Download or read book Willy Loman s False Values and Misguided Dreams written by Florian König and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2009-11 with total page 29 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, http: //www.uni-jena.de/, course: Classics of Modern American Drama, language: English, abstract: The plot of Arthur Miller's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Death of a Salesman revolves around the last days in the life of Willy Loman, an aging salesman, whose pursuit of a prosperous and rewarding life for himself and his two sons, especially his oldest one Biff, comes to a tragic end. One of the reasons why he fails is because he values the wrong things and leads his life guided by wrong dreams. Willy Loman, the protagonist of Miller's classic, which critics label "as one of the most powerful and affecting plays in American theatrical history," appears to overemphasize such things as success, physical ability or personal attractiveness and looses his sense of the real forces of life in his attempt to achieve his "(American) dream. He holds onto his dream and his ideas long after they cease to correspond with reality. This is his biggest flaw and dooms him at last. In the following paragraphs, I want to explore some examples of these values and dreams which seem to dictate Willy Loman's life and also, mostly because of him, the lives of his sons Biff and Happy and will eventually lead to his death through suicide, which, in the end, "will create the fortune that his life could never accumulate." In the subsequent chapter, I will show by whom the main character Willy Loman is influenced. The question that should be investigated is: Who could be the sources of Willy's philosophy of life? After that, in chapters 3 and 4, I want to go into further detail and provide specific examples of the major motifs that Miller sustains throughout the play, which in particular are: the importance of "being well liked" and the importance physical prowess.
Download or read book Willy Loman s False Values and Misguided Dreams written by Florian König and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2009-11-05 with total page 16 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, http://www.uni-jena.de/, course: Classics of Modern American Drama, language: English, abstract: The plot of Arthur Miller’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Death of a Salesman revolves around the last days in the life of Willy Loman, an aging salesman, whose pursuit of a prosperous and rewarding life for himself and his two sons, especially his oldest one Biff, comes to a tragic end. One of the reasons why he fails is because he values the wrong things and leads his life guided by wrong dreams. Willy Loman, the protagonist of Miller’s classic, which critics label “as one of the most powerful and affecting plays in American theatrical history”, appears to overemphasize such things as success, physical ability or personal attractiveness and looses his sense of the real forces of life in his attempt to achieve his “(American) dream. He holds onto his dream and his ideas long after they cease to correspond with reality. This is his biggest flaw and dooms him at last. In the following paragraphs, I want to explore some examples of these values and dreams which seem to dictate Willy Loman’s life and also, mostly because of him, the lives of his sons Biff and Happy and will eventually lead to his death through suicide, which , in the end, “will create the fortune that his life could never accumulate.” In the subsequent chapter, I will show by whom the main character Willy Loman is influenced. The question that should be investigated is: Who could be the sources of Willy’s philosophy of life? After that, in chapters 3 and 4, I want to go into further detail and provide specific examples of the major motifs that Miller sustains throughout the play, which in particular are: the importance of “being well liked” and the importance physical prowess.
Download or read book Willy Loman in Miller s Death of a Salesman An analysis of character portrayal written by Sarah Breitkopf and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2008-10-13 with total page 18 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject Interpreting / Translating , grade: 2,0, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (Fachbereich Angewandte Sprach- und Kulturwissenschaft), course: Highlights of Mid-20th -Century American Drama, language: English, abstract: Since the existence of life on earth there has been the struggle between the stronger and the weaker of all creatures. The species that had adapted best obtained the greatest chance to prevail in this “combat”. In exactly the same way we can consider the history of mankind as a surviving of the fittest. Nowadays it is not the physique alone that decides if somebody gets above the others or not. It’s more or less the right combination of certain abilities, ambitions and values that make up the secret of success. Nevertheless we can still talk about a kind of natural selection. Although skills and knowledge can be trained, and abilities and competences can be improved by means of special learning methods, somebody who wants to be at the top must already have a certain biological and genetic qualification. Willy Loman, the main character of the play Death of a Salesman, is a salesman past sixty years of age. In his youth he believes that he has found the secret to success .Willy is convinced that he will make it if he tries his luck in the business and starts his career in a selling firm. He never has any doubt about achieving his aim as he is of the opinion to have all traits of character and competences he needs. But in reality Willy can be considered as a looser and a poor guy who only claims himself to be at the top. He brings up his two boys in these illusions and is assured of having chosen the right way. The paper deals on the one hand with the main character of the play himself, his dreams, illusions and wrong values that finally lead to his failure and suicide. On the other hand it treats the influence that these illusions exert on his two boys and their wrong upbringing.
