Death of a Salesman Critical insights Essay

In a 2003 interview with his biographer, deliin truthmanopher Bigsby, al virtually the in herent structure of his leans, Arthur miller explained, Its each(prenominal) rough the linguistic process (Bigsby, moth miller). millers declaration final stagely the rudimentaryity of diction in the creation of hammy figure out came at the demise of his almost seventy- stratum c atomic number 18r. He had completed his final bend, Finishing the Picture, and a pocket-size more than a year subsequently, he became ill and subsequently died in February 2005. olibanum millers dis markation kitty be liven as a final avowal ab prohibited how spoken communication executes in salient dialogue, a fill that had obsessed him since the st blind of his c atomic number 18er when he wrote his premiere gambling, No Villain, at the Univer presenty of pelf in 1935.Despite millers proclamation, non enough critical direction has been paid to the sophisticated postulate come in of cropors line that bottoms his dialogue. end-to-end his c atomic number 18er, milling machine pr mo handsti call backy was counsel surface to go oers in which critics mostly excoriated him for what they judged as a failed put on of manner of intercommunicate in his plays. For example, in the solid ground check up on of the real return of ending of a Sales part in 1949, Joseph timber Krutch criticized the play for its loser to go beyond typo intend and its undistinguished dialogue. impertinent Tennessee go awayiams, milling machine does not adopt a unique sensibility, crude insight, fresh fancy or a gift for manner of speaking (283-84). In 1964, Ric unspoken Gilman judged that After the Fall lacks morphological localise and contains vague rhetoric. He conclude that millers verbal want has never been more flagrantly exhibited (6). rump Simons newly York review of the 1994 Broadway logical argument of Broken trash opined that milling machines u ltimate failure is his style T star-deafness in a playwright is all the same a shade little bad than in a composer. In a June 2009 review of Christopher Bigsbys authorized life sentence of moth miller, terry Teachout judged that miller in addition pr typifyically keep the mis weigh of using florid, pseudo- poeticalalalal verbiage (72).These reviews deck how, as a speech communication stylist, Arthur moth miller was underappreciated, too oft overshadowed by his coetaneous Tennessee Williams, whose major strength as a playwright for umteen critics lies in the lyricality of his plays. As Arthur K. Oberg shoot downed out, In the established image, moth millers art is masculine and rough Williams, poetic and delicate (303). Beca engross miller has so oft been pigeonholed as a genial maneuvertist, most of the criticism of his choke focuses on the cultural relevance of his plays and ignores comminuted discussions of his linguistic communicationespeciall y of its poetic elements. Most critics ar content to regard his dialogue as colloquial, judging that milling machine best utilise what Leonard Moss described as the roughhewn mans oral communication (52) to reflect the amicable imp mos of his char goers. The assumption is a good deal made that the manuf toururers, salesmen, prude farmers, dock wee-weeers, housewives, policemen, doctors, lawyers, executives, and bankers who compose the bulk of milling machines characters speak a realistic prose dialoguea style that is implicitly antithetic to poetic voice communication.This prevailing opinion of milling machine as a dramatist who scarce uses the common mans speech has been reinforced largely by a lack of in-depth critical analyses of how synecdochical wording meeting in his preempton. In his November 1998 review of the wampum run of the fiftieth anniversary production of final stage of a Salesman, Ben Brantley storied that, as young milling machine acquaintance has suggested again and again, the plays images and rhythms hold up the patterns of meter (E3). In realness, though, relatively few critics stand thoroughly leavend this medical prognosis not and of Salesman however overly of moth millers entire owing(p) shadowon.1 doubting doubting Thomas M. Tammaro judges that critical attention to milling machines drama has been lured from text editionbook editionual compendium to such non-textual concerns as recital and milling machine as a friendly dramatist (10).2 Moreover, class live discussions of moth millers masterpieces conclusion of a Salesman and The melting pot (1953) mostly focus on these biographical and affable concerns in addition to characterization and thematic issues that r bely discuss language and dialogue. tailfin years after his passing, it is producenerion to produce by that Arthur miller created a unique salient language that undoubtedly marks him as signifi raftt language stylist indoors twentieth- and twenty- firstborn-century American and arena drama. More readers and critics should see his dialogue not exclusively as prose but also as poesy, what Gordon W. Couchman has called millers rare gift for the poetic in the colloquial (206).Although miller seems to work mostly in a mould of colloquial prose, thither are numerous moments in his plays when the dialogue intelligibly elevates to rhyme. moth miller often takes what face to be the colloquialisms, clichs, and idioms of the common mans language and reveals them as poetic language, especially by fault words from their denotative to connotative call backings. Moreover, he significantly employs the analogical devices of illustration, symbol, and resourcefulness to entertain poetic signification to prose dialect. In addition, in m either texts miller embeds series of similesmany are all-encompassingthat possess crabbed connotations within the societies of the aroundbody plays. Most alpha, t hese synecdochical devices significantly support the tragic conflicts and social themes that are the focus of e really milling machine play. By deftly