Death of a Salesman

Why am I trying to become what I don't want to be ... when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am.

Willy Loman is an ageing travelling salesman haunted, driven and yet held back by empty dreams of prosperity and success. Justly celebrated as one of the most famous dramatisations of the failure of the American Dream, the play's moral and political purpose is perfectly counterbalanced by a powerful and moving human drama of a man trying to make his way in the world and of the human flaws that lead to the shattering of his family and of their figurehead.

Death of a Salesman is Miller's tragic masterpiece and considered one of the greatest plays of the twentieth century. Awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1949, the play remains a classic work of literature and drama that is studied and performed around the world.

This new edition includes an introduction by Claire Conceison that explores the play's production history as well as the dramatic, thematic, and academic debates that surround it; a must-have resource for any student exploring Death of a Salesman.

Auteur

Arthur Miller was born in New York City in 1915. After graduating from the University of Michigan, he began work with the Federal Theatre Project. His first Broadway hit was All My Sons, closely followed by Death of a Salesman, The Crucible and A View from the Bridge. His other writing includes Focus, a novel; The Misfits, first published as a short story, then as a cinema novel; In Russia, In the Country, Chinese Encounters (all in collaboration with his wife, photographer Inge Morath) and 'Salesman' in Beijing, non-fiction; and his autobiography, Timebends, published in 1987. Among his other plays are: Incident At Vichy, The Creation of the World and Other Business, The American Clock, The Last Yankee, and Resurrection Blues. His novella, Plain Girl, was published in 1995 and his second collection of short stories, Presence, in 2007. He died in February 2005 aged eighty-nine.

Contenu

Chronology

Introduction

Historical, Social and Cultural Contexts

Genre and Themes

Play as Performance

Production History

Academic Debate

Behind the scenes - Excerpts from interview with Chinese actor/translator Ying Ruocheng about working with Miller in Beijing in 1983

Further Study

Death of a Salesman


Notes