5/31 notes from class
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| Nashville Repertory Theatre's production of Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller. |
Arthur Miller - Death of a Salesman
Summary
Willy Loman, an old salesman, returns early from a business trip. After nearly crashing multiple times, Willy has a moment of enlightenment and realizes he shouldn’t be driving. Seeing that her husband is no longer able to do his job as a traveling salesman, Willy’s wife, Linda, suggests that he ask his boss, Howard, to give him a local office job at the New York headquarters. Willy thinks that getting the new job is a sure thing since he (wrongly) sees himself as a valuable salesman.
headquarter: to have the main offices of an organization in a particular place(總部)
We begin to learn some family background and hear about Willy and Linda’s grown sons, Biff and Happy. Biff has just returned home from working as a farmhand in the West. Willy thinks Biff could easily be rich and successful, but is wasting his talents and needs to get on track. Willy thinks Biff is being wish-washy to spite him.
(get )on track:making progress and likely to succeed
Later that night, Willy starts having flashbacks and talking to imagined images as if they were real people. You guessed it: something is wrong. He’s ranting so loudly that Happy and Biff wake up. The brothers are legitimately worried, as they have never seen their father like this. Biff, feeling as though he should stay close to home and fix his relationship with his dad, decides to talk to a former employer, Bill Oliver, about getting a loan to start a business.
rant:
1)to speak or shout in a loud,uncontrolled or angry way,often saying confused or silly things
2)to talk in a noisy exited ,or declamatory manner(=way)
3)to speak vehemently
vehement: expressing strong feelings, or shown by strong feelings or great energy or force
declamatory: expressing something with strong feeling, ,in a loud voice ,or forceful language
Synonym of "rant"(verb): diatribe, jeremiad(a long list of complaints and problems ) ,assault, attack, reproach, reprimand( )
diatribe(誹謗)angry speech or piece of writing that severely criticizes something or someone
jeremiad: a long list of complaints and problems
Making a sentence with "jeremiad"→The critic delivers regular jeremiads against the contemporary art word .
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What is contemporary art ?
Contemporary art is the art of today, produced by artists who are living in the twenty-first century. Contemporary art provides an opportunity to reflect on contemporary society and the issues relevant to ourselves, and the world around us. Contemporary artists work in a globally influenced, culturally diverse, and technologically advancing world. Their art is a dynamic combination of materials, methods, concepts, and subjects that challenge traditional boundaries and defy easy definition. Diverse and eclectic, contemporary art as a whole is distinguished by the very lack of a uniform, organizing principle, ideology, or ‘ism.’ Contemporary art is part of a cultural dialogue that concerns larger contextual frameworks such as personal and cultural identity, family, community, and nationality.
In vernacular English, "modern" and "contemporary" are synonyms, resulting in some conflation of the terms "modern art" and "contemporary art" by non-specialists.
※eclectic(折衷):
1)Methods ,beliefs ideas,etc.that are eclectic combine whatever seem the best or most useful things from many
different areas or systems, rather than following a single system
※contextual : related to the context or something
▼Making a sentence with "contextual"→It's impossible to understand the nuances of an isolated word without some contextual clues.
2)consisting of many things or different sorts
▼Make a sentence with "eclectic"→
The museum's eclectic collection has everything from a giraffe's skeleton to medieval musical instrument.
In the middle of the night, Willy’s talking to himself(More precisely , he is ranting severely) so loudly that everyone wakes up. Linda admits to her sons that she and Willy are struggling financially. Worse, Willy has been attempting suicide. She’s worried and takes it out on her boys, accusing Biff of being the cause of Willy’s unhappiness. Now Willy gets in on the family discussion and the situation goes downhill. He and Biff begin to argue, but Happy interjects that Biff plans to see Oliver the following morning. Willy is overjoyed. Everyone goes to sleep believing that tomorrow will fulfill their dreams: Willy expects to get a local job, and Biff expects to get a business loan.
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| Theater Version |
＊kleptomania: (竊盜狂)a very strong wish to steal that you cannot control ,especially without any need or purpose, usually considered to be a type of mental illness.
