His plays include All My Sons (1947), Death of a Salesman (1949), The Crucible (1953), A View from the Bridge and A Memory of Two Mondays (1955), After the Fall (1964), Incident at Vichy (1965), The Price (1968), The Creation of the. Grace Ioppolo is Professor of English at the University of Reading. DEATH OF A SALESMAN Arthur Miller was born in New York City in 1915 and studied at the University of Michigan. So the dreams of someone else cannot bring one happiness. The wrong key will not open the lock no matter how hard one tries. However, a lock will only unlock with one key. To unlock one’s happiness, one must find the right key. The key to happiness is often unveiled by our dreams. Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman is a commentary upon society in relation to the painful conflicts of a working class family in New York who throughout their life has struggled to make a decent living and fulfil the American dream. Biff and Happy in Death of A Salesman It is said that the sins of the. Students using a different edition of the play may encounter slight differences in both the text and the page numbering. The Pursuit of Happiness in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. How is Death of a Salesman a commentary upon American society and values.
Note: We use the Penguin Modern Classics edition of play (ISBN: 978-4-2). Who is to blame for everything that has happened? Has anyone learned anything? In the fifth module, we focus on the climactic scene of the play – the scene in which Biff walks in on his father with another women – before moving on in the sixth module to consider the play’s ending. In the third module, we explore the relationship between Willy and his two sons, Biff and Happy, before turning in the fourth module to the treatment of women in the play. The boys reminisce about old times and women. According to Happy, Willy is usually talking to Biff during his private reveries. Happy tells Biff that Willy has started talking to himself nearly all of the time. After that, we think about the opening of the play, the character of Willy Loman and the themes of capitalism and the American Dream. Willy's sons, Biff and Happy, overhear him.
We begin by thinking about the historical context in which the play was written, focusing in particular on the development of American theatre between the 1930s and 1950s. In this course, Professor Grace Ioppolo (University of Reading) explores Arthur Miller’s masterpiece, ‘Death of a Salesman’. Mr Oliver’s carton of basketballs, his fountain pen, etc.) (iii) Happy’s self-destructive streak and (iv) the general uneasiness of the relationship between the two sons and their father. In this module, we think about the relationship between Biff, Happy, and their father, focusing in particular on: (i) the sense of promise surrounding the younger Biff and his failure to fulfil that promise (ii) Biff’s tendency to steal things (e.g.