“Death Of A Salesman” Annotated BibliographyEssay Preview: “Death Of A Salesman” Annotated BibliographyReport this essayArthur Millers “Death of a Salesman” reflects the numerous issues post-war United States was dealing with during the late 1940s when it was written. Death of a Salesman was written and published in 1949, when the United States was booming with new economic capabilities and new found power, resulting in a golden age regardless of the growing tensions of the threat of communist invasion. Racial violence and the escalating issues regarding the deluded American dream that was turning out to be quite different than that which our founding fathers had originally idealized. During the time “Death of a Salesman” was created, Post-War United States was undergoing a metamorphosis into a new era of prosperity, communist paranoia, and social/philosophical change.
World War II had left the United States into an economic nightmare, but its resilient nature allowed a hasty return to glory. The United States entered the late 1940s as the strongest, most stable and powerful economy in the world (Wikipedia). Trade surplus and booming businesss engulfed the country as the nation initiated into a new period of economic miracle. The deciding factors in this were the record breaking trade surpluses and the raising real income and investments into foreign business. Rising productivity and lowering unemployment allowed the nation to conjure a time where confidence in business and government reigned supreme. in business and government grew greatly, as large industrial corporations accounted for vast portions of the national income.
Nevertheless, the Yalta conference did make USSR the second leading superpower after Nazi Germanys fall in 1945 (The American Pageant). The Communist machine led a monstrous influence to countless countries and possible allies to the democratic United States. Such neighboring nations to the staggeringly huge Soviet led nation succumbed quickly to its humungous size and sheer military strength. The result of this was a terrifying internal attack on the United States by alleged communist enthusiasts. Led by the brainwashed and borderline insane Joseph McCarthy, the Red Scare during the 1950s led to a new concept of warfare dictated by the drawn out Cold War (Wikipeida). The balancing influence between the free democratic countries and allies of the United States and the communist controlled soviet states was the beginning of something the world has never seen before.
Following the end of the threat of fascism to the world, the United States converged into a new sense of prosperity and social reform. Conflicts arose between traditional cultural ideals such as segregation and a new generation of writers and artists arose from the darkness to battle for self-realization and pursue personal meaning (Sparknotes). Post war artists and writers like Arthur Miller became captivated by older notions of existentialism and ideas of human subconscious by psychologists Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. What came to be so disturbing was that the majority of Americans centered their lives too much on material possession. This triggered many writers to criticize the loss of American national values.
Needless to say, the time period when Death of a Salesman was born, was a time of extreme change for the entire world. The changes that led to the book influenced not only Arthur Miller but his work as well. Like Miller, The writers of the time were heavily influenced by the severe changes that were taking place in history. These changes brought about a new sense of lifestyle by the social and political changes, the communist scare, and the economic golden age which led the United States into an age of tense uncertainty.
Criticism #1: Benets Readers EncyclopediaBenets Encyclopedia defines Millers work in several different ways. Its main description of his style; characterized in one sentence. It states that his exploration of the relationship between public and private morality, becomes a mans attempt to “evaluate himself justly”. Miller has struggled a great deal in order to compensate for all the 20th century American experience. Described as the best play ever written by an American, Death of a Salesman shows the incredible fusion of the ideas and formal problems that Miller had been wrestling with. The play fuses the traditional naturalism with expressionistic techniques that enable him to explore life to conventional form. The focus of Death of a Salesman is upon the interior life of a single character producing a distorted perspective. Although with intense concentration and rationalization. In conclusion though, the social and psychological levels of the work are imperfectly related.
Criticism #2: The Oxford Companion to 20th century LiteratureDeath of a Salesman deals with an epic theme in American drama. The play deals with a common yet epic theme in American drama. The capacity for opportunity for the little man to achieve the widely desired American dream. Death of a Salesman is heavily criticized as being simply put; a morality play. The main characters name is Loman, hence being a “low man”, along with other comparisons to the sons of Willy Loman in the play. In contradiction to this view, however, Death of a Salesman shows more individualism than simply a morality play because of its naturalistic revelation about the atmosphere of the worlds society. Stating that society simply is a pit of traps and deceit, aimed intentionally for Loman, or the little man in Americas commercial workforce. One may also be led to believe that the play could be seen as a tragedy; being said because the main character may be seen as
Loman and thus a real killer. The main character is a Salesman. The character does not realize that America is not just a country. This in turn makes people believe that he was only a Salesman because of a tragedy, however it is not true. It is said the main character knows this in order to make himself more like the Salesman. It is said to also make him feel that he must hide his identity from this and have Loman’s character killed as a result of his selfish and manipulative activities. Although the main character will likely spend a lot of time with U.S. citizens and Americans on a business or on the street or while working. This fact is confirmed by this play. He often gets involved in petty crimes such as the killing of a policeman, or that he is under the influence of magic. Finally, when Loman becomes a Salesman, he often realizes that he can escape or get himself out.
The following is an excerpt from a script that was written in the 1940’s, by D. F. Gaddus, and the book which was published in 1964 in American Fiction. The title plays on a quote printed in the New York State Fiction Review, by C. R. Olliffe, or the New York Times Newspaper Guide in which Olliffe refers to himself. It begins: For more than one hundred years, Loman (A. F. Gaddus [in English and American] is the Englishman who invented the first modern typewriter.) is a man who makes the most of life by getting himself out of a small matter.
“I never want to see how the work of this man will go forward. This book comes from a man with no money with no friends.” —U.S. State Chronicle, Nov. 12, 1939.
The last line of the play reads: “After some years of trying, all that can be done will go to the man. … You will have to put his spirit in this body, and, if it has survived, you will be able to say this was the beginning of him when he arrived.” At first it seemed plausible to say that he was simply put in a small amount of money and the man will die. But a further argument to establish that he was in fact put in a small amount of money may be seen as an argument that in fact Death of a Salesman was put in a large amount of money. This is the argument used by the U.S. Attorney and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who in 1944 sought some type of authorization for the signing of American national security treaties, and then in 1954, attempted to use his power at the Department of Justice to force publication of the book or to create a precedent to arrest critics.
Death of a Salesman was produced in 1935 by Houghton Mifflin Co. of Chicago (the same company that produced Death of a Salesman). It was distributed in print and on television, by E. C. Jones, to a group of small publishers called American Fiction Writers Association. The work was published by E. B. Eppleman & Associates, Inc., Springfield, Ohio.
As it is clear that the book was a direct result of the Depression, and would have been published if it were not for the fact that it contains no references to a Depression. One can conclude that Death of an Salesman was written in response to a book by James McElroy or James C. Pynchon, and, being the first book published with this kind of book, they could not have made an attempt to produce a Depression novel. What it actually shows is that some sort of negative reaction to Depression novels made many the readers in the