion continues through the play, and when he dies ultimately by crashing his car by himself, he still believed that his son Biff would do excellently in life. The story starts when Willy returns home from a failed sales trip, and complains to his wife Linda, that their elder ...

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Literature

Death of a salesman, written by Arthur Miller, is a twentieth century modern play which primarily delineates the life of the modern man in today’s contemporary world that is getting sophisticated on a daily basis in numerous facets including the advancement of technology. The fundamental aim of the play is to portray how money has turned into an obsessions to many people these days, and how the modern life of people in today’s world is determined through the quantum of his earnings, either daily or on a monthly basis. The protagonist of the ...

Death of a Salesman is the Pulitzer Prize winning play by Arthur Miller, it was published in 1949. The play is an American tragedy that details the life and death of Willy Loman, a traveling salesman. Note that Arthur Miller named this character “Loman” a name that literally derives from Low Man. Willy Loman lives in Brooklyn New York, where Arthur Miller was born and lived his professional life. Loman’s home life revolves around his nagging wife Linda, deadbeat son Biff, and younger son Happy. Loman fantasizes about being younger and having a young, joyful family with productive happy sons and a supportive ...

Over the years, the definition of tragedy has undergone considerable evolution. According to Aristotle, a tragic play can exist without characters but it cannot exist without a plot (Poetics), however, this is not agreeable from a modern standpoint. By today’s standards, both the characters and the plot are vital aspects to a meaningful tragic play. On the other hand, Arthur Miller is more focused on the “tragic hero,” exposing the man behind the tragic mask rather than the contents of the plot itself. His idea of depicting a tragic hero as a common man is more up to date. Thus, tragedies like Sophocles’ “Oedipus ...

The aim of this essay is to present you with the answers to the following questions on how lighting can and ought to be applied on the theatrical performance of the play ‘Death of a Salesman’ by Arthur Miller.

1-Explain what type of lighting you would have for several different scenes?

It is common knowledge that lighting contributes to the message a play’s scene puts across to its audience since it creates the atmosphere of the set environment within which the play’s scenes are to be performed. The play ‘Death of a Salesman’ holds its own internal light since it leads its audience to self –knowledge shedding light through the protagonist’s ...

Persecution has been a round for sometime and can be traced historically from the time of Jesus to the present time. Christians were persecuted for their faith in the hands of the Jews. Many Christians have been persecuted in history for their allegiance to Christ and forced to denounce Christ and others have been persecuted for failing to follow the laws of the land. The act of persecution is on the basis of religion, gender, race, differing beliefs and sex orientation (Davis 220). Persecution is a cruel and inhumane act that should not be supported since people are tortured to death. ...

Introduction

Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman is a masterpiece that has remained relevant for many decades. Like other literary works of this great dramatist the concern is with the anxiety and uncertainty that characterized the middle class of his time. This award-winning play is an illustration of the influence of a writer’s life experiences on thematic considerations in a work of art especially in relation to success and family life.

Arthur Miller – A Background

Arthur Miller was born in 1915 in a relatively rich Jewish family. During the Great Depression of the 1930s the his family’s business collapsed and this exposed Arthur to an ...

Outlining Aristotle’s Theory of Tragedy, a brief discussion on the definition of tragedy can be delivered. According to the Theory of Tragedy, it is a kind of literature that presents replication of several serious actions of different magnitudes compiled with each brand of artistic as well as linguistic embellishment (Jeong-Hyok Seo). In addition to that, the literature has been divided into many parts in the form of continuous actions sometimes not descriptive. At the end of the play, the several incidents create distinct misfortune and fear that ends in accomplishing grief. Considering the tragedy as a literary genre, ...

Willy and Shelly as Tragic Heroes

The plays “The Death of a Salesman” and “Glengarry Glen Ross” focus on the dramatic events in the lives of aging salesmen, whose careers are rapidly ended when they start underperforming in their jobs, and even though they try their best to succeed, they are eventually destroyed by their unrealistic ambitions. The figures of Shelly Levene and Willy Loman have been characterized as tragic throughout the years, even though many critics continue to disagree with this denomination. Even though they may not entirely comprise the classical attributes of tragic heroes, they essentially represent the same kinds of heroes that ...

Throughout the course of American mythology and literature, there is a curious persistence of the concept of the American dream. From the very beginning of western influence on the continent, groups of people have constantly flocked to the land in search of a fabled life better than their own. Even among natural born citizens, there exists a belief that life can become whatever a person desires, as long as they work hard. Playwright Arthur Miller frequently wrote about and depicted this ideology. Through his play Death of a Salesman, Miller denounces the American dream as impossible and unrealistic for society as a whole, due to ...

