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Extended introduction to "Death of a Salesman" photo

Death of a Salesman : an extended introduction

by · Lecture: 21 minutes
  1. Death of a Salesman : an extended introduction
  2. Family in Death of a Salesman
  3. Death of a Salesman: Tragedy versus Social Drama
  4. Death of a Salesman: the play’s structure, a memory play

Introduction: the structure of the play

In Miller’s mind, Death of a Salesman was not an abstract concept but the concrete image of an enormous head that would be on stage, opening up the play, so that spectators would be able to see inside. It was a very ambitious idea and the original title was The Inside of His Head.

In Death of a Salesman, the spectator is plunged into the main character’s head. There is no linear onward progression – it is a play with interruption and the striking characteristic of Death of a Salesman is its uninterrupted dramatic tension. Tragic density can be found from the beginning to the end.

Miller: ‘It is not a mounting line of tense, nor a gradually come of intensifying suspense but a block, a single chord presented as such at the outset, within which all the strains and melodies would already be contained’.

Hence, everything is in place at the beginning and the music takes a great deal of importance for it is used to set the mood. It is time now to make the difference between the different kinds of plots.

The external plot represents the succession of events perceived by Willy Loman (present-objective reality). The internal plot deals with Willy’s stream of consciousness -his memories and obsessions (subjective reality). The music points to the fact we move from the character’s present to his past.

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I. The external plot

Death of a Salesman is made up of two acts without any scenes. The requiem is a burial scene. The play is about the last 24 hours of Willy Loman’s life; it starts in ‘media res’, i.e. in the middle of an action that has already begun.

Act I starts on Monday night and at the end of it, all characters go to bed.

Act II is about Tuesday’s events at 10 am. The action is no longer limited to the Lomans’ house -the two sons go to the restaurant… At 6 pm, they go out with two girls. Later, they found Willy sowing seeds. There is an argument, a showdown between Biff and Willy. Then, a car is heard roaring in the night. The curtain falls.

The requiem recounts the day of the funeral, which is not precisely set in time. Let us say out of time. It does not conclude convincingly the play. It is rather open.

The play also has a subheading, which is ‘Certain Private Conversations in Two Acts and a Requiem’. We can deduce a tension between the private sphere (son/father – husband/wife) and the requiem for it is public, attended by lots of people.

Willy Loman is a private character, nonetheless with a public dimension. Both public and private, he stands for the average American.

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Structure and Narration in "The Great Gatsby" photo

The ordering of events in The Great Gatsby

by · Lecture: 13 minutes
  1. Introduction to The Great Gatsby by Francis Scott Fitzgerald: from the Lost Prairies to the Realist Jungle
  2. The Great Gatsby: characters and characterization
  3. The Great Gatsby: the Romantic Quest
  4. Structure and Narration in The Great Gatsby
  5. The ordering of events in The Great Gatsby
  6. The Great Gatsby: an American novel

Introduction

In The Great Gatsby Fitzgerald condensed the story’s events. It appears that two important changes were introduced:

1. Fitzgerald suppressed a long episode of Gatsby’s childhood to heighten the sense of mystery surrounding his protagonist’s youth. This fragment was then turned into a short story Absolution that was published in a review by Mercury.

2. The second important change concerned the order of the events and the fact that in the original version, it was Gatsby who spoke.

In the final version, all the action unfolds during one summer – from mid-June to early September – and the geographical location is confined to New York, Long Island: East Egg and West Egg. The tragic dimension is also increased due to the fact that all the events have occurred before the curtain rises.

I. Scrambled chronology

The story’s events have been scrambled, but it is a sign of artistic order. Besides we get to know Gatsby much in the same way as in real life we become acquainted with a friend, namely progressively by fitting together fragments that are picked up as we read the novel.

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First Gatsby appears to Nick as a pictorial vision, an emblematic figure that is almost unreal in the night: “Fifty feet away a figure had emerged from the shadow of my neighbour’s mansion…regarding the silver pepper of the stars” (p27). Then through Nick’s narrative, we move forward and backward over Gatsby’s past.

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Structure and Narration in "The Great Gatsby" photo

Structure and Narration in The Great Gatsby

by · Lecture: 10 minutes
  1. Introduction to The Great Gatsby by Francis Scott Fitzgerald: from the Lost Prairies to the Realist Jungle
  2. The Great Gatsby: characters and characterization
  3. The Great Gatsby: the Romantic Quest
  4. Structure and Narration in The Great Gatsby
  5. The ordering of events in The Great Gatsby
  6. The Great Gatsby: an American novel

The Great Gatsby is the third novel of Fitzgerald, published in 1925 after This Side of Paradise (1920) and The Beautiful and the Damned (1922).

Introduction

It was a turning point in Fitzgerald’s literary career because it was to improve on his previous works: he tested new techniques and insisted on the novelty of his enterprise: ‘I want to write something new, something extraordinary and beautiful and simple and ‘intricately patterned’ (letter to Perkins, agent at Scribner’s).

Indeed, Fitzgerald devoted a lot of care and attention to pruning unnecessary passages and tried to introduce editing methods (just like a filmmaker) to re-arrange his story in movie sequences.

In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald’s main innovation was to introduce a first-person narrator and protagonist whose consciousness filters the story’s events.

This device was not a total invention since a character through whose eyes and mind the central protagonist is discovered is to be found in two of Conrad’s books: Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim.

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As usual with this device, the main protagonist remains strange and shady. This technique reinforces the mystery of the characters.

The second advantage is that the mediation of a character-witness permits a play between the real and the imaginary.

This indirect approach is inherited from Nathaniel Hawthorne. Hence, it is difficult to distinguish between true representation and fantasizing. For Emerson, the vision was more important than the real world.

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