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Reader-Response Criticism In Death Of A Salesman By Arthur Miller
810 Words4 Pages
When reading a play, it is fundamental to pay attention to details within the play for a script envisioned in more than one way. Moreover, discovering those critical items found in the play is important in helping one criticize the play correctly since; a critic is able to see the quality and mistakes found in the play. Likewise, the critic is also able to see valuable and critical things missed by the reader since as critics they looked at different functions within the play. With that said, this paper is going to explore two critical approaches seen in “Death of a Salesman” a play written by Arthur Miller (1915 – 2005). Those critical approaches are Reader-Response Criticism and Psychological (psychoanalytic) criticism.
Reader-Response Criticism is as important as the author is since; readers are active participants in literary works and has his or her own opinion, understanding and image of the work read. Even though the interpretation may look similar from one person to another, nonetheless, there will always be a slight difference in how it is perceived. According to Barnet, Burto, and Cain (2011), readers are to give a response that cannot be compared to the real life. “At one extreme are those who say that our response to a work of literature should be purely aesthetic- a response to a work of art-and not the response we would have to something comparable in real life” (p. 1745). Moreover, it is also important for readers to keep in mind that the
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Graff paints reading as an insufferable and tedious chore that must be endured and the way that one is able to complete such a task is through theoretical analysis of the text. However, some students have a passion for reading that can drive them to spend time studying and interpreting a text. This would lead to more original ideas than interpretations that are influenced by what other critics say about a text or by the reader being told how to read a text. Graff does not believe in Bloom’s idea of “just reading”: “As readers, we are necessarily concerned with both the questions posed by the text and the questions we bring to it from our own differing interests and cultural backgrounds” (46-47). While Graff views this as an unavoidable contamination of “pure” reading, I believe this can also be viewed as a unique perspective that could be lost by an introduction to literary theory.
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In an article called “Why Americans Seek Opportunity Abroad” from New York Times, the author, Richard Florida, emphasis the economic crisis happening in our country. “The economic crisis has put a substantial crimp in a cornerstone of the American dream – their ability to climb the socio-economic ladder,” Florida says, but through his writing he directed his ideas more towards the group of upcoming adults. It is said that a small group of Americans are headed abroad for economic opportunity and to have the chance to learn and grow. This is viewed as a good thing.
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Usually, society views those who have a score of four and higher to be successful and adored by many. Therefore, an individual with a low score can cause society to view them negatively. As Lacie strives to maintain a positive impression on others, she depicts a performer of her own theatrical performance. By using a Symbolic Interactionist perspective, Nosedive is explained through Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical analysis which includes the aspects of front stage, back stage, and embarrassment. Goffman’s dramaturgical analysis depicts life in the form of a theatrical performance where everyday life represents a stage and each individual is a performer (Brym et al.
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In a 1949 New York Times review of Death of a Salesman, Brooks Atkinson praises Arthur Miller for writing such an outstanding drama. Atkinson says that the play “is so simple in style and so inevitable in theme that is scarcely seems like a thing that has been written and acted. For Mr. Miller has looked with compassion into the hearts of some ordinary Americans and quietly transferred their hope and anguish to the theatre”
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A tragic hero is a literary character that makes a judgment error that leads to his or her downfall. Traditionally, a tragic hero is reserved only for the elite, or noble members of society. However, Miller believes that the common man is equally subject to tragedy as the highest kings are. In The Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller portrays the protagonist, Willy Loman as a tragic hero. Willy Loman is a financially struggling man in his sixties looking for success for him and his family.
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According to the Freudian model of the psyche, psychoanalysis is a systematic structure of theories concerning the relation of the conscious mind and the unconscious mind by examining psychological process such as impulses, anxieties and internal conflicts. This model consists of three subcategories; the id, the ego, and the super-ego, all of which are evident in Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible. The id focuses on a person’s desires without any correlation to the conscience, much like that of Abigail William’s lust for John Proctor. The ego identifies the part of a person’s personality responsible for dealing with reality, such as John coming to the realization that he must remain an upright and honest man. The super-ego represents a repository of socially
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Parallels between Aristotle’s Poetics and Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman Aristotle wrote Poetics in 335BC and in that discourse he defined the elements of a tragedy and compared it to other plays like an Epic. Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, which was written over two thousand years after Aristotle’s Poetics, can easily be considered a modern Aristotelian tragedy. Thereby, a study of Death of a Salesman can help us to understand Aristotle’s Poetics. First off, Aristotle defines a tragedy as “an imitation of an action that is serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself; in appropriate and pleasurable language;… in a dramatic rather than narrative form; with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish a
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The times that we live in heavily influence our understanding of people and the literary characters we get to know of. The Reader Response theory revolves around the central idea that the context any reader resides in, influences the reader 's understanding of and the response to characters. This is the case in 'A Doll 's House ' by Henrik Ibsen too, where, Torvald Helmer, the protagonist 's husband evokes different responses by different readers of the play. While a Victorian Era reader will sympathize with the character of Helmer as he holds a his "dignity" above all, even the woman he "loves", the modern reader of the 21st century is outraged by Helmer 's blatantly sexist remarks about a woman 's "duty." The readers ' receptions of Helmer 's character varies greatly due to the different values they believe in and their social context.
1581 Words | 7 Pages
In his seminal work, Death of A Salesman, Arthur Miller portrays wretched conditions inflicting the lives of lower class people amid class-struggle in 1940s America. Miller sets the story during the great financial depression in the US , in between times after World War I and around World War II, though his characters hardly speak about the trauma of two World Wars. Miller earns an enormous success by putting an ordinary salesman as the protagonist in his play instead of putting a man of social nobility. In the play, Miller depicts his central character, Willy Loman as a destitute salesman struggling to rise up the social ladder in a capitalist society, who remains deluded by a 'dream of success ' and takes on a relentless pursuit of happiness that eventually brings his tragic demise. Though some critics speak in favor of the popular account of the cause of his death being his excessive obsession with so called the American dream and the 'capitalist oppression ' ; however, many still refuse to ascribe the cause of his death to capitalist oppression, which I will use synonymously with American dream here.
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Meta – Response Effect on Art In “The Pleasures of Tragedy,” the author Susan Feagin discuses with her audience the impact of direct responses and meta responses and explains how it relates to the tragic world of theatre. How the author defines direct responses is, “Only in the sense that it is a response to the qualities and content of the work of art.” (97) and that a meta response is known as “It is how one feels about and what one thinks about one 's responding (directly) in the way one does to the qualities and content of the work.” (97) but to be more direct in the tragedy scene a direct response can be seen as non-pleasing experiences and/or unhappy endings in which it brings the audience together when showing conflict that impacts everyone to come together and vice versa with meta response where we see something emotionally tragic such as a character’s death and we all come together and analyze what happen in the tragedy and connect it within own lives.
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