Death of a Salesman

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Death of a Salesman

• By Arthur Miller

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Arthur Miller Biography

• I think the job of the artist . . . is to remind
  people of what they have chosen to forget.
• - Arthur Miller

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Arthur Miller Biography

• 1915 2005
• father owned a women's clothes/coat-manufacturing
  business, which failed in the Wall Street Crash
  of 1929
• After the Crash, they moved to a modest house in
  Brooklyn.

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College Life

• Went to college at Michigan.
• Majored in journalism
• Changed his major to English after having the
  play No Villain published.
• I hate Michigan

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Personal Life

• Was married to Marilyn Monroe
• House of Un-American Activities Committee
  investigates Miller.

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Personal Life

• He is arrested and thrown in jail for contempt of
  court.
• He is eventually released from prison and
  acquitted of his charges.

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His Works

• 1953 He writes The Crucible, an allegorical
  play in which Miller likened the situation with
  the House Un-American Activities Committee to the
  witch-hunt in Salem

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His Works

• 1949 He wrote Death of a Salesman, which was
  viewed by many as an attack on the American Dream
  of achieving wealth and success without regard
  for principle.

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Terms

• Capitalism - An economic system in which private
  owners control a countrys industry.

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Terms

• Communism - system of government in which the
  state plans and controls the economy and a
  single, authoritarian party holds power, claiming
  to make progress toward a higher social order in
  which all goods are equally shared by the people.
  

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Terms

• American Dream - set of ideals in which freedom
  includes the opportunity for prosperity and
  success, and an upward social mobility achieved
  through hard work

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Historical Context

• During the postwar boom of 1948, most Americans
  were optimistic about a renewed version of the
  American Dream striking it rich in some
  commercial venture, then moving to a house with a
  yard in a peaceful suburban neighborhood where
  they could raise children and commute to work in
  their new automobile.

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Historical Context

• The difference between this and the
  nineteenth-century version of the same dream, in
  which a family or a single adventurer went into
  America's wilderness frontier and tried to make
  their fortune from the land itself, reflected the
  country's economic shift from agriculture to
  urban industry, and then from manufacturing into
  service and sales.

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Terms

• Flashback A scene that is set in a time that
  came before the main story.

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Sets
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Down Stairs
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Up Stairs
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