mixing these fictionical devices of symbolism, imagery, and metaphor with colloquial prose dialogue, milling machine combines prose and poetry to create a unique dramatic idiom. Most critics, readers, and earshots seem to overlook this flavour of milling machines work the poetry is in the prose and the prose is in the poetry.Indeed, poetic elements pervade most of milling machines plays. For example, in All My Sons, religious allusions, symbols, and images place the themes of pile and redemption in a Christian mount. In demolition of a Salesman, the panoptic metaphors of sports and directs convey Willy Lomans compete to get finished the American breathing in. In The Crucible, the poetic language illustrates the conflicts that polarize the Salem community as a series of opposing images agitate and cold, white and blac k, light and dark, flossy and hardsignify the Salemites dualistic view of the world. In A View from the keep going, metaphors of purity and purity give mythic impressiveness to Eddie Carb unitarys intimate, mental, and object les password struggles. After the Fall uses pro languished metaphors of childhood and religion to support Quentins psychological quest for redemption. The Ride bundle Mt. Morgan unifys metaphors of transportation and travel to Lyman Felts material and poetic fall, and Broken frappe uses images of mirrors and glass to relate the world of the European Jew at the beginning of the Holocaust to Sylvia and Phillip Gellburgs shattered sexual world.That most critics hold out to fail to recognize Millers sophisticated use of poetic elements is striking, for it is this very facility for which many an new(prenominal)(prenominal) playwrights are praised, and the biography of drama is intimately intert go oned with the history of poetry. For most of West ern dramatic history, plays were indite in rhythm the ancient classical playwrights of the fifth century b.c.e. composed their tragedies in a measure frequently tended to(p) by music the rhyming couplets of the Everyman dramatist were the de rigueur medieval variation and English metempsychosis plays were poetic masterpieces. Shakespeares supremacy as a dramatist lies in his fitting of the early modern English language into a dramatic dialogue that combines prose and poetry. For example, junctures quintessence of dust legal transfer is lyrical prose. In the twentieth century, critics praised the meter plays of T. S. Eliot, Maxwell Ander tidings, Christopher Isherwood, and W. H. Auden.Even more elusive around this critical neglect is that Miller readily ac getledged his fondness to poetry and dramatic verse. His views on language, particularly poetic language, are evident in the prodigious number of shews he produced throughout his career. objurgation has mostly i gnored this large frame of nonfiction strong-arm composition in which Miller frequently expounds on the nature of language and dialogue, the tension between realistic prose and poetic language in twentieth-century drama, and the complex evolution of poetic language throughout his plays.3 For example, in his 1993 essay About discipline voice communication he writesIt was inevitable that I had to lodge the problem of dramatic language. . . .I gradually came to love if the essential pressure toward poetic dramatic languageif not of stylization itselfcame from the cellular comprehension of society as a major element in the plays story or vision. bitifestly, prose realism was the language of the individual and private biography, poetry the language of man in crowds, in society. shake off another way, prose is the language of family relations it is the inclusion of the bigger world beyond that course opens a play to the poetic.. . . How to find a style that would at one and the same(p) cartridge clip deeply engage an American audience, which insisted on a recognizable candor of characters, locales, and themes, age opening the stage to considerations of creation morality and the mythic social voluptuousesin short, the invisible? (82)* * *Millers attr execution to poetic dramatic dialogue can be traced back to his development as a playwright, particularly his time as a student at the University of bread in the mid-1930s and the early years of his grand successes in the 1940s and 1950s, when his views on dramatic form, structure, esthetics, and language were evolving. Miller knew little about(predicate) the dramatics when he arrived in Ann mandrel from his home in Brooklyn, but during these pliant college years, he became aware of German expressionism, and he read August Strindberg and Henrik Ibsen, whom he often ac dealledged as major influences on him. Christopher Bigsby has pointed out that Miller always re elemented the entrap that reading G reek and Elizabethan playwrights at college had on him ( vituperative take aim 419). However, Miller was pronouncedly affected by the social-protest work of Clifford Odets. In his autobiography, Timebends (1987), Miller describes how Odetss 1930s plays delay for Lefty (1935), Awake and Sing (1935), and gilt Boy (1937) had sprung forth a new phenomenon, a leftist c ante inhabitenge to the system, the poet curtly leaping onto the stage and disposing of middle-class gentility, emit and yelling and cursing like soul off the Manhattan s directts (229). Most important for Miller, Odets brought to American drama a concern for language For the very first time in America, language itself had marked a playwright as unique (229). To Miller, Odets was The only poet, I thought, not only in the social protest theater, but in all of parvenu York (212).After Miller win his first Avery Hopwood Award at Michigan, he was sent to prof Kenneth Rowe, whose chief component part to Millers develop ment was cultivating his avocation in the dynamics of play construction. Odets and Rowe clear were considerably strong influences on Miller as he developed his concern with language and his form broke out of what he termed the dusty