ALLUSIONS IN DOAS
The Ibsenesque technique used by Miller in this play consisted of a series of allusions and foreshadowings that progressively lead to the disclosure of hidden sins. This gradual revelation contributes to the rising tension of the play until the climax certifies the horror lurking behind apparently quiet, domestic scenes (Manual) FORESHADOWING: Willy’s flute theme foreshadows the revelation of his father’s occupation and abandonment; Willy’s preoccupation with Linda’s stockings foreshadows his affair with The Woman; Willy’s automobile accident before the start of Act I foreshadows his suicide at the end of Act II (Sparknotes) 1.-I don’t say that he is a great man. Willy Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper. He’s not the finest character that ever lived. But he’s a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him.So attention must be paid. He’s not to be allowed to fall into his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must be finally paid to such a person. (Quoted in Manual) COMMENT: Linda , as the same tittle does, is alluding to Willy’s death and the short attended funeral
Meeting the adult Bernard, we see that the meek bookworm whom Willy once called “anemic” has grown up to be more successful and likable than Biff and Hap. Bernard’s affluence and elevated social status reveal themselves in his occupation as a lawyer arguing a case in front of the Supreme Court and in his friend who owns a tennis court. Furthermore, tennis itself – unlike football, which Biff played – seems like a sport for successful, upper-class, sophisticated people (from e-notes) . 2.-
COMMENT: Willy is unable to see what Bernard and his sons are going to become in their lives.This is a dramatic irony. 1.- HAPPY AND BIFF AS “HERCULES “ AND “ADONIS” Mythic Figures
Willy’s tendency to mythologize people contributes to his deluded understanding of the world. He speaks of Dave Singleman as a legend and imagines that his death must have been beautifully noble. Willy compares Biff and Happy to the mythic Greek figures Adonis and Hercules because he believes that his sons are pinnacles of “personal attractiveness” and power through “well liked”-ness; to him, they seem the very incarnation of the American Dream. (From Sparknotes)
Hercules is a Roman hero and god. He was the equivalent of the Greek divine hero Heracles, who was the son of Zeus (Roman equivalent Jupiter) and the mortal Alcmene. In classical mythology, Hercules is famous for his strength and for his numerous farranging adventures. The Romans adapted the Greek hero's iconography and myths for their literature and art under the name Hercules. In later Western art and literature and in popular culture, Hercules is more commonly used than Heracles as the name of the hero. Hercules was a multifaceted figure with contradictory characteristics, which enabled later artists and writers to pick and choose how to represent him (From Wikipedia)
Adonis[a] was the mortal lover of the goddess Aphrodite in Greek mythology. In Ovid's first-century AD telling of the myth, he was conceived after Aphrodite cursed his mother Myrrha to lust after her own father, King Cinyras of Cyprus. Myrrha had sex with her father in complete darkness for nine nights, but he discovered her identity and chased her with a sword. The gods transformed her into a myrrh tree and, in the form of a tree, she gave birth to Adonis. Aphrodite found the infant and gave him to be raised by Persephone, the queen of the Underworld. Adonis grew into an astonishingly handsome young man, causing Aphrodite and Persephone to feud over him, with Zeus eventually decreeing that Adonis would spend one third of the year in the Underworld with Persephone, one third of the year with Aphrodite, and the final third of the year with whomever he chose. Adonis chose to spend his final third of the year with Aphrodite. (From Wikipedia) COMMENT: Both mythological characters stand for beauty and strength, what were the most important issues for Willy to achieve success, and what he sees in his sons, and not in Bernard. However, these accomplishments bring no success to the young men, but frustration and despair; by the other hand, Bernard has become a successful lawyer, due to his hard work and not to his appearance.
2.-. THE GREAT GATSBY.-
America as a land of opportunity Like Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Death of a Salesman inspects the nature of the myth, and provides adequate dramatic representation of its facts and its fallacies. Unlike Gatsby, however,Willy Loman stands for all those whose ambitions have resulted in failure, thus embodying the falseness of the idea that success is achievable for anyone. Therefore, his characterization is built upon contradictions, the first of which emanates from the disparity between his firm belief in the American myth of success and his own actual life. (Manual). COMPARATION TGG / DOAS:
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Both, Willy and Gatsby go beyond the American Dream, but while Gatsby adquires a great amount of money, Willy does not. But, while Willy has love and family, Gatsby, does not. They both has the car as an important element in their lives, but, while Gatsby uses it as a means to show his richness and attract Daisy, for Willy is a means of work, a tool. But in both cases, the car means death. In both works, the west is seen as a land of promision and truer life than in New York ( in DOAS is Biff who believes so).
3.- SHERWOOD ANDERSON.-
The influence of Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio is seen in the theme of death in life,or emotional paralysis, in Death of a Salesman. (Manual). 4.- PSYCHOANALYSIS.
Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology through dialogue between a patient and a psychoanalyst.[4] In creating psychoanalysis, Freud developed therapeutic techniques such as the use of free association and discovered transference, establishing its central role in the analytic process. Freud's redefinition of sexuality to include its infantile forms led him to formulate the Oedipus complex as the central tenet of psychoanalytical theory. [8] His analysis of dreams as wish-fulfillments provided him with models for the clinical analysis of symptom formation and the underlying mechanisms of repression. On this basis Freud elaborated his theory of the unconscious and went on to develop a model of psychic structure comprising id, ego and super-ego.[9] Freud postulated the existence of libido, an energy with which mental processes and structures are invested and which generates erotic attachments, and a death drive, the source of compulsive repetition, hate, aggression and neurotic guilt.[10] In his later work Freud developed a wide-ranging interpretation and critique of religion and culture. COMMENT: The most important contribution of Freud to western culture was to explain human behavior as not only driven by consciousness, but also and even more dramatically by unconscious forces. In DOAS we can trace Miller’s debt to Freud’s theory of the personality in the hidden affair of Willy with the Woman, that is haunting the whole play: the Woman’s laughter is like the repressed events struggling to go outside in psychoanalytic terms; Willy’s pathetic desire to be successful in the American Dream is a compensation for his father and brother’s abandonment. Biff has not developed his personality in full, as he is overwhelmed by his father behavior in Boston.
5.- EXPRESSIONISM.-
britannica.com
Expressionism | artistic style | Britannica.com Expressionism, artistic style in which the artist seeks to depict not objective reality but rather the subjective emotions and responses that objects and events arouse within a person. The artist accomplishes this aim through distortion, exaggeration, primitivism, and fantasy and through the vivid, jarring, violent, or dynamic application of formal elements. Strongly influenced by Expressionist stagecraft, the earliest Expressionist films set out to convey through decor the subjective mental state of the protagonist. The most famous of these films is Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), in which a madman relates his understanding of how he came to be in the asylum. The misshapen streets and buildings of the set are projections of his own crazy universe, and the other characters have been abstracted through makeup and dress into visual symbols. The film’s morbid evocation of horror, menace, and anxiety and the dramatic, shadowy lighting and bizarre sets became a stylistic model for Expressionist films by several major German directors. Paul Wegener’s second version of The Golem (1920), F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922), and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927), among other films, present pessimistic visions of social collapse or explore the ominous duality of human nature and its capacity for monstrous personal evil. (From Wikipedia)
The formal strategies employed by the author aimed at the exhibition of such mental processes as memory, conflict, or self-delusion.The temporal and spatial dislocations that nevertheless maintained a continuous action and tension provided an agile strategy through which to reveal the protagonist’s constant recall of the past. (Manual) In filmmaking, some editing techniques such as dissolves (gradual transitions from one scene to another) and fades (progressive darkening or lightening of the screen into a new scene) soften the transitions between different shots (Idem)
The light effects that accentuate specific spots or situations are also expressionistic strategies. Light games play a part in the hallucinatory atmosphere that surrounds Willy (Idem) COMMENT: Miller was deeply influenced by this European movement, as we can see in these formal devices. But he was also influenced by it as to give the name Loman to the family in this play, coming from the psychiatric doctor Lohman in Fritz Lang’s The testament of doctor Mabuse 6.- SHAKESPEARE.- Hamlet.
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. (Sparknotes)
COMMENT: Ben’s ghost plays an important role in the work, as he pushes Willy to go beyond his common life and try to go into the jungle to take the treasure, in the same way that Old King Hamlet’s ghost made the action go claiming revenge. We can also see an allusion to Hamlet in the final scene, when Linda is on Willy’s grave.
7.- SOPHOCLES.-
Oedipus Rex, is an Athenian tragedy by Sophocles that was first performed around 429 BC.[1] .It is thought to have been renamed Oedipus Tyrannus to distinguish it from Oedipus at Colonus. In antiquity, the term “tyrant” referred to a ruler, but it did not necessarily have a negative connotation.[2][3][4] Prior to the start of Oedipus Rex, Oedipus has become the king of Thebes while unwittingly fulfilling a prophecy that he would kill his father, Laius (the previous king), and marry his mother, Jocasta (whom Oedipus took as his queen after solving the riddle of the Sphinx). The action of Sophocles' play concerns Oedipus' search for the murderer of Laius in order to end a plague ravaging Thebes, unaware that the killer he is looking for is none other than himself. At the end of the play, after the truth finally comes to light, Jocasta hangs herself while Oedipus, horrified at his patricide and incest, proceeds to gouge out his own eyes in despair. (From Wikipedia) COMMENT: Biff has been raised with an inadecuate self image instilled by his father’s delusional idea of the way to achieve the American dream (no more than being strong, well liked and to act according to one’s will). Willy is far from achieving this goal, but has a distorted perception of reality and is unable to see the gap between reality and dream. Biff finally sees what he wants; Biff matures, but to do it, he has to be harsh with his father and forces Willy to face the truth. This is a symbolic ( and not so symbolic) “killing of the father”. PLUS: Charley functions as a sort of poetic prophet or sage. Miller portrays Charley as ambiguously gendered or effeminate, much like Tiresias, the mythological seer in Sophocles’ Oedipus plays. Whereas Linda’s lucid diagnosis of Willy’s rapid decline is made possible by her emotional sanity, Charley’s prognosis of the situation is logical, grounded firmly in practical reasoned analysis. He recognizes Willy’s financial failure, and the job offer that he extends to Willy constitutes a commonsense solution. Though he is not terribly fond of Willy, Charley understands his plight and shields him from blame. (FROM Sparknotes)