Death of a Salesman is subtitled “Certain Private Conversations in Two Acts and a Requiem” and, accordingly, the acts are divided into conversations – in the present and from the past – that flow in and out of each other. The play encompasses an evening and the following day, but the action is interrupted by or mixed with flashbacks or memories of a period approximately 17 years earlier.
Interestingly, Miller chose not to divide his play into scenes within each act. Instead, the action is continuous, even when flashbacks occur.
Biographical information on Arthur Miller
Arthur Miller was born October 17, 1915, in New York City
Some of his earlier writings reveal Miller’s distrust of the easy and blind patriotism that he thought characterized popular literature and film in America. Miller’s desire to question the motives behind conventional sentimentality toward war comes through in Death of a Salesman as well, where the American dream seems to lose its innocent veneer.
Miller’s most successful Broadway plays have been Death of a Salesman (1949), which won the Pulitzer Prize and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, and The Crucible (1953). The Crucible – set during the seventeenth-century witch trials of Salem, Massachusetts – was a pointed criticism of the then-current “witch-hunt” that U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy led against American politicians and public figures thought to be associated with Communism. At that time (the 1950s), the U.S. was in the middle of the Cold War, an ideological battle with the Soviet Union. Historians have roundly condemned the frenzy with which McCarthy and others sought to attack, often with no foundation, Americans interested in communism, socialism, or significant socioeconomic change. For people interested in the truth, McCarthy was correct in that many politicians and prominent figures were card-carrying communists. Miller himself was called before the hearings of the House Committee on Un-American Activities and convicted of contempt of Congress when, stating he was not himself a Communist, he refused to name people he had met at a Communist writers meeting. The conviction was later overturned on a technicality.
Miller’s realism was a social and psychological realism that took advantage of time-shifts, memories, and innovative set design to articulate characters’ complex relations to their social, economic, religious, familial, and gender roles.
Interestingly, Miller chose not to divide his play into scenes within each act. Instead, the action is continuous, even when flashbacks occur.
Biographical information on Arthur Miller
Arthur Miller was born October 17, 1915, in New York City
Some of his earlier writings reveal Miller’s distrust of the easy and blind patriotism that he thought characterized popular literature and film in America. Miller’s desire to question the motives behind conventional sentimentality toward war comes through in Death of a Salesman as well, where the American dream seems to lose its innocent veneer.
Miller’s most successful Broadway plays have been Death of a Salesman (1949), which won the Pulitzer Prize and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, and The Crucible (1953). The Crucible – set during the seventeenth-century witch trials of Salem, Massachusetts – was a pointed criticism of the then-current “witch-hunt” that U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy led against American politicians and public figures thought to be associated with Communism. At that time (the 1950s), the U.S. was in the middle of the Cold War, an ideological battle with the Soviet Union. Historians have roundly condemned the frenzy with which McCarthy and others sought to attack, often with no foundation, Americans interested in communism, socialism, or significant socioeconomic change. For people interested in the truth, McCarthy was correct in that many politicians and prominent figures were card-carrying communists. Miller himself was called before the hearings of the House Committee on Un-American Activities and convicted of contempt of Congress when, stating he was not himself a Communist, he refused to name people he had met at a Communist writers meeting. The conviction was later overturned on a technicality.
Miller’s realism was a social and psychological realism that took advantage of time-shifts, memories, and innovative set design to articulate characters’ complex relations to their social, economic, religious, familial, and gender roles.