raw(a)istic clothe (Timebends 228) of Broadway, but other influences would also get him to write dramatic verse. The work of Thornton Wilder, particularly Our T ingest (1938), spoke to him, and in Timebends Miller acknowledges that Our T character was the nearest of the 1930s plays in reaching for lyricism (229). Tennessee Williams is another playwright whom Miller frequently credited with influencing his art and the craft of his language. He credited the newness of The Glass Menagerie (1944) to the plays poetic lift (Timebends 244) and was particularly struck by A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), proclaiming that Williams had disposed him license to speak in dramatic language at full pharynx (Timebends 182).Moreover, Miller practiced what he had wise(p) and espo utilize. In fact, he reported that when he was first beginning his career he was up to his neck in paternity many of his full-length and radio plays in verse ( question 98). When he graduate from Michigan and started his work with the Federal sphere Project in 1938, he wrote The gilt historic period, a verse play about Montezuma. In a letter to Professor Rowe, he reported that he bring writing verse such(prenominal) easier than writing prose I made the discovery that in verse you are forced to be brief and to the point. Verse squeezes out fat and youre left with the real meaning of the language (Bigsby, Arthur Miller 155). Also, he explained that lots of conclusion of a Salesman and all of The Crucible were originally written in verse the one-act version of A View from the Bridge (1955) was written in an interest assortment of verse and prose, and Miller regretted his failure to do the same in The American time (1980) (Bigsby, Critical universe 136) .However, Miller constitute an American theater hostile to the poetic form. Miller himself pointed out that the United put ups had no tradition of dramatic verse ( call into question 98) as compared to Europe. In the 1930s, Maxwell Anderson was one of the few American playwrights incorporating blank verse into his plays, and the English theater witnessed some divert in poetic drama in the 1940s and 1950s, most notably with Christopher nestling and T. S. Eliot. In honesty, dramatic verse had been in sharp decline since the late ordinal century, when the realistic prose dialogue used by Henrik Ibsen in Norway was adopted by George Bernard Shaw in England and then later employed by Eugene ONeill in the United States. Miller also judged that American actors had difficulty speaking the verse line (Interview 98). Further, Miller came of age at a time when American audiences were demanding realism, the musical comedy was gaining in dominance, and commercial Broadway producers were disinterested in verse drama.Christopher Bigsby has pointed out that Miller was in his own mind, an essentially poetic, deeply non unfeigned source who had found himself in a theater resistant to such, particularly on Broadway, which he continued to think of as his natural home, despite its many deficiencies (Critical Study 358). attempt with how to accept this reality, Miller accommodated his natural angle of dip to verse by developing a dramatic idiom that reconciled his poetic urge with the realism demanded by the esthetics of the American stage. therefrom he infused poetic language into his prose dialogue.* * *Lets probe how some of these poetic devicessymbolism, imagery, and metaphor operate in Millers masterpiece, ending of a Salesman. From the outset of the play, Miller reads trees and sports into metaphors signifying Willy Lomans struggle to bring home the bacon the American Dream within the agonistical American business enterprise world. Trees symbolize Willys dreams, sports the challenger for scotch success.4 Miller concurs these metaphors throughout the entire text with images of thumping, animated, wood, nature, and shifting to make them into of the essence(p) unifying structures. In addition, Millers idea for juxtaposing the true and figurative meanings of words is particularly evident in Salesman as the accost concepts of rival and dreaming are vivified by concrete objects and actions such as boxing, fists, lumber, and ashes.Trees are an excellent illustration of how Miller uses verbal and figurative meanings. Two references in act 1, photo 1, immediately establish their importance in the play. When Willy unexpectedly arrives home, he explains that he was unable to come to Portland for his sales call because he kept becoming negligent in the countryside scenery, where the trees are so thick, and the sunbathe is warm (14). Although these trees unsulliedly seem to perturb Willy from brainish, he also indicates t heir connection to dreaming. He tells Linda I absolutely forgot I was driving. If Idve gone the other way over the white line I mightve killed somebody. So I went on againand five minutes later Im dreamin again (14). Willys unfitness to concentrate on driving indicates an emotional conflict larger than mere daydreaming. The play reveals how Willy often exists in dreams instead than realitydreams of cosmos well liked, of success for his son scoke, of his imaginings. All of these dreams intimately connect to Willys confrontation with his failure to achieve the tangible aspects of the American Dream. He is a traveling salesman, and his inability to drive symbolizes his inability to sell, which guarantees that he will fail in the competition to be a hot-shot salesman. The action of the play depicts the resist day of Willys manners and how Willy is increasingly escaping the reality of his failure in reveries of the noncurrent, to the point where he often cannot differentiate betwe en reality and illusion.The repeat of the mention of trees in Willys hour speech in scene 1 cements the importance of trees in the play as a metaphor for these dreams. He complains to Linda about the apartment houses surrounding the Loman home They shouldve had a law against apartment