Download or read book Death of a Salesman written by Arthur Miller and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1998-05-01 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Pulitzer Prize-winning tragedy of a salesman’s deferred American dream Ever since it was first performed in 1949, Death of a Salesman has been recognized as a milestone of the American theater. In the person of Willy Loman, the aging, failing salesman who makes his living riding on a smile and a shoeshine, Arthur Miller redefined the tragic hero as a man whose dreams are at once insupportably vast and dangerously insubstantial. He has given us a figure whose name has become a symbol for a kind of majestic grandiosity—and a play that compresses epic extremes of humor and anguish, promise and loss, between the four walls of an American living room. "By common consent, this is one of the finest dramas in the whole range of the American theater." —Brooks Atkinson, The New York Times "So simple, central, and terrible that the run of playwrights would neither care nor dare to attempt it." —Time
Download or read book Prize Papers written by and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Logical Reasoning written by Bradley Harris Dowden and published by Bradley Dowden. This book was released on 1993 with total page 516 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is designed to engage students' interest and promote their writing abilities while teaching them to think critically and creatively. Dowden takes an activist stance on critical thinking, asking students to create and revise arguments rather than simply recognizing and criticizing them. His book emphasizes inductive reasoning and the analysis of individual claims in the beginning, leaving deductive arguments for consideration later in the course.
Download or read book The Temptation of Innocence in the Dramas of Arthur Miller written by Terry Otten and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Critical Theory Today written by Lois Tyson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-09-10 with total page 486 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Critical Theory Today is the essential introduction to contemporary criticial theory. It provides clear, simple explanations and concrete examples of complex concepts, making a wide variety of commonly used critical theories accessible to novices without sacrificing any theoretical rigor or thoroughness. This new edition provides in-depth coverage of the most common approaches to literary analysis today: feminism, psychoanalysis, Marxism, reader-response theory, new criticism, structuralism and semiotics, deconstruction, new historicism, cultural criticism, lesbian/gay/queer theory, African American criticism, and postcolonial criticism. The chapters provide an extended explanation of each theory, using examples from everyday life, popular culture, and literary texts; a list of specific questions critics who use that theory ask about literary texts; an interpretation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby through the lens of each theory; a list of questions for further practice to guide readers in applying each theory to different literary works; and a bibliography of primary and secondary works for further reading.
Download or read book The American Dream written by Jim Cullen and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2004 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first "narrative history" traces the thread that binds the dreams and aspirations of most Americans together, exploring shared history and sacred texts--the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence--in search of the origins of these ideas.
Download or read book Born Losers written by Scott A. Sandage and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2006-04-30 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What makes somebody a Loser, a person doomed to unfulfilled dreams and humiliation? Nobody is born to lose, and yet failure embodies our worst fears. The Loser is our national bogeyman, and his history over the past two hundred years reveals the dark side of success, how economic striving reshaped the self and soul of America. From colonial days to the Columbine tragedy, Scott Sandage explores how failure evolved from a business loss into a personality deficit, from a career setback to a gauge of our self-worth. From hundreds of private diaries, family letters, business records, and even early credit reports, Sandage reconstructs the dramas of real-life Willy Lomans. He unearths their confessions and denials, foolish hopes and lost faith, sticking places and changing times. Dreamers, suckers, and nobodies come to life in the major scenes of American history, like the Civil War and the approach of big business, showing how the national quest for success remade the individual ordeal of failure. Born Losers is a pioneering work of American cultural history, which connects everyday attitudes and anxieties about failure to lofty ideals of individualism and salesmanship of self. Sandage's storytelling will resonate with all of us as it brings to life forgotten men and women who wrestled with The Loser--the label and the experience--in the days when American capitalism was building a nation of winners.
