Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller (1915-2005) This play is dated 1949 https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/KitchenSinkDrama

1. A Kitchen Sink Drama – Focuses on the struggles of the urban working class, stemming from the wider “Kitchen Sink” movement of social realism in art (United Kingdom). This style of writing was popular in the 1950s through 1960s and had a revival in the 1980s through 1990s. But the tropes and methods lingered.

The name came from the stereotype of two women arguing while working in the kitchen or a husband and wife arguing while she fixes dinner. The movement evolved as more working-class writers emerged after the war. Many of its primary movers grew up as working class and wrote in reaction to prior stereotypical depictions of the working class, which prior to the movement tended to be either forelock-tugging yokels who happily deferred to their social ‘betters’ or were simply violent, uncouth thugs. As a consequence, Kitchen Sink Drama usually contains some kind of political agenda about it. Often a leftist or socialist one, and is often motivated b political anger; not for no reason, the term “Angry Young Men” was frequently applied to the early contributors. Most writers experienced working-class life, as opposed to being middle- and upper-class types, and were motivated by the desire to show the authentic working class experience.

https://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-trope.html2. Trope: a broad term that means figurative or metaphorical use of a word or expressionTropes are usually metaphors or similes but they can be personification, hyperbole, metonymy, synecdoche, pun, verbal irony, zeugma, etc. In modern times, cliché also became known as a trope. Some people mean cliché when they say trope but that’s not actually what the word means.

3. Zeugma (ZOOG ma): applies one verb to two different items – I left my heart and my luggage in San Francisco. He broke my heart and my car. He fishes for trout and compliments.

https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/schemes.html4. Schemes: Like a trope, a scheme adds depth to language but a trope changes the meaning of an expression; whereas, a scheme focuses on syntax (the order of words), letters and sounds.

COMMON SCHEMES: 5. Parallelism: a similar pattern of grammatical structure – Parallelism – “King Alfred tried to make the law clear, precise, and equitable.” NOT parallelism – “King Alfred tried to make clear laws that had precision and were equitable.” Parallelism – “The bigger they are, the harder they fall.” Parallelism – “The government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth.” 6. Chiasmus (ki AZ mus – the i is like “eye”)—a type of crisscross “By day the frolic, and the dance by night.” 7. Ellipsis – omitting a word implied by the previous clause – The European soldiers killed six of the

remaining villagers, the American soldiers, eight.”8. Alliosis – alternatives – “You can eat well or you can sleep well.” Sometimes, this results in a logical

fallacy of false dichotomy AKA the either/or fallacy, but sometimes it creates a clever and balanced sentence.

9. Asyndeton (ah SIN de tawn)– dropping conjunctions – “I came. I saw. I conquered.” 10. Polysyndeton (polly SIN de tawn – say polly like the name) using many conjunctions –

“Then suddenly fire burst from the Meneltarma, and there came a mighty wind and a tumult of the earth, and the sky reeled, and the hills slid, and the Numenor went down into the sea, with all its children and its wives and its maidens and its ladies proud; and all its gardens and its halls and its towers, its tombs and its riches, and its jewels and its webs and its things painted and carven, and its laughter and its mirth and its music, its wisdom and its lore; they vanished forever. (From The Silmarillion by J. R. R. Tolkien)

11. Enallage (in AL edge) – misuse of grammar for characterization or to make a memorable phraseBoxing manager Joe Jacobs became famous for this: “We was robbed!” British magazine Punch became famous for this: “You pays your money, and you takes your chances.”

12. Anapodoton (an a poe DOE tin) – a deliberate sentence fragment – “If only you came with me!” 13. Neologism (Knee ALL i gizm)– creating a new or imaginary word – Lewis Caroll uses this excessively –

“Twas brillig, and the slithy toves / did gyre and gimble in the wabe; / All mimsy were the borogoves, / and the mome raths outgrage.”

14. Anaphora (an A for ah – the A sounds like “at”)– repetition of beginning clauses – Churchill declared, “We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans. We shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air. We shall defend our island, whatever the cost shall be.”

