Death of a Salesman

By Arthur Miller

Arthur Miller Biography

I think the job of the

artist . . . is to remind
people of what they
have chosen to forget.
- Arthur Miller

Arthur Miller Biography

1915 2005
father owned a women's
clothes/coatmanufacturing business,
which failed in the Wall
Street Crash of 1929
After the Crash, they
moved to a modest
house in Brooklyn.

College Life

Went to college at
Michigan.
Majored in journalism
Changed his major to
English after having the
play No Villain
published.
I hate Michigan

Personal Life

Was married to Marilyn

Monroe
House of Un-American
Activities Committee
investigates Miller.

Personal Life

He is arrested and
thrown in jail for
contempt of court.
He is eventually
released from prison
and acquitted of his
charges.

His Works

1953 He writes The

Crucible, an allegorical
play in which Miller
likened the situation
with the House UnAmerican Activities
Committee to the witchhunt in Salem

His Works

1949 He wrote Death

of a Salesman, which
was viewed by many as
an attack on the
American Dream of
achieving wealth and
success without regard
for principle.

Terms

Capitalism - An
economic system in
which private owners
control a countrys
industry.

Terms

Communism - system
of government in which
the state plans and controls
the economy and a single,
authoritarian party holds
power, claiming to make
progress toward a higher
social order in which all
goods are equally shared
by the people.

Terms

American Dream set of ideals in which

freedom includes the
opportunity for
prosperity and
success, and an
upward social
mobility achieved
through hard work

Historical Context

During the postwar boom of 1948, most

Americans were optimistic about a renewed
version of the American Dream: striking it rich
in some commercial venture, then moving to a
house with a yard in a peaceful suburban
neighborhood where they could raise children
and commute to work in their new automobile.

Historical Context

The difference between this and the

nineteenth-century version of the same dream,
in which a family or a single adventurer went
into America's wilderness frontier and tried to
make their fortune from the land itself,
reflected the country's economic shift from
agriculture to urban industry, and then from
manufacturing into service and sales.

Terms

Flashback A scene that

is set in a time that came
before the main story.

Visualizing
Death of a Salesman

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Down Stairs

Up Stairs

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