Biff and Happy return home from their dates to find their mother waiting for them, fuming mad that they left their father at the restaurant. A massive argument erupts. No one wants to listen to Biff, but he manages to get the point across that he can’t live up to his dad’s unrealistic expectations and is basically just a failure. He’s the only one who sees that they’ve been living a lie, and he tells them so.
get something(the point) across: to make someone understand or believe something
In the final scene, Linda, sobbing, still under the delusion(迷惑) that her husband was a well-liked salesman, wonders why no one came to his funeral. Biff continues to see through his family’s lies and wants to be a better man who is honest with himself. Unfortunately, Happy wants to be just like his dad.
※delusion: belief in something that is not true
Arthur Miller was born in New York City on October 17, 1915. His career as a playwright began while he was a student at the University of Michigan. Several of his early works won prizes, and during his senior year, the Federal Theatre Project in Detroit performed one of his works. He produced his first great success, All My Sons, in 1947. Two years later, Miller wrote Death of a Salesman, which won the Pulitzer Prize and transformed Miller into a national sensation. Many critics described Death of a Salesman as the first great American tragedy, and Miller gained eminence as a man who understood the deep essence of the United States. He published The Crucible in 1953, a searing indictment of the anti-Communist hysteria that pervaded 1950s America. He has won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award twice, and his Broken Glass (1993) won the Olivier Award for Best Play of the London Season.
Death of a Salesman, Miller’s most famous work, addresses the painful conflicts within one family, but it also tackles larger issues regarding American national values. The play examines the cost of blind faith in the American Dream. In this respect, it offers a postwar American reading of personal tragedy in the tradition of Sophocles’ Oedipus Cycle. Miller charges America with selling a false myth constructed around a capitalist materialism nurtured by the postwar economy, a materialism that obscured the personal truth and moral vision of the original American Dream described by the country’s founders.
A half century after it was written, Death of a Salesman remains a powerful drama. Its indictment of fundamental American values and the American Dream of material success may seem somewhat tame in today’s age of constant national and individual self-analysis and criticism, but its challenge was quite radical for its time. After World War II, the United States faced profound and irreconcilable domestic tensions and contradictions. Although the war had ostensibly engendered an unprecedented sense of American confidence, prosperity, and security, the United States became increasingly embroiled in a tense cold war with the Soviet Union. The propagation of myths of a peaceful, homogenous, and nauseatingly gleeful American golden age was tempered by constant anxiety about Communism, bitter racial conflict, and largely ignored economic and social stratification. Many Americans could not subscribe to the degree of social conformity and the ideological and cultural orthodoxy that a prosperous, booming, conservative suburban middle-class championed.
＊postwar: happening or existing in the period after a war, especially the First or Second World War
＊capitalist:an economic, political, and social system in which property, business, and industry are privately owned, directed towards making the greatest possible profits for successful organizations and people
＊reverend: a title for a priest of the Christian Church
＊milieu: the people, physical, and social conditions and events that provide the environment in which someone acts or lives
＊existentialist philosophy: (philosophy) a 20th-century philosophical movement chiefly in Europe; assumes that people are entirely free and thus responsible for what they make of themselves
＊hypocritical postwar condition: saying that you have particular moral beliefs but behaving in a way that shows these are not sincere.
＊discord: the state of not agreeing or sharing opinions
Uneasy with this American milieu of denial and discord, a new generation of artists and writers influenced by existentialist philosophy and the hypocritical postwar condition took up arms in a battle for self-realization and expression of personal meaning. Such discontented individuals railed against capitalist success as the basis of social approval, disturbed that so many American families centered their lives around material possessions (cars, appliances, and especially the just-introduced television)—often in an attempt to keep up with their equally materialistic neighbors. The climate of the American art world had likewise long been stuck in its own rut of conformity, confusion, and disorder following the prewar climax of European Modernism and the wake of assorted -isms associated with modern art and literature. The notions of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung regarding the role of the human subconscious in defining and accepting human existence, coupled with the existentialist concern with the individual’s responsibility for understanding one’s existence on one’s own terms, captivated the imaginations of postwar artists and writers. Perhaps the most famous and widely read dramatic work associated with existentialist philosophy is Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Miller fashioned a particularly American version of the European existentialist stance, incorporating and playing off idealistic notions of success and individuality specific to the United States.