Download or read book The Stone Angel written by Margaret Laurence and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-07-22 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Stone Angel, The Diviners, and A Bird in the House are three of the five books in Margaret Laurence's renowned "Manawaka series," named for the small Canadian prairie town in which they take place. Each of these books is narrated by a strong woman growing up in the town and struggling with physical and emotional isolation. In The Stone Angel, Hagar Shipley, age ninety, tells the story of her life, and in doing so tries to come to terms with how the very qualities which sustained her have deprived her of joy. Mingling past and present, she maintains pride in the face of senility, while recalling the life she led as a rebellious young bride, and later as a grieving mother. Laurence gives us in Hagar a woman who is funny, infuriating, and heartbreakingly poignant. "This is a revelation, not impersonation. The effect of such skilled use of language is to lead the reader towards the self-recognition that Hagar misses."—Robertson Davies, New York Times "It is [Laurence's] admirable achievement to strike, with an equally sure touch, the peculiar note and the universal; she gives us a portrait of a remarkable character and at the same time the picture of old age itself, with the pain, the weariness, the terror, the impotent angers and physical mishaps, the realization that others are waiting and wishing for an end."—Honor Tracy, The New Republic "Miss Laurence is the best fiction writer in the Dominion and one of the best in the hemisphere."—Atlantic "[Laurence] demonstrates in The Stone Angel that she has a true novelist's gift for catching a character in mid-passion and life at full flood. . . . As [Hagar Shipley] daydreams and chatters and lurches through the novel, she traces one of the most convincing—and the most touching—portraits of an unregenerate sinner declining into senility since Sara Monday went to her reward in Joyce Cary's The Horse's Mouth."—Time "Laurence's triumph is in her evocation of Hagar at ninety. . . . We sympathize with her in her resistance to being moved to a nursing home, in her preposterous flight, in her impatience in the hospital. Battered, depleted, suffering, she rages with her last breath against the dying of the light. The Stone Angel is a fine novel, admirably written and sustained by unfailing insight."—Granville Hicks, Saturday Review "The Stone Angel is a good book because Mrs. Laurence avoids sentimentality and condescension; Hagar Shipley is still passionately involved in the puzzle of her own nature. . . . Laurence's imaginative tact is strikingly at work, for surely this is what it feels like to be old."—Paul Pickrel, Harper's
Download or read book Growing Up written by Russell Baker and published by Rosetta Books. This book was released on 2011-09-06 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Pulitzer Prize–winning memoir about coming of age in America between the world wars: “So warm, so likable and so disarmingly funny” (The New York Times). One of the New York Times’ “50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years” Ranging from the backwoods of Virginia to a New Jersey commuter town to the city of Baltimore, this remarkable memoir recounts Russell Baker’s experience of growing up in pre–World War II America, before he went on to a celebrated career in journalism. With poignant, humorous tales of powerful love, awkward sex, and courage in the face of adversity, Baker reveals how he helped his mother and family through the Great Depression by delivering papers and hustling subscriptions to the Saturday Evening Post—a job which introduced him to bullies, mentors, and heroes who endured this national disaster with hard work and good cheer. Called “a treasure” by Anne Tyler and “a blessing” by Time magazine, this autobiography is a modern-day classic—“a wondrous book [with scenes] as funny and touching as Mark Twain’s” (Los Angeles Times Book Review). “In lovely, haunting prose, he has told a story that is deeply in the American grain.” —The Washington Post Book World “A terrific book.” —St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Download or read book Movement for Actors written by Nicole Potter and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2002-07-01 with total page 461 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this rich resource for American actors, renowned movement teachers and directors reveal the physical skills needed for the stage and screen. Experts in a wide array of disciplines provide remarkable insight into the Alexander technique, the use of psychological gesture, period movement, the work of Rudolph Laban, postmodern choreography, and Suzuki training, to name but a few. Those who want to pursue serious training will be able to consult the appendix for listings of the best teachers and schools in the country. This inspiring collection is a must read for all actors, directors, and teachers of theater looking for stimulation and new approaches.
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to the Federalist Papers written by Jack N. Rakove and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-12 with total page 623 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A multifaceted approach to The Federalist that covers both its historical value and its continuing political relevance.
Download or read book At Home in the World written by Joyce Maynard and published by Picador. This book was released on 2010-04-01 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times bestselling author of Labor Day With a New Preface When it was first published in 1998, At Home in the World set off a furor in the literary world and beyond. Joyce Maynard's memoir broke a silence concerning her relationship—at age eighteen—with J.D. Salinger, the famously reclusive author of The Catcher in the Rye, then age fifty-three, who had read a story she wrote for The New York Times in her freshman year of college and sent her a letter that changed her life. Reviewers called her book "shameless" and "powerful" and its author was simultaneously reviled and cheered. With what some have viewed as shocking honesty, Maynard explores her coming of age in an alcoholic family, her mother's dream to mold her into a writer, her self-imposed exile from the world of her peers when she left Yale to live with Salinger, and her struggle to reclaim her sense of self in the crushing aftermath of his dismissal of her not long after her nineteenth birthday. A quarter of a century later—having become a writer, survived the end of her marriage and the deaths of her parents, and with an eighteen-year-old daughter of her own—Maynard pays a visit to the man who broke her heart. The story she tells—of the girl she was and the woman she became—is at once devastating, inspiring, and triumphant.
Download or read book Studying Drama written by Brian Crow and published by . This book was released on 1983 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Glass Menagerie written by Tennessee Willams and published by The Anglo Egyptian Bookshop. This book was released on with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
