Assignment. Due June 7 or 8.
Read the play. Then, if you have time, watch the movie adaptation of the play. It stars Dustin Hoffman as
Willy Loman and John Malkovich as Biff Loman.
This assignment is not an essay. It’s a reading journal, a brainstorming assignment. (It’s similar to the test
you took on "The Birthmark" and "The Egg".) I want you to read the play, obviously, and think about how it
dramatizes the American themes that we’ve studied in the poems, stories, novels and nonfiction that
we’ve read and discussed this year. Be specific. And mark up the play. Write in the book, if you can. You
may include in your assignment photocopied pages from the play with notes on them.
Consider the play’s characters, images, scenes, dialogue--all of which Miller uses to dramatize his
American ideas/themes--and their connection with the scenes, characters, ideas, dialogue, images, etc,
in the other works. Include similarities and differences.
Everything we’ve read and discussed resonates in Death of a Salesman. It’s all there. It’s such a great
play, a moving drama about the American soul.
You may set up your assignment the same way you set up your exam on "Birthmark" and "Egg." Feel free
to write at length–in a brainstorming kind of way–about some of these connections you make. Remember
to be specific. You must always show how writers make ideas happen. Make connections among specific
images, scenes, dialogue (everything we've read has so many great lines of dialogue that reveal so
much...even something as seemingly insignificant as "You loved me too?" from The Great Gatsby reveals
so much. And speaking of Gatsby, don’t ignore that last page of the novel!)
I want you to see and to appreciate and to understand and to get excited about all of these great words
we’ve read and how their passion and imagery and drama tell so beautifully and powerfully the story of
the American soul.
Here are most, if not all, of the works you might pull into your assignment: The Things They Carried ; "The
Egg"; "The Birthmark"; "The Fourth Alarm"; "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities"; The Catcher in the Rye;
The Great Gatsby; ; poems by William Carlos Williams, Langston Hughes, Yeats, Dickinson, etc;
Benjamin Franklin: the excerpt from his Autobiography; Nathaniel Ames's Almanac entry (think about this
when you listen to Ben and Willie’s thoughts about him); King’s "Letter from Birmingham Jail."; Walt
Whitman.
Some themes: the road (a line from Salesman: "Willy, you’re a road man." Most Americans are);
American ambition, or the American attitude about life and becoming successful (shape life, control and
conquer it); the American Dream, and reaching for the ideal--for perfection–and failing; money (it’s
everywhere); social status (interesting treatment of this in the books--various perspectives); the past (!)
and its relationship to the future (go back to all of the works for this, but especially Gatsby. So many
references to time in that novel. And time is a major issue/theme in Salesman. (Willy’s brother Ben:
"Time, William, time.) Another theme: the pastoral ideal--and don’t ignore how this idea of America as a
pastoral paradise connects with the American’s desire and dream to return to the past when life was, on a
personal level, pure and Edenic and pastoral and full of hope and possibility. (Notice what happens to the
stage–read stage directions carefully–when Willy Loman thinks about the past.) Contrast the present
images of fire (orange) and the apartment buildings with how it looked outside of the Loman house in the
past. Here’s a great quote from Willy Loman: "The woods are burning" (he says this a number of times in
the play). Consider: what happens to things when they burn? What do they turn into? Find a connection in
Gatsby. Think about what Willy means when he says that "the woods are burning." How does it resonate
in the play and connect with "the trees that made way for Gatsby’s house?" (See that last page of Gatsby
and consider: What do the "trees make way for" in Salesman? Trees are made into wood, and the wood
is used to....) Look out for some other things that burn in Salesman. Don’t ignore Biff and his dreams.
More themes: American innocence; identity, and the search for one; self-invention, and re-invention; selfdiscovery.
All of these are important. Think great thoughts. Get it all down