The basis for the dramatic conflict in Death of a Salesman lies in Arthur Miller’s conflicted relationship with his uncle, Manny Newman, also a salesman. Newman imagined a continuous competition between his son and Miller. Newman refused to accept failure and demanded the appearance of utmost confidence in his household. In his youth, Miller had written a short story about an unsuccessful salesman. His relationship with Manny revived his interest in the abandoned manuscript. He transformed the story into one of the most successful dramas in the history of the American stage. In expressing the emotions that Manny Newman inspired through the fictional character of Willy Loman, Miller managed to touch deep chords within the national psyche.
Character List
Willy Loman - An insecure, self-deluded traveling salesman. Willy believes wholeheartedly in the American Dream of easy success and wealth, but he never achieves it. Nor do his sons fulfill his hope that they will succeed where he has failed. When Willy’s illusions begin to fail under the pressing realities of his life, his mental health begins to unravel. The overwhelming tensions caused by this disparity, as well as those caused by the societal imperatives that drive Willy, form the essential conflict of Death of a Salesman.
Biff Loman - Willy’s thirty-four-year-old elder son. Biff led a charmed life in high school as a football star with scholarship prospects, good male friends, and fawning female admirers. He failed math, however, and did not have enough credits to graduate. Since then, his kleptomania has gotten him fired from every job that he has held. Biff represents Willy’s vulnerable, poetic, tragic side. He cannot ignore his instincts, which tell him to abandon Willy’s paralyzing dreams and move out West to work with his hands. He ultimately fails to reconcile his life with Willy’s expectations of him.
Read an in-depth analysis of Biff Loman.
Linda Loman - Willy’s loyal, loving wife. Linda suffers through Willy’s grandiose dreams and self-delusions. Occasionally, she seems to be taken in by Willy’s self-deluded hopes for future glory and success, but at other times, she seems far more realistic and less fragile than her husband. She has nurtured the family through all of Willy’s misguided attempts at success, and her emotional strength and perseverance support Willy until his collapse.
Happy Loman - Willy’s thirty-two-year-old younger son. Happy has lived in Biff’s shadow all of his life, but he compensates by nurturing his relentless sex drive and professional ambition. Happy represents Willy’s sense of self-importance, ambition, and blind servitude to societal expectations. Although he works as an assistant to an assistant buyer in a department store, Happy presents himself as supremely important. Additionally, he practices bad business ethics and sleeps with the girlfriends of his superiors.
Charley - Willy’s next-door neighbor. Charley owns a successful business and his son, Bernard, is a wealthy, important lawyer. Willy is jealous of Charley’s success. Charley gives Willy money to pay his bills, and Willy reveals at one point, choking back tears, that Charley is his only friend.
Bernard - Bernard is Charley’s son and an important, successful lawyer. Although Willy used to mock Bernard for studying hard, Bernard always loved Willy’s sons dearly and regarded Biff as a hero. Bernard’s success is difficult for Willy to accept because his own sons’ lives do not measure up.
Ben - Willy’s wealthy older brother. Ben has recently died and appears only in Willy’s “daydreams.” Willy regards Ben as a symbol of the success that he so desperately craves for himself and his sons.
The Woman - Willy’s mistress when Happy and Biff were in high school. The Woman’s attention and admiration boost Willy’s fragile ego. When Biff catches Willy in his hotel room with The Woman, he loses faith in his father, and his dream of passing math and going to college dies.
Howard Wagner - Willy’s boss. Howard inherited the company from his father, whom Willy regarded as “a masterful man” and “a prince.” Though much younger than Willy, Howard treats Willy with condescension and eventually fires him, despite Willy’s wounded assertions that he named Howard at his birth.
Stanley - A waiter at Frank’s Chop House. Stanley and Happy seem to be friends, or at least acquaintances, and they banter about and ogle Miss Forsythe together before Biff and Willy arrive at the restaurant.
Miss Forsythe and Letta - Two young women whom Happy and Biff meet at Frank’s Chop House. It seems likely that Miss Forsythe and Letta are prostitutes, judging from Happy’s repeated comments about their moral character and the fact that they are “on call.”
There is a wonderful final image in Sarah Esdaile's revival of Arthur Miller's great play of misplaced and broken dreams: Linda Loman and her sons trudging along the road well travelled by her salesman husband, Willy – a road that has previously been a highway to nowhere, but which now draws them towards an unknown future.