Intricacy and complexity of Arthur Miller`s play Death of a Salesman reflect not only existential along with social anxieties and miseries, but, also, American reality of the post-war period, when the US society seemed to get rid of devastating effect of the Great Depression and aftermath of WWII. In his play Miller depicts an average American who, like the rest of the world, has a dream. However, taking into consideration national and social peculiarities of protagonist this dream is tightly connected with more ideological notion entitled – the American Dream. Thus, through play`s protagonist, Willy Loman, one may ...

Tragedy is a genre rather than an idea. It depicts man as an unwelcome guest in the world and teaches the world that it is better never to have been born. Tragedy underscores the hopelessness of individuals’ attempts to remake the world. It deals with suffering through a series of experiences and conventions of life. Tragedy forces individuals to recognize that they may act against their own interests and that the consequences of their actions deviate disastrously from their hopes and expectations. In other words, tragedy refers to the inescapabilty of suffering and loss. Tragedy enhances any conceivable refinement of misconception, ...

When people describe an event as “tragic,” the first thing that comes to mind is that something terrible has happened to a person or people. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines tragedy as “a very bad event that causes great sadness and often involves someone's death; a very sad, unfortunate, or upsetting situation , something that causes strong feelings of sadness or regret, [or] a play, movie, etc., that is serious and has a sad ending.” In life, it is not difficult to classify particular situations as tragic, such as the ending of a young life by a drunk driver or the destruction of the World Trade Center by terrorists. ...

Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman shapes the trajectory of understanding the American dream in what is considered as the promise of success in the economic and social spectrum. By using the character that exudes the personally attractive and the well-liked man in business, Miller explores the inherent desire among the middle class Americans to acquire material comfort. This is occasioned by the modern American life, evidenced in "the man who makes an appearance in the business world, the man who creates a personal interest, is the man who gets ahead. Be liked and you will never want" ( ...

Introduction

For the sake of this project, I chose to analyze the following literary and nonliterary works:
- “The Death of Ivan Ilych” by Leo Tolstoy (Novel)
- Death of a Salesman, directed by Laszlo Benedek (Film)
- “Piano Man,” written and performed by Billy Joel (Music)
All three of these works relate to the ways in which we live our lives, and the necessity to be able to view our lives much more abstractly and open-mindedly – the works feature characters who are either served well or could be served well by their capacity for critical thought ...

Introduction

The play, Death of a salesman is one of the plays authored by Miller. It gives a concept that is gathered from the exploration of the world as from the America after the war. It tries to assess the result of this war to the American new found prosperity on men. Ideally, men in the 1950s commence having a feeling of pressure that resulted from their family responsibilities. Besides the pressure to provide basic necessities but also to deliver the members of one’s family with luxurious items that are believed to be essential to the families. The idea here was that ...

Introduction

In this play of “Death of a salesman,” I will argue how Loman explored the American dream and all he thought reflected the attitude of the true life and dream of the middle class and other common people of America.
Believe it or not, the beauty of life lies in commitment, honesty, true and simple living, integrity of character, and adherence to moral values. What matters ultimately in life is how honest one is to oneself. It hardly makes any difference how others perceive you or how you are to others. If one is true and honest to oneself ...

Tragedies are among the most enjoyable plays of the dramatic genre. Something far removed from our own lives such as the play on a stage allows us to enjoy the poignant not-really-fictitious realities of good tragedies. Arthur Miller's The Crucible is just that kind of tragedy. Inspired by the horrifically real tragedy of the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, Miller's four-act tragedy came to the American stage during the Cold War Era, when the Red Scare of was creating a fearful frenzy among the United States of America.

The Crucible recreates the awful events leading up to the Salem Witch Trials ...

The American Dream states that basically anyone can achieve anything if they work hard enough, thus obtaining freedom and ensuring upward mobility for the next generation. Every person who is thinking about America has the American Dream stamped in their minds, thanks to mainstream media and pop culture. But, is the American Dream just a fantasy, an unfulfillable promise, a utopia for those who have lost hope and are wanting a better life for themselves?
Arthur Miller, in his 1949 play "Death of a Salesman", portrays an average American, a man called Willy Loman. Willy is depressed, recently suffered a car accident and wants ...

29 March 2011
Belonging as an area of study requires exploration into a text or different typesof texts to
establish how the concept of belonging comes out. The concept of belonging reveals itself in a text depending on how a person’s perceptions and ideas are directed by culture and history , and may be the social context of the writer . The field of belonging therefore tries to find how different aspects of belonging come out in from a person’s experiences in life taking into account the notions of identity and relationships.
Texts do show or rather depict belonging in ...

Religion is strict with its limitations; a matter often destroying the specific constructive liberal structures of the society. Although it is not considered detrimental, the extensive rules that religion often imposes create more harm than good to its members. With such strict commandments, the response of the people were rather common; to hide secrets, to deal with matters in a hypocritical manner, presenting themselves clean when they actually are doing something else behind the back of the church’s knowing. Among the primary characters who could be noted for such consideration of the church’s laws include John Proctor and Reverend ...

