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The Salesman: Theater Showtimes & Ticket Purchasing. Death of a Salesman is a 1949 play written by American playwright Arthur Miller. It was the recipient of the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and Tony Award for Best Play. The play premiered on Broadway in February 1949, running for 742 performances, and has been. Salesman definition, a man who sells goods, services, etc. Dictionary.com Word of the Day Translate Games Blog Thesaurus.com Favorites Dictionary.com Thesaurus.com My Account Log Out Log In Try Our Apps definitions Watch: Pore or CITE. From a general summary to chapter summaries to explanations of famous quotes, the SparkNotes Death of a Salesman Study Guide has everything you need to ace quizzes. Featuring Willy Loman, Death of a Salesman has been seen as an attack on the American dream. Death of a Salesman is one of the works for which Arthur Miller became most famous, bringing him international acclaim. Here are a few quotes from Death of a. Test Yourself: Death of a Salesman Click on the correct answer 1 Who says, \'I\'m losing weight, Pop, you notice?\' Biff Linda Ben Hap Charley 2 What object symbolizes Willy\'s best year, the year in which he felt most happy and successful? Clement Stone quotes from BrainyQuote.com. An in-depth discussion of the play Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller. Includes plot summary, character analysis, themes, quotes and more! This study guide helps students and readers of Arthur Miller\'s famous tragedy Death of a Salesman better understand. What Makes a Good Salesman View more from the July–August 2006 Issue Explore the Archive Loading. Executive Summary Reprint: R0607N Despite millions of dollars spent on combating the high turnover rate among insurance agents, the rate. He don\'t put a bolt to a nut, he don\'t tell you the law or give you medicine. He\'s a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine.\' Willy Loman has been a salesman for 34 years. At 60, he is cast aside, his usefulness exhausted. Death of a Salesman: Death of a Salesman Play Summary & Study Guide. Arthur Miller\'s play Death of a Salesman addresses loss of identity and a man\'s inability to accept change within himself and society. The play is a montage of memories, dreams, confrontations, and arguments, all of which make up the last 2. Willy Loman\'s life. The play concludes with Willy\'s suicide and subsequent funeral. Miller uses the Loman family — Willy, Linda, Biff, and Happy — to construct a self- perpetuating cycle of denial, contradiction, and order versus disorder. Willy had an affair over 1. Miller focuses on the affair and its aftermath to reveal how individuals can be defined by a single event and their subsequent attempts to disguise or eradicate the event. For example, prior to discovering the affair, Willy\'s son Biff adored Willy, believed all Willy\'s stories, and even subscribed to Willy\'s philosophy that anything is possible as long as a person is . Biff realizes that Willy has created a false image of himself for his family, society, and even for himself. Willy is not an invincible father or a loyal husband or a fantastically successful salesman like he wants everyone to believe. He fails to appreciate his wife. And he cannot acknowledge the fact that he is only marginally successful. Hence, Willy fantasizes about lost opportunities for wealth, fame, and notoriety. Even so, it would be incorrect to state that Miller solely criticizes Willy. Instead, Miller demonstrates how one individual can create a self- perpetuating cycle that expands to include other individuals. This is certainly the case within the Loman family. Until the end of the play, Willy effectively blocks the affair out of his memory and commits himself to a life of denial. He cannot remember what happened, so naturally he does not understand why his relationship with Biff has changed. Willy wants Biff\'s affection and adoration as before, but instead the two constantly argue. Willy vacillates, sometimes criticizing Biff\'s laziness and ineptitude, other times praising his physical abilities and ambition. Linda and Happy are also drawn into the cycle of denial. Linda is aware of Willy\'s habit of reconstructing reality; however, she also recognizes that Willy may not be able to accept reality, as shown through his numerous suicide attempts prior to the beginning of the play. As a result, Linda chooses to protect Willy\'s illusions by treating them as truth, even if she must ignore reality or alienate her children in doing so. Happy is also a product of Willy\'s philosophy. Like Willy, he manipulates the truth to create a more favorable reality for himself. For example, when Happy tells everyone that he is the assistant buyer, even though he is only the assistant to the assistant, he proves that he has incorporated Willy\'s practice of editing facts. Miller based Willy\'s character on his uncles, Manny Newman and Lee Balsam, who were salesmen. Miller saw his uncles as independent explorers, charting new territories across America. It is noteworthy that Miller does not disclose what type of salesman Willy is. Rather than drawing the audience\'s attention to . Willy is an explorer — conqueror of the New England territory — and a dreamer, and this allows the audience to connect with him because everyone has aspirations, dreams, and goals. Willy\'s despair results from his failure to achieve his American dream of success. At one point, Willy was a moderately successful salesman opening new territory in New England, and Biff and Happy viewed him as a model father. Once Biff discovers the affair, however, he loses respect for Willy as well as his own motivation to succeed. As Willy grows older, making sales is more difficult for him, so he attempts to draw on past success by reliving old memories. Willy loses the ability to distinguish reality from fantasy, and this behavior alienates him from others, thereby diminishing his ability to survive in the present. As the play progresses, Willy\'s life becomes more disordered, and he is forced to withdraw almost completely to the past, where order exists because he can reconstruct events or relive old memories. The play continues to affect audiences because it allows them to hold a mirror up to themselves. Willy\'s self- deprecation, sense of failure, and overwhelming regret are emotions that an audience can relate to because everyone has experienced them at one time or another. Although most do not commit suicide in the face of adversity, people connect with Willy because he is a man driven to extreme action. An audience may react with sympathy toward Willy because he believes he is left with no other alternative but to commit suicide. On the other hand, an audience may react with disgust and anger toward Willy, believing he has deserted his family and taken the easy way out. Either way, individuals continue to react to Death of a Salesman because Willy\'s situation is not unique: He made a mistake — one that irrevocably changed his relationship with the people he loves most — and when all of his attempts to eradicate his mistake fail, he makes one grand attempt to correct the mistake. Willy vehemently denies Biff\'s claim that they are both common, ordinary people, but ironically, it is the universality of the play that makes it so enduring.
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