Miller's 1949 play was his first great success, and even now its time-bend structure, in which past and present exist side by side on stage, is dramatically startling – as if you are watching a drowning man reviewing his life just before he goes under for the last time. Philip Jackson plays Willy, a decent man who has ended up more dead than alive, and destroyed himself and his sons by clinging to his belief that selling is the only passport to the American Dream.
Jackson's Willy, who looks like an old teddy bear from which somebody has ripped the stuffing, is painfully human and full of hurt. He sports a constant look of puzzlement that his life has turned out the way it has, even though he has colluded in his own little tragedy at every step.
Esdaile sometimes seems a little in awe of Miller's play, rather than taking it by the scruff of the neck and giving it a good shake. The result is a really decent revival, but not a thrilling or distinctive one, although after a slow first half the production does finally burst into vivid, raging life just as Willy is slipping away. We watch him, a big man suddenly rendered tiny, who stands with hoe in hand, quietly digging his own grave.
The Crucible
Early in the year 1692, in the small Massachusetts village of Salem, a collection of girls fell ill, falling victim to hallucinations and seizures. In extremely religious Puritan New England, frightening or surprising occurrences were often attributed to the devil or his cohorts. The unfathomable sickness spurred fears of witchcraft, and it was not long before the girls, and then many other residents of Salem, began to accuse other villagers of consorting with devils and casting spells. Old grudges and jealousies spilled out into the open, fueling the atmosphere of hysteria. The Massachusetts government and judicial system, heavily influenced by religion, rolled into action. Within a few weeks, dozens of people were in jail on charges of witchcraft. By the time the fever had run its course, in late August 1692, nineteen people (and two dogs) had been convicted and hanged for witchcraft.
seizure: the action of taking something by force or with legal authority
cohort; a group of people who share a characteristic ,usually age
1)something that arouses activities or activity
＊Making a sentence with "spur": The threat of losing franchise was the spur the city council needed to finally do something about the rising crime rate.
spur: to encourage an activity or development or make it happen faster
＊Synonym of "spur": boost, encouragement, incentive, stimulant
consort: to spend a lot of time in the company of a particular group of people ,especially people whose character is not approved of
grudge(怨恨、恨意): a strong feeling of anger and dislike for a person who you feel has treated you badly ,especially one that lasts for a long time
＊Making a sentence with "grudge": I don't bear any grudge against you.
hysteria:
1)extreme fear, excitement ,or anger, etc.that cannot be controlled
2)a state of wildly excited activity or emotion
More than two centuries later, Arthur Miller was born in New York City on October 17, 1915. His career as a playwright began while he was a student at the University of Michigan. Several of his early works won prizes, and during his senior year, the Federal Theatre Project in Detroit performed one of his works. He produced his first great success, All My Sons, in 1947. Two years later, in 1949, Miller wrote Death of a Salesman, which won the Pulitzer Prize and transformed Miller into a national sensation. Many critics described Death of a Salesman as the first great American tragedy, and Miller gained an associated eminence as a man who understood the deep essence of the United States.
Drawing on research on the witch trials he had conducted while an undergraduate, Miller composed The Crucible in the early 1950s. Miller wrote the play during the brief ascendancy of Senator Joseph McCarthy, a demagogue whose vitriolic anti-Communism proved the spark needed to propel the United States into a dramatic and fractious anti-Communist fervor during these first tense years of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Led by McCarthy, special congressional committees conducted highly controversial investigations intended to root out Communist sympathizers in the United States. As with the alleged witches of Salem, suspected Communists were encouraged to confess and to identify other Red sympathizers as means of escaping punishment. The policy resulted in a whirlwind of accusations. As people began to realize that they might be condemned as Communists regardless of their innocence, many “cooperated,” attempting to save themselves through false confessions, creating the image that the United States was overrun with Communists and perpetuating the hysteria. The liberal entertainment industry, in which Miller worked, was one of the chief targets of these “witch hunts,” as their opponents termed them. Some cooperated; others, like Miller, refused to give in to questioning. Those who were revealed, falsely or legitimately, as Communists, and those who refused to incriminate their friends, saw their careers suffer, as they were blacklisted from potential jobs for many years afterward.