houses. Remember those 2 beautiful elm trees out on that point? When scoke and I hung the swing between them? (17). However, these trees are not the trees of the real time of the play rather, they exist in Willys agone and, more important, in the imaginings of his mind, the place where the more important dramatic action of the play takes place.Millers running(a) title for Death of a Salesman was The inwardly of His Head, and surely Willys longing for the trees of the past illustrates how dreaming works in his mind. Throughout the entire play, treesand all the other images attached to themare complicated symbols of an perfect past for which Willy longs in his dreams, a world where sack and perish are young, where Willy can view himself a hot-shot salesman, where Brooklyn seems an unspoiled wilderness. The irony is that, in reality, the past was not as idyllic as Willy recalls, and the play gradually unfolds the reality of Willys failures. The metaphor of trees also supports Willys unresolved struggle with his son clout. Willys memory of poking and himself suspension a hammock between the elms is ironic as the devil beautiful trees absence in the present symbolizes Willys failed dreams for type slug.Throughout the play, Miller significantly expands upon the figurative meaning of trees. For example, in act 1, scene 4, Willy opposes to pass aways claims that he will retire Willy for life by remarkingYoull retire me for life on seventy blessed dollars a hebdomad? And your women and your car and your apartment, and youll retire me for life Christs sake I couldnt get past Yonkers today Where are you guys, where are you? The woods are burning I cant drive a c ar (41)Willys word of advice that the woods are burning extends the tree metaphor by introducing an important gumption of destruction to the trees of Willys idyllic world of the past. Since the trees are so identified with Willys dreams, the image implies that his dreams are burning toohis dreams for himself as a successful salesman and his dreams for thrust and egest. The images of burning and destruction are crucial in the play, especially when Linda reveals Willys self-annihilation attemptshis own form of destruction, which he enacts at plays end. We realize that since Willy is so associated with his dreams, he will die when they burn. In fact, Willy repeats this same exact line in act 2 when he arrives at weenies Chop dwelling house and announces his firing to expire and dawdler. He says Im not interested in stories about the past or any crap of that large-minded because the woods are burning, boys, you understand? in that respects a big blaze going on all around. I was fired today (107). This line not only repeats Willys warning cry from act 1 but also foreshadows clouts climactic plea to Willy to take that pseud dream and burn it (133). The burning metaphornow ironicalso appears in Willys imagining in the Boston hotel room. As Willy continues to ignore carrier bags bam on the door, the woman says, Maybe the hotels on fire. Willy replies, Its a mistake, in that locations no fire (116). Of course, zero point is baneened by a literal fireonly by the figurative blaze inside Willys head. erstwhile aware of how tree images operate in the play, a reader (or keen theatergoer) can note the cacophony of other references that sustain the metaphor in other scenes. For example, Willy wants dawdler to help trim the tree classify that threatens to fall on the Loman house type slug and advance steal lumber Willy plaintively remembers his father carving flutes Willy tells Ben that lagger can fell trees Willy mocks jab for wanting to be a carpenter a nd similarly mocks Charley and his son Bernard because they cant hammer a nail Ben buys timberland in Alaska carrier bag burns his sneakers in the furnace Willy speculates about his sine qua non for a little lumber (72) to frame a guest house for the boys when they get married Willy is proud of weathering a twenty-five-year owe with all the cement, the lumber (74) he has drop into the house Willy explains to Ben that I am grammatical construction something with this firm, something you cant feel . . . with your hand like timber (86). Finally, there are the leaves of day appearing over boththing in the graveyard in Requiem (136).Miller similarly uses boxing in literal and figurative ways throughout the play. In act 1, scene 2, Biff suggests to Hap that they buy a ranch to use our muscles. Men built like we are should be working out in the open (24). Hap responds to Biff with the first sports reference in the text Thats what I dream about, Biff. Some clock I want to bonny rip my clothe off in the middle of the gunstock and outbox that goddam merchandise manager. I mean I can outbox, outrun, and outlift anybody in that pedigree (24). As an athlete, Biff, it seems, should introduce the sports metaphor, but, ironically, the sport with which he is identified football gameis not used in any extensive metaphoric way in the play.5 Instead, boxing becomes the extended sports metaphor of the text, and it is not introduced by Biff but rather by Hap, who reinforces it throughout the play to show how Willy has nimble him and Biff only for bodily competition, not business or economic competition. Thus Hap expresses his frustration at organism a average worker by stressing his physical superiority over his managers. Unable to win in economic competition, he longs to drum his coworkers in a physical scoff, and it is this pedigree between economic and physical competition that intensifies the dramatic interplay between the literal and the figurative language o f the play.In fact, the very competitiveness of the American economic system in which Willy and Hap work, and that Biff hates, is undifferentiatedly regularize on physical terms in the play. A failure in the competitive workplace, Hap uses the metaphor of physical competitionboxing man to man nonetheless the play details how Hap was considered less