15. Requiem: an act or token of remembrance; in the Roman Catholic Church this is a Mass for the repose of the souls of the dead.

Cast for the play:Willy Loman – The consummate salesman, feels his family is destined to great thingsLinda Loman – His devoted and long-suffering wifeBiff – The older son, the gifted and pampered athleteHappy – the younger son, always willing to help outBernard – a studious childhood friend and Charley’s son. He is a successful lawyer. The woman – Charley – a neighbor and friend Uncle Ben – Willy’s mysterious relative that had stupendous successHoward WagnerJenny – Charlie’s secretaryStanley – a waiterMiss Forsythe – Young prostitutesLetta –

Act 1

1. Make several observations about the setting.

Dormer window – a window that projects vertically from a sloping roof Mercurial – subject to sudden changes of mood or mind

The play begins: Trepidation – fear or agitation about something that may happen

Studebaker – an American car company, started in 1852, originally produced wagons

Yonkers – a city in New York, 4th most populous in NY.

Open windshield – This is a 1932 Ford.

Crestfallen – sad and disappointed

Willy regarding Biff – “[H]e has yet to make thirty -five dollars a week!” (16).http://aboutcancer.com/1949.htm

Average annual in 1949 salary $3,600 per yearMinimum wage 40 cents per hour – a forty-hour week would earn $16.00. Car – 1,650, Gas – 26 cents, House – 14,500, Milk – 84 cents, Bread – 14 cents, Postage stamp – 3 cents

Willy – “Certain men just don’t get started till later in life. Like Thomas Edison, I think. Or B. F. Goodrich. One of them was deaf” (18).

https://www.biography.com/people/thomas-edison-9284349Thomas Edison (1847-1931) was hard of hearing. He once mentioned that he hadn’t heard a bird chirp since he was twelve. He invented the phonograph, the light bulb, alkaline storage batteries and the Kinetograph (a camera for motion pictures).

Benjamin (B. F.) Goodrich (1841-1888) was a physician and industrialist, who founded the B. F. Goodrich company, a tire and rubber manufacturer. He invented the tire that is filled with air.

1928 Chevy The line across the windshield is where it opens.

Simonize – to polish a car to a high sheen. Simonize is an American manufacturer of car and cleaning products, founded in 1910; this is the oldest car care brand in the US.

Biff is making $28.00 per week right now (22).

2. Up to page 27, what do you make of the two boys? What kind of men did they become? What attitudes can you attribute to them?

IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT TIME SHIFTING: A change in time occurs at the bottom of page 27 in the italicized section when “The apartment houses are fading out, and the entire house and surroundings become covered with leaves. Music insinuates itself as the leave appear.” You are now in Willy’s memory up to Page 40 when Willy hollers, “There’s nothing the matter with him! You want him to be a worm like Bernard? He’s got spirit, personality . . . ” Then the italics kick in with “As he speaks, Linda, almost in tears, exits into the living-room.” When Willy speaks harshly, he thinks he’s talking to his wife in the past but his words sound to her as if she’s being scolded. We are back in current time and Willy didn’t mean to yell at his wife.

Laconic – using few words

On page 44, pay attention to the italics. Ben is part of Willy’s imagination. He never exists in real time. But this time Willy’s conversation with Ben interferes with his ongoing conversation with Charley. This starts to involve other people as well.

3. How does this scene, with Willy, Charlie and Ben, work for you? Why does the author create this confusion?

Willy asks Linda, “Didn’t [Ben] give you a watch fob with a diamond in it?” (53). A fob is a change or clip that connects a watch to a woman’s clothing.

Surlily / surly – rude or bad tempered

Linda tells her sons about finding a rubber pipe in the cellar (the basement) next to the water heater where Willy has probably been inhaling gas (59). The unfortunate idea behind the attempts to commit suicide indicate that Will is worth more dead than alive.

4. Consider all of her conversation with her sons. How does it go? What kinds of concerns does she have? To what extent are they reasonable? What does she want?

5. At the end of Act 1, write about what each member of the Loman family needed in the past and what he/she wants now. Which character(s) are most likely to be rewarded at the end of the play? Predict the ending.