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ascendancy: a position of power, strength, or success
※demagogue(煽動者) :a person, especially a political leader, who wins support by exciting the emotions of ordinary people rather than by having good or morally right ideas
※allege(斷言、聲稱、指控): to say that someone has done something illegal or wrong without giving proof
★Making a sentence with "allege": The two men allege (that) the police forced them to make false confessions.
perpetuate(使永垂不朽):
1) to cause something to happen
2)to give eternal or lasting existence to
Synonym of "perpetuate": commemorate, memorialize; celebrate, enshrine, honor; conserve, keep up,
★Making a sentence with "perpetuate": We hope to perpetuate this holiday tradition
whirlwind: a tall, spinning column of air that moves across the surface of the land or sea
▲what is "whirlwind romance":
Examples: After a whirlwind romance of only three weeks, Johnny and Sandra decided to get married in Las Vegas.
At the time of its first performance, in January of 1953, critics and cast alike perceived The Crucible as a direct attack on McCarthyism (the policy of sniffing out Communists). Its comparatively short run, compared with those of Miller’s other works, was blamed on anti-Communist fervor. When Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were accused of spying for the Soviets and executed, the cast and audience of Miller’s play observed a moment of silence. Still, there are difficulties with interpreting The Crucible as a strict allegorical treatment of 1950s McCarthyism. For one thing, there were, as far as one can tell, no actual witches or devil-worshipers in Salem. However, there were certainly Communists in 1950s America, and many of those who were lionized as victims of McCarthyism at the time, such as the Rosenbergs and Alger Hiss (a former State Department official), were later found to have been in the pay of the Soviet Union. Miller’s Communist friends, then, were often less innocent than the victims of the Salem witch trials, like the stalwart Rebecca Nurse or the tragic John Proctor.
＊allegorical : a story, play, poem, picture, or other work in which the characters and events represent particular qualities or ideas that relate to morals, religion, or politics
＊lionize:(將…以名人待之,遊覽…的名勝(vi.)結交名流)
1)to make someone famous, or to treat someone as if they were famous2) to treat as an object of great interest or importance
If Miller took unknowing liberties with the facts of his own era, he also played fast and loose with the historical record. The general outline of events in The Crucible corresponds to what happened in Salem of 1692, but Miller’s characters are often composites. Furthermore, his central plot device—the affair between Abigail Williams and John Proctor—has no grounding in fact (Proctor was over sixty at the time of the trials, while Abigail was only eleven). Thus, Miller’s decision to set sexual jealousy at the root of the hysteria constitutes a dramatic contrivance.
In an odd way, then, The Crucible is best read outside its historical context—not as a perfect allegory for anti-Communism, or as a faithful account of the Salem trials, but as a powerful and timeless depiction of how intolerance and hysteria can intersect and tear a community apart. In John Proctor, Miller gives the reader a marvelous tragic hero for any time—a flawed figure who finds his moral center just as everything is falling to pieces around him.
Plot Overview
In the Puritan New England town of Salem, Massachusetts, a group of girls goes dancing in the forest with a black slave named Tituba. While dancing, they are caught by the local minister, Reverend Parris. One of the girls, Parris’s daughter Betty, falls into a coma-like state. A crowd gathers in the Parris home while rumors of witchcraft fill the town. Having sent for Reverend Hale, an expert on witchcraft, Parris questions Abigail Williams, the girls’ ringleader, about the events that took place in the forest. Abigail, who is Parris’s niece and ward, admits to doing nothing beyond “dancing.”
※coma: a state in which a person is unconscious and cannot be woken, caused by damage to the brain after an accident or illness
▼Making a sentence with "coma": She went into a deep coma after taking an overdose of sleeping pills.
※ward:
1)one of the parts into which a prison is divided2)means or method of defending
※Synonyms of "ward": aegis (also egis), ammunition, armor, buckler, cover, guard, protection, safeguard, screen, security, shield, wall, defense
While Parris tries to calm the crowd that has gathered in his home, Abigail talks to some of the other girls, telling them not to admit to anything. John Proctor, a local farmer, then enters and talks to Abigail alone. Unbeknownst to anyone else in the town, while working in Proctor’s home the previous year she engaged in an affair with him, which led to her being fired by his wife, Elizabeth. Abigail still desires Proctor, but he fends her off and tells her to end her foolishness with the girls.