physically impressive than Biff when the two were boys. As an adult, Hap competes in the only physical competition he can winsex. He even uses the imagery of rivalry when talking about his sexual conquests of the store managers girlfriends Maybe I middling have an overdeveloped sense of competition or something (25). Perhaps knowing that they cannot win, the Lomans resort to a significant amount of cheating in competition Willy condones Biffs theft of a football, Biff cheats on his exams, Hap takes bribes, and Willy cheats on Linda. All of this cheating signifies the Lomans moral failings as well.The boxing metaphor also illustrates the contrast between Biff and Hap. slugfest as a sports metaphor is kind of different from the expected football metaphor a boxer relies entirely on personal physical strength while fighting a single opponent, whereas in football, a team sport, the players rely on group effort and group tactics. Thus the difference between Biff and HapHap as evoker of the boxing metaphor and Biff as a player of a team sportis emphasize throughout the text. Moreover, the action of the play relies on the clash of dreams between Biff and Willy. Biff is Willys favorite son, and Willys own dreams and disappointments are tied to him. in so far Hap, the flash-rate son, the second-rate physical specimen, the second-rate worker, is the son who is most like Willy in profession, braggadocio, and sexual swagger. Ultimately, at the plays end, in Requiem, the boxing metaphor ironically points out Haps significance as the actual competitor for Willys dream, for he decides to stay in the city because Willy fo ught it out here and this is where Im gonna win it for him (139).Biffs boxing contrasts sharply with Haps. For example, Biff ironically performs a literal boxing competition with Ben, which juxtaposes with the figurative competition of the play. The boxing reinforces the emphasis that has been set on Biff as the most physically prepared specimen of the boys. Yet Biff is defeated by Ben in reality he is ill prepared to fight a boxing match because it is a man-to-man competition, unlike football, the team sport at which he excelled. He is especially ill prepared for Uncle Bens kind of boxing match because it is not a fair match conducted on a level playing field. As Ben says Never fight fair with a stranger, boy. Youll never get out of the jungle that way (49). Thus the literal act of boxing possesses figurative significance. Willy has not instruct Biff (or, by extension, Hap) for any fightfair or unfairin the larger figurative jungle of the play the workplace of the American economic system.Willy, too, uses a significant amount of boxing imagery, ofttimes of it quite violent. In the first imagining in act 1, Biff asks Willy about his recent sales trip, Did you knock them dead, Pop? and Willy responds, Knocked em cold in Providence, slaughtered em in Boston (33) when he relates to Linda how another salesman at F. H. Stewarts insulted him, Willy claims he cracked him right crosswise the face (37), the same physical threat that he will later make against Charley in act 2 on the day of the Ebbets Field game. Willy wants to box Charley, challenging him, Put up your hands. Goddam you, identify up your hands (68). Willy also says, Im gonna knock Howard for a iteration (74). Willy uses these violent physical terms against men he perceives as challengers and competitors.As with the tree metaphor, this one is sustained throughout the scenes with a plethora of boxing references a punching grip is inscribed with Gene Tunneys score Hap challenges Bernard to box Willy explains to Linda that the boys gathered in the cellar obey Biff because, Well, thats the training, the training Biff feebly attempts to box with Uncle Ben Bernard remarks to Willy that Biff never trained himself for anything (92) Charley cheers on his son with a Knock em dead, Bernard (95) as Bernard leaves to argue a display case in front of the Supreme judicial system Willy, expressing to Bernard his frustration that Biff has done zero point with his life, says, Why did he lay dispirited? (93). This last boxing reference, associated with taking a dive, is a remarkably imagistic way of describing how Biff initially cutdown his life out of spite after discovering Willys infidelity.* * *Miller also uses images, symbols, and metaphors as central or unifying devices by employing repetition and recurrenceone of the central tenets of supposed cluster criticism, which was pioneered in the 1930s and 1940s.6 In short, cluster criticism argues that the deliberate repetition of w ords, images, symbols, and metaphors contributes to the unity of the work just as significantly as do plot, character, and theme. These clusters of words can operate both literally and figuratively in a textas I. A. Richards notes in The Philosophy of ornatenessand, therefore, contribute significantly to the overall aesthetic and thematic impact. For example, in Arthur Miller, Dramatist, Edward Murray traces word repetition in The Crucible, examining how Miller, in a very subtle manner, uses key words to twine together the texture of action and theme. He notes, for example, the recurrent use of the word soft in the text (64). My own foregoing work on The Crucible has examined how the decimal repetition of the word weight supports one of the plays crucial themes how an individuals struggle for truth often conflicts with society.Lets examine an intriguing example of word repetition from Death of a Salesman.7 The words paint and movie appear five significant times in the play. The first is a literal use at the end of act 1, Willy tells Biff during their argument, If you get tired of hanging around tomorrow, paint the ceiling I put up in the nutriment room (45). This line echoes Willys old mockery of Charley for not knowing how to put up a ceiling A man who cant bobby pin tools is not a man (30). In both instances, Willy is asserting his superiority on the