English

The Death of a Salesman deals with two unresolved problems; the problem of family, and the marked society. Volker Schlöndorff made Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman (1985) into a mini-serial for television audiences. The movie deals with the dynamics of the family system; whether it’s the relationship between father and son, or the relationship between father and daughter, and so on. In Death of Salesman, Willy Lowman, the protagonist, is seen as a man who leads a life in isolation. His life goes around in circles and has illusions that he would make it rich one day. The frequent appearance ...

Imagery in William Shakespeare’s “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day” and William Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”
Both William Shakespeare and William Wordsworth rely on nature and its beauty to denote the true state of their emotions in their poems. Shakespeare compares his beloved with the loveliness of nature to evoke visual impressions of the person’s beauty, in an effort to make an abstract notion such as love and devotion more palpable, by comparing it to something that most people agree is beautiful. Wordsworth on the other hand, utilizes the beauty of ...

Many American tend today to believe that a play Death of a Salesman written by Arthur Miller is considered to be a quintessential literary work that brilliantly describes American Dream. The poem tells us about the last days in a life of Willy Loman, who desperately tried to succeed but did not manage, nevertheless the fact that he was a kind man with good intentions.
First and foremost, the drama is quite realistic, the main actions happened in the past, but the author’s usage of the flashback technique that combines present and past actions allows the reader to ...

‘Instructor’s name’

Compare and Contrast the characters of Catherine and Latifa
This essay aims at evaluating the similarities and differences between the characters of Latifa of the novel “My Forbidden Face” and Catherine of “A View from the Bridge”, a play written by Arthur Miller. Catherine is the niece of the tragic protagonist Eddie Carbone, who harbors a lust for her, and tries to keep her away from other male suitors. They are an Italian American family living in the Red Hook community of New York of the 1950s, which is known for its Italian immigrants.
Marco and Rodolpho, who are ...

Introduction

Relationships form a very important theme in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. An example of a relationship in the play is the brothers’ relationship. In the play, Biff and Happy are brothers whose relationship is quite dynamic. The two are the sons of main character in the play, Willy Loman.
Their relationship can be described as that of love but also that is filled with a lot of conflict. They exhibit a lot of the average sibling relationship. Although there are differences that spring up between them, they have however also a lot have in common and this ultimately brings them together. ...

50 years after the catastrophic explosion that shook the island of Krakatoa and claimed over 36,000 lives and massive destruction of flora and two-thirds of the land mass ensued life seemed to be back to normal with species re-colonization being reported by MacArthur and Wilson (515). Such a catastrophic natural disaster has the capability to wipe out all fauna and flora available as even a slight change in the biodiversity can seriously compromise its equilibrium. As Wilson puts it, “too much disturbance diminishes the assets of biological diversity.” Anak Krakatoa rose as a caldera from this massive eruption ...

The death of a salesman rotates around Willy, who is the father to Biff and Happy, and a husband to Linda. It is an average family whose dreams seem to differ, and Willy develops a personal conflict in his own life. The death of a salesman is a tragic story where Willy tries hard,but he does not achieve his dreams.His needs are not met; hence, leading to his death. Willy’s life rotates around failures, and he feels a failure knows him best since nothing he tries succeeds. He feels tiered working as a salesman because his job does not help him achieve his dreams. ...

Death of a salesman is a play where Willy Lowman spends most of his time on the road as a salesman. He did his job as directed, and manages to purchase mortgage from his sales. He is also trying to raise his two kids and a wife, as he struggles to attain The American Dream. A raisin in the sun portrays a few weeks of an African -American family, the Youngers in the 1950’s and live in the Southside of Chicago.
In Death of a salesman the character Willy shows money is everything, because everything that is happening around him revolves around money. ...

1.0 Lab 1: Heating Value Measurements: Solid and Liquid Fuels with a Bomb Calorimeter
1.1 Introduction
Measurements of heating values can be derived for both solid and liquid combustible fuels using an Oxygen Bomb Calorimeter. The calorimeter measures heat. Heat is not the same thing as temperature. The heat of combustion is called the calorific value. The calorific value is “:the number of heat units liberated by a unit mass of a sample when burned with oxygen in an enclosure of constant volume” (Introduction 2007). The experiment uses the 6100 Bomb Calorimeter. The definition of calorific value in a bomb calorimeter ...

In the previous chapter we have shown how the alienation pervades both of the plays thematically. The present chapter concerns with the stylistic devices which are used by Arthur Miller and Samuel Beckett to support the thematic preoccupation. Since we are concerned with the study of drama, we judge important to include an examination of the stagecraft; that is to say the technical aspects of the two plays. The most important point to insist on is that Death of a Salesman and Waiting for Godot belong to two different, if not opposed, theatrical movements - Realism and Absurdism, respectively. As a ...