Betty wakes up and begins screaming. Much of the crowd rushes upstairs and gathers in her bedroom, arguing over whether she is bewitched. A separate argument between Proctor, Parris, the argumentative Giles Corey, and the wealthy Thomas Putnam soon ensues. This dispute centers on money and land deeds, and it suggests that deep fault lines run through the Salem community. As the men argue, Reverend Hale arrives and examines Betty, while Proctor departs. Hale quizzes Abigail about the girls’ activities in the forest, grows suspicious of her behavior, and demands to speak to Tituba. After Parris and Hale interrogate her for a brief time, Tituba confesses to communing with the devil, and she hysterically accuses various townsfolk of consorting with the devil. Suddenly, Abigail joins her, confessing to having seen the devil conspiring and cavorting with other townspeople. Betty joins them in naming witches, and the crowd is thrown into an uproar.
A week later, alone in their farmhouse outside of town, John and Elizabeth Proctor discuss the ongoing trials and the escalating number of townsfolk who have been accused of being witches. Elizabeth urges her husband to denounce Abigail as a fraud; he refuses, and she becomes jealous, accusing him of still harboring feelings for her. Mary Warren, their servant and one of Abigail’s circle, returns from Salem with news that Elizabeth has been accused of witchcraft but the court did not pursue the accusation. Mary is sent up to bed, and John and Elizabeth continue their argument, only to be interrupted by a visit from Reverend Hale. While they discuss matters, Giles Corey and Francis Nurse come to the Proctor home with news that their wives have been arrested. Officers of the court suddenly arrive and arrest Elizabeth. After they have taken her, Proctor browbeats Mary, insisting that she must go to Salem and expose Abigail and the other girls as frauds.
escalate: to become or make something become greater or more serious
Making a sentence→His financial problems escalated after he became unemployed.(more negative)
harboring feeling: The next day, Proctor brings Mary to court and tells Judge Danforth that she will testify that the girls are lying. Danforth is suspicious of Proctor’s motives and tells Proctor, truthfully, that Elizabeth is pregnant and will be spared for a time. Proctor persists in his charge, convincing Danforth to allow Mary to testify. Mary tells the court that the girls are lying. When the girls are brought in, they turn the tables by accusing Mary of bewitching them. Furious, Proctor confesses his affair with Abigail and accuses her of being motivated by jealousy of his wife. To test Proctor’s claim, Danforth summons Elizabeth and asks her if Proctor has been unfaithful to her. Despite her natural honesty, she lies to protect Proctor’s honor, and Danforth denounces Proctor as a liar. Meanwhile, Abigail and the girls again pretend that Mary is bewitching them, and Mary breaks down and accuses Proctor of being a witch. Proctor rages against her and against the court. He is arrested, and Hale quits the proceedings.
The summer passes and autumn arrives. The witch trials have caused unrest in neighboring towns, and Danforth grows nervous. Abigail has run away, taking all of Parris’s money with her. Hale, who has lost faith in the court, begs the accused witches to confess falsely in order to save their lives, but they refuse. Danforth, however, has an idea: he asks Elizabeth to talk John into confessing, and she agrees. Conflicted, but desiring to live, John agrees to confess, and the officers of the court rejoice. But he refuses to incriminate anyone else, and when the court insists that the confession must be made public, Proctor grows angry, tears it up, and retracts his admission of guilt. Despite Hale’s desperate pleas, Proctor goes to the gallows with the others, and the witch trials reach their awful conclusion.Movie I recently watched
《Love comes softly 》
quote: I guess you might say we joined forces out of sheer need.
join forces - work together on a common enterprise of project;
"The soprano and the pianist did not get together very well"; "We joined forces with another research group"
Synonym : collude, conspire, cooperate, participate
The truth of God's love, is not that He allows bad things to happen , it's His promise.
LOL = Laugh Out Loud.
OMG = Oh, my God!
ASAP = As Soon As Possible.
XOXO = hugs and kisses
FYI = For Your Information.
BRB = Be Right Back.
BTW = By the Way
TTYL = Talk to you later.
OIC = Oh, I see!
JK = Just kidding
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