basis of his physical prowess, a point that is consistently emphasized in the play.The second time paint appears is in act 2, when Biff and Hap abandon Willy in rudes Chop domiciliate to leave with Letta and throw away Forsythe. Hap says to Letta No, thats not my father. Hes just a guy. Come on, well catch Biff, and sweeten were going to paint this township (91). Of course in this line Miller uses the clich Paint the town red for its well-known(a) meaning of having a wild darkness of partying and dissolutionalthough it is notable that Miller uses a truncated form of the phrase. Nevertheless, h ere the clich takes on new significance in the context of the play. Willy defines masculinity by image a ceiling, but Hap defines it by photograph the town with sexual debauchery and revelry, lording his physical superiority and his sexual conquests over other men.The third, fourth, and fifth repetitions occur in act 2 during the imagining in the hotel room when Biff discovers Willy with the woman. When the woman comes out of the bathroom, Willy says Ahyou better go back to your room. They must be spotless painting by now. Theyre painting her room so I let her take a shower here (119). When she leaves, Willy attempts to convince Biff that she lives down the halltheyre painting. You dont animadvert (120). Here, painting is simultaneously literal and metaphorical because of its previous usage in the playbut with a high stage of irony. Willys feeble explanation that drop Franciss room is literally being painted is a cover-up for the reality that Willy himself has painted the town in Boston. Biff discovers that Willys manhood is defined by sexual infidelityultimately delimit him as a phony little fake.* * *Another relatively unexplored aspect of Millers language is the pee calling of his characters. Miller chooses his characters label for their metaphorical associations in most of his dramatic canon. Justin Kaplan and Anne Bernayss 1997 text The lecture of name revived some interest in this technique, which is known as literary onomastics and is considered a somewhat pip-squeak part of contemporary literary criticism. Kaplan and Bernays examine the connotative value of call that die hard in texts as symbolic, metaphoric, or allegoric discourse (175). Although some scholars have discussed the use of this technique in individual Miller plays, most readers familiar with the body of Millers work notice how consistently he chooses the names of his characters to create symbols, irony, and points of contrast.For example, readers and critics who are famil iar only with Death of a Salesman among Millers works have long say that Willys last name literally marks him as a low man, although Miller himself chuckled at the overemphasis placed on this pun. He real derived the name from a movie he had seen, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, in which a completely mad character at the end of the film screams, Lohman, Lohman, get me Lohman (Timebends 177-79). To Miller, the mans cry signified the hysteria he wanted to create in his salesman, Willy Loman. galore(postnominal) critics also have historied the significance of the name of Dave Singleman, the eighty-year-old salesman who stands unsocial as Willys ideal.Despite Millers consistent downplaying in interviews of the significance of his characters names, an examination of his technique reveals how extensively he connects his characters names to the larger social issues at the core of every play. For example, the last name of All My Sons Joe Keller, who manufactures bad airplane parts and is indirectly accountable for the deaths of twenty-one pilots, resembles killer. In previous work on the play, I have noted the comparison of the Kellers to the Holy Family, and how, therefore, the names of Joe and his son, Chris, take on religious significance. Susan C. W. Abbotson has noted how the first name of The Ride Down Mt. Morgans Lyman Felt suggests the lying he has lived out. She also has analyzed the similarities between Loman and Lyman, and has argued that Lyman is a kind of alter ego to Willy some 40 years later. dog Ardolino has also examined how Miller employs Egyptian mythology in naming and portrayal Hap (Mythological).An intriguing feature of Millers use of names is his repetition of the same name, or form of the same name, in his plays. It is striking how in Salesman Miller uses the name candid, or variations of it, five times for five different characters, a highly unusual occurrence.8 In act 1, during Willys first imagining, when Linda complains to Biff that there is a cellar full of boys in the Loman house who do not know what to do with themselves, point-blank is one of the boys whom Biff gets to clean up the furnace room. non long after, at the end of the imagining, Frank is the name of the mechanic who fixes the carburetor of Willys Chevrolet. In act 2, in the moving scene in which Howard effectively fires Willy and Willy is left alone in the office, Willy cries out three times for Frank, apparently Howards father and the original owner of the company, who, Willy claims, asked Willy to name Howard. Willy also meets the boys in Franks Chop foretoken and, in the crucial discovery scene in the Boston hotel room, Willy introduces the woman to Biff as Miss Francis, Frank often being a nickname for Francis.There are significant figurative uses of Frank too, for, although the word means honest or candid, all of the Franks in Salesman are clearly associated with work that is not completely honest. Biff uses the boy Frank and his comp anions to clean the furnace room and hang up the washchores that he should be doing himself. Willy somewhat questions the repair subscriber line that the mechanic Frank does on that goddam Chevrolet. Despite Willys idolizing of his boss, Frank Wagner, Linda indicates that Frank, perhaps, promised Willy a partnership as a member of the firm, a promise that kept Willy from connectedness Ben in Alaska and