For the 6.2 set I teach with MKTH ...
A number of you have read, or know about, Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. Here are some quotations for you to think about. Even if you don't know the play, use the quotations as starting-points for further revision work in preparation for the synoptic paper.
From careful reading ... of Death of a Salesman, it is evident that Arthur Miller not only indicts the shallowness and weaknesses of Willy Loman, but also indicts many weaknesses of 20th century American society. Consider (for discussion next term) the broader social criticism of each of the following quotations:
1. “As more light appears, we see a solid vault of apartment houses around the small, fragile seeming home. An air of the dream clings to the place, a dream rising out of reality.”
2. “Work a lifetime to pay off a house. You finally own it, and there’s nobody to live in it.”
3. “The street is lined with cars. There’s not a breath of fresh air . . . . The grass don’t grow . . . ., you can’t raise a carrot in the back yard.”
4. “I don’t know what the hell I’m workin’ for. Sometimes I sit in my apartment—all alone . . . . My own apartment, a car, and plenty of women. And still, goddammit, I’m lonely.”
5. “. . . you’re both built like Adonises. Because the man who makes an appearance in the business world, the man who creates personal interest is the man who gets ahead.”
6. “Never fight fair with a stranger, boy. You’ll never get out of the jungle that way.”
7. I’m always in a race with the junkyard: I just finished paying for the car and its on its last legs. The refrigerator consumes belts . . . They time those things . . . . so when you finally paid for them they’re used up.”
8. “Business is definitely business . . . .” ... “The only thing you got in this world is what you can sell.”
9. “Be liked and you will never want.”
10. “You can’t eat the orange and throw the peel away—a man is not a piece of fruit!” Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute
The Yale site also has these thoughts:
This essay expresses ideas about the 18th century American character as “a new man who acts upon new principles” and as one who has left behind old prejudices and traits and has taken on a new way of life. (Andrew J. Porter, Jr., Henry L. Tarrie, Jr. and Robert A. Bennett, American Literature [Lexington, Mass.: Ginn and Co., 1981], pp. 201-202.) ... Next, students will read Alfred Ferguson’s essay about “Dreams and Goals” in which he explains that a dream is a vision that we receive from our imaginations while a goal is something exact and precise that can be achieved by deliberate effort. Dreams can be changed to goals if we imagine them precisely and work to make them real. From the earliest times of the American experience there was a wide discrepancy between what we imagined was the American dream and what we were able to realize. Nevertheless, “the dream of America as a land of opportunity for a new way of life” has persisted. (Philip McFarland, Allen Kirschner, Alfred Ferguson, Larry D. Benson and Morse Peckham, Themes in American Literature [Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1972], p. 661, 712-721.) Morse Peckham’s essays, “Ideas and The Arts” and “Music” from Themes in American Literature will be assigned after Ferguson’s “Dreams and Goals”. ... In the essay “Ideas and The Arts” Peckham provides pictures with commentaries on American paintings which relate to the American dream or experience themes. ... For example, one painting, Edward Hicks’s “Peaceable Kingdom”, depicts many creatures and humans living together peacefully.
Peaceable Kingdom (ca. 1833), Edward Hicks (1780–1849) Worcester Art Museum The Quaker, Edward Hicks was inspired by William Penn’s treaty with the Indians which supposedly established coexistence between the settlers and the Indians. One aspect of the American dream was the idea that America was a Garden of Eden without hatred or war. ... Finally, students will read the essay, “Music” by Morse Peckham which discusses the American dream and the American promise. He tells about Ernest Bloch, a musician, who was born in Switzerland and in 1916 emigrated to America. Bloch wrote a musical composition, America: An Epic Rhapsody in Three Parts for Orchestra. “This symphony has been written in love for this country, in Reverence for its Past, in Faith in its Future. It is dedicated to the memory of Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman whose vision has upheld its inspiration.” ... Thomas Wolfe has written, “I believe that we are lost here in America, . . . I think that the true discovery of America is before us. I think the true fulfilment of our spirit, of our people, of our mighty and immortal land is yet to come.”