Theatre Review: A View from the Bridge performed at the Lutcher Theatre in Orange, Teaxs on April 14 2012

Introduction:

A View from the Bridge is an intriguing play which sheds light on an ordinary working man’s life which initially appears to be going through a good patch but which turns sour after some family business which ruins him. It is an intriguing play which demonstrates that the working class have their own emotions too and are allowed to think and act although the end result is quite tragic to say the least. I saw the play at the Lutcher ...

John Proctor is one of the main figures in the play “The Crucible”. The author of this play is Arthur Miller. The character of John Proctor is one of the major personalities which are described in the play. He happens to be one of the reasons why the witch trial begins. The character of John Proctor goes from a much respected man to a man who falls from grace and becomes a sinner.
John Proctor wants to get back the time and pretend like the adultery situation did not happen at all. He says: “Abby, I may think of ...

Theater is one of the most ancient forms of art. The beginning of Western civilization, ancient Greece, lived a very important part in the development of this form, with many plays reaching classical status, like Oedipus King and the Oresteia trilogy. Aristotle, one of the most important Greek philosophers, offered six elements of drama in his work Poetics: setting, characters, theme, plot, language and music. These have served as a reference to study these types of works of art from antiquity to this day. The first three will serve as a guide for the analysis and comparison of important works from two ...

Part A:

John Proctor was one of the most complex characters in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. He has both positive and negative qualities to his personality. Primarily, Proctor is honest, dependable, and a man of solid moral. However, he is not always the pillar of morality. Perhaps most noticeably is the negative propensity he has for cheating on his wife. He is lustful after one of the young girls in the village: Abigail Williams. Eventually the two begin an affair. The affair ends before the play begins, igniting Abigail’s intense jealousy toward Proctor’s wife. It also ignites the audience’ ...

The play “Oedipus the King” by Sophocles begins with Oedipus the king explaining his concern about his citizens thus: “My zeal in your behalf ye cannot doubt; Ruthless indeed were I and obdurate, If such petitioners as you I spurned” (11-15). These lines clearly establish the fact that Oedipus is a good king and looks after his kingdom, Thebes, quite well. However, this is not enough. No matter how well Oedipus governs his kingdom or how valiant he is, tragedy befalls Oedipus through what can be said as “Hamartia”. Hamartia or tragic flaw is what brings down a great character and ...

Marilyn Monroe came from a very ordinary background and went on to become extraordinary. Was she really extraordinary or the people around her and the media projected her as one? In order to understand this, it is essential to understand her mind. Maybe there is a side to her that nobody has seen. She is no fiction but a real woman, who made all those movies and did get married. She is not the fantasies that people built around her. People love fantasies more than the reality. Marilyn allowed them to fantasize about something else.
The purpose of this paper is ...

Summary

The article “Death of a Salesman” was co-authored by Caywood Clarke and Gene R. Laczniak in 1986. Trade press has mainly been focused to high selling pressure and switch promotions that encourage sales. However, empirical efforts have been minimal. It has even been difficult for researchers to define various selling practices that may be termed as unethical. Ethical issues have been renowned as the main causes of conflicts among salespeople.
This article aims at understanding as well as evaluating various prepositions about ethical aspects for personal selling which deserves further reflection and investigation for proper understanding. There are numerous ...

Black Reconstruction by W.E.B. Du Bois
This book by W.E.B. Du Bois was first published in 1935. It takes a deeper depth in examining Reconstruction of the south in the Civil War of America. It delves more on the economic front. The most significant argument in the text is basically that black and white workers were divided on racial grounds after the civil war (Du and Edward 12). This had an unfortunate result. The white class which had a lot of property took advantage of them since the laborers could not stand against them. This, according to DU Bois, was ...

Explore the use of consumerism and the race with the junkyard in Willy’s destruction in Death of a Salesman. How do various things – the Studebaker, the refrigerator – become symbols, and what do they symbolize?
In the first flashback into the past, once Willy has returned from a selling trip and spoken to Biff and Happy, he and Linda discuss their finances. It turns out that the refrigerator needs a repair – the fan belt has broken. The washing machine and the vacuum cleaner also need repairs or perhaps they have been bought on credit: either way the point is clear – Willy ...

Hamlet by William Shakespeare, A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen and Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller are separated by time, language and culture. All three are still widely performed all over the world. What is their appeal? Throughout the ages, theatre has evolved through many genres, styles and forms. However, many people would agree that all drama needs some sort of conflict in order to succeed. In my essay, I will discuss the three plays mentioned above in order to demonstrate that they all contain a mixture of conflict in the main character’s private life together with a ...