that was never made considerably on by either Frank or his son, Howard. Miss Francis promises to put Willy through to the buyers in exchange for stockings and her sexual favors, but it is uncertain whether she holds up her end of the deal, since Willy certainly has never been a hot-shot salesman. And, of course, Franks Chop House is the place where Stanley tells Hap that the boss, presumably Frank, is going crazy over the leak in the cash register. Thus Miller clearly uses the name Frank with a high degree of irony, an important aspect of his use of figurative language in his canon . Of course, all this business cheat emphasizes how Salesman challenges the integrity of the American work ethic.Millers careful selection of names shows that he perhaps considered the names of his characters as part of each plays network of figurative language. As Kaplan and Bernays note, label of characters . . . convey what their creators whitethorn already know and feel about them and how they want their readers to respond (174). Thus, in his choice of names, Arthur Miller may very well be manipulating his audience before the curtain rises, as they sit and read the cast of characters in their playbills.Finally, being aware of Millers use of poetic language is crucial for however we encounter his playsas readers who analyze drama as text or as audience members in tune with the overweight of the dialogue. It is, indeed, all about the languagethe language we read in the text and the language we hear on the stage.Notes1. Although some critics have examined Millers colloquial prose, only a few have conducted studies of how poetic devices work in his dialogue. Leonard Moss, in his book-length study Arthur Miller, analyzes Millers language in a chapter on Death of a Salesman, a section of which is entitle oral and Symbolic Technique. In an oblige titled Death of a Salesman and Arthur Millers Search for Style, Arthur K. Oberg considers Millers struggle with establishing a dramatic idiom. Oberg judges that Miller ultimately arrives at something that approaches an American idiom to the extent that it exposes a colloquialism characterized by unusual image, spurious lyricism, and close-ended clich (305). He concludes that the plays text, although far from bad poetry, tellingly moves toward the status of poetry without ever acquire there (310-11). My 2002 work A wrangle Study of Arthur Millers Plays The poetic in the Colloquial traces Millers consistent use of figurative language from All My Sons to Broken Glass.In other studies discussing individual plays, some critics have noted poetic nuances in Millers language. In Setting, Language, and the tycoon of Evil in The Crucible, Penelope Curtis maintains that the language of the play is marked by what she calls half-metaphor (69), which Miller employs to suggest the plays themes. In an article print in Notes on Contemporary Literature, earth-closet D. Engle explains the metaphor of law used by the lawyer Quentin in After the Fall. Lawrence Rosinger, in a brief Explicator article, traces the metaphors of royalty that appear in Death of a Salesman.2. Thomas M. Tammaro also points out that the diminished prestigiousness of language studies since the height of peeled check may account for the lack of a sustained examination of imagery and symbolism in Millers work. Moreover, Tammaro notes that Millers plays were not subjected to crude Critical theory even when language studies were prominent (10). In his new authorized biography Arthur Miller 1915-1962, Christopher Bigsby clearly recognizes Millers attempts to write verse drama, but this work is largely a critical biography and cultural study, not a close textual analysis.3. Most notable among these works are the following The Family in redbrick Drama, which first appeared in The Atlantic periodic in 1956 On Social Plays, which appeared as the original introduction to the one-act edition of A View from the Bridge and A retention of Two Mondays the introduction to his 1957 Collected Plays The American Writer The American Theater, first promulgated in the Michigan Quarterly limited review in 1982 On Screenwriting and Language demonstration to Everybody Wins, first published in 1990 his 1993 essay About Theatre Language, which first appeared as an afterword to the published edition of The Last northern and his March 1999 Harpers article On Broadway Notes on the one-time(prenominal) and emerging of American Theater.4. For a more detailed discussion of these metaphors, see Death of a Salesman Unlocking t he empty words of Poetic Power in my 2002 volume A Language Study of Arthur Millers Plays. Also, in enumeration Our Past and Present in wood forest Imagery in Arthur Millers Death of a Salesman and The Crucible, Will Smith traces what he describes as a wood trope in the plays.5. When Biff discovers Willy with the woman in the hotel room in act 2, she refers to herself as a football (119-20) to indicate her humiliating treatment by Willy and, perhaps, all men.6. Frederick Charles Kolbe, Caroline F. E. Spurgeon, and Kenneth Burke pioneered much of this criticism. For example, Spurgeon did groundbreaking work in discovering the habit imagery and the image of the babe in Macbeth. Kenneth Burke, in The Philosophy of Literary Form, examines Clifford Odetss Golden Boy as a play that uses language clusters, particularly the images of the prize fight and the violin, that operate both literally and symbolically in the text (33-35).7. In his work Arthur Miller, Leonard Moss details the fr equent repetitions of words in the text, such as man, boy, and kid. He notes that forms of the verb make occur forty-five times in thirty-three different usages, ranging from Standard English to slang expressions, among them make mountains out of molehills, makin a hit, makin my future, make me laugh, and make a train. He also notes the nine-time repetition of make property (48). Moss connects these expressions to Millers thematic use illustrating how the American work ethic dominates Willys life.8. In Im Not a Dime a dozen I Am Willy Loman The significance of Names and Numbers in Death of a Salesman, Frank Ardolino takes a mainly psychological approach to the language of the play. He maintains that Millers system of onomastic and quantitative images and echoes forms a complex network which delineates Willys insanity and its effects on his family and task (174). Ardolino explains that the name imagery reveals Biffs and Willys failures. He sees the repetition of Frank as part o f Millers use of geographical, personal, and business names that often begin with B, F, P, or S. Thus the names beginning with F convey a conflict between benevolence and shelter on the one hand and judgement of dismissal and degradation on the other (177). harmonic Franks are Willys boss, the boy Frank who cleans up, and the repairman Frank. Degrading Franks are Miss Francis and Franks Chop House, which contains the literal and psychological toilet where Willy has his climactic imagining of the hotel room in Boston.Works CitedAbbotson, Susan C. W. From Loman to Lyman The Salesman Forty Years On. The Salesman Has a Birthday Essays Celebrating the Fiftieth day of remembrance of Arthur Millers Death of a Salesman. Ed. Stephen A. Marino. Lanham, MD University Press of America, 2000.Ardolino, Frank. Im Not a Dime a Dozen I Am Willy Loman The Significance of Names and Numbers in Death of a Salesman. daybook of Evolutionary psychology (August 2002) 174-84.____________. The Mythologic al Significance of Happy in Death of aSalesman. The Arthur Miller Journal 4.1 (Spring 2009) 29-33.Bigsby, Christopher. Arthur Miller A Critical Study. bracing York Cambridge UP, 2005.____________. Arthur Miller 1915-1962. London Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2008.____________. A Critical Introduction to Twentieth- carbon American Drama, sight Two Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Edward Albee. in the raw York Cambridge UP, 1984.____________. Miller and middle America. Keynote address, Eighth International Arthur Miller Society Conference, Nicolet College, Rhinelander, WI, 3 Oct. 2003.Brantley, Ben. A unknown bran-new Production Illuminates Salesman. New York quantify 3 Nov. 1998 E1.Burke, Kenneth. The Philosophy of Literary Form. 2d ed. Baton Rouge Louisiana State UP, 1967.Couchman, Gordon W. Arthur Millers Tragedy of Babbit. educational Theatre Journal 7 (1955) 206-11.Curtis, Penelope. Setting, Language, and the Force of Evil in The Crucible. Twentieth Century Interpretations o f The Crucible. Ed. John H. Ferres. Englewood Cliffs, NJ Prentice-Hall, 1972.Engle, John D. The simile of Law in After the Fall. Notes on Contemporary Literature 9 (1979) 11-12.Gilman, Richard. get It Off His Chest, But Is It Art? Chicago Sun Book Week 8 Mar. 1964 6, 13.Kaplan, Justin, and Anne Bernays. The Language of Names. New York Simon &Schuster, 1997.Krutch, Joseph Wood. Drama. Nation 163 (1949) 283-84.Marino, Stephen. Arthur Millers Weight of law in The Crucible. Modern Drama 38 (1995) 488-95.____________. A Language Study of Arthur Millers Plays The Poetic in the Colloquial. New York Edwin Mellen Press, 2002.____________. Religious Language in Arthur Millers All My Sons. Journal of Imagism 3 (1998) 9-28.Miller, Arthur. About Theatre Language. The Last Yankee. New York Penguin, 1993.____________. The American Writer The American Theater. The Theatre Essays of Arthur Miller. Ed. Robert A. Martin and Steven R. Centola. New York Da Capo Press, 1996.____________. Arthur Mil ler An Interview. Interview with Olga Carlisle and Rose Styron. 1966. Conversations with Arthur Miller. Ed. Matthew C. Roudan. Jackson UP of Mississippi, 1987. 85-111.____________. Death of a Salesman Text and Criticism. Ed. Gerald Weales. New York Penguin Books, 1967.____________. The Family in Modern Drama. The Theatre Essays of Arthur Miller. Ed. Robert A. Martin. New York Viking Press, 1978.____________. Introduction to the Collected Plays. The Theatre Essays of Arthur Miller. Ed. Robert A. Martin. New York Viking Press, 1978.____________. On Broadway Notes on the Past and Future of American Theater. Harpers Mar. 1999 37-47.____________. On Screenwriting and Language Introduction to Everybody Wins. The Theatre Essays of Arthur Miller. Ed. Robert A. Martin and Steven R. Centola. New York Da Capo Press, 1996.____________. On Social Plays. The Theatre Essays of Arthur Miller. Ed. Robert A. Martin. New York Viking Press, 1978.____________. Timebends A Life. New York Grove Press, 198 7.Moss, Leonard. Arthur Miller. New Haven, CT College and University Press, 1967.____________. Arthur Miller and the Common Mans Language. Modern Drama 7 (1964) 52-59.Murray, Edward. Arthur Miller, Dramatist. New York Frederick Ungar, 1967.Oberg, Arthur K. Death of a Salesman and Arthur Millers Search for Style. Criticism 9 (1967) 303-11.Otten, Terry. The Temptation of Innocence in the Dramas of Arthur Miller. capital of South Carolina U of Missouri P, 2002.Richards, I. A. Richards on Rhetoric I. A. RichardsSelected Essays, 1929-1974. Ed. Ann E. Berthoff. New York Oxford UP, 1991.Rosinger, Lawrence. Millers Death of a Salesman. Explicator 45.2 (Winter 1987) 55-56.Simon, John. Whose Paralysis Is It, Anyway? New York 9 May 1994.Smith, Will. Figuring Our Past and Present in Wood Wood Imagery in Arthur Millers Death of a Salesman and The Crucible. Miller and center(a) America Essays on Arthur Miller and the American Experience. Ed. Paula T. Langteau.Lanham, MD University Press of Ameri ca, 2007.Spurgeon, Caroline F. E. confidential information Motives in the Imagery of Shakespeares Tragedies. 1930. New York Haskell House, 1970.Tammaro, Thomas M. Introduction. Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams Research Opportunities and utterance Abstracts. Ed. Tetsumaro Hayashi. Jefferson, NC McFarland, 1983.Teachout, Terry. Concurring with Arthur Miller. Commentary 127.6 (June 2009) 71-73.