Both of the plays, “The Death of a Salesman” by Arthur Miller and “The Glass Menagerie” by Tennessee Williams, have acting done based on memories that haunt a character in the play. In the “Death of a Salesman”, the acting shifts from present to past with the past at times intermingled with the present as the main character, Willy, seems unable to distinguish his memory’s flashbacks from reality. In “The Glass Menagerie”, the play shifts from present to past also, but the only actor in the present is the narrator Tom, whose memory the play is based on. While both plays use nonrealistic techniques with the scenery, music and characters to show actions from the past, they use them in different ways for different effects.
The scenery in these plays is set up to emphasize different ideas produced in the plays. In “The Death of a Salesman”, when the acting is in the present, the house is basically translucent and in one dimension with other apartment houses visible through the translucent walls; this emphasizes the crowded neighborhood which seems to bother Willy. When the acting is in the present, Miller writes, “the actors observe the imaginary wall-lines, entering the house only through the door at the left” (1373; act 1). However, when the scene turns to the past, the apartment houses disappear, the background becomes covered in leaves and there are no more boundary lines, actors enter or leave a room by stepping through the walls (1373; act 1); this creates a sense of freedom not found in the past.
In “The Glass Menagerie”, Miller has the scenery set in a dimly lit atmosphere. Tom says, “The play is memory. Being a memory play, it is dimly lighted, it is sentimental, it is not realistic” (1440; scene I). Williams uses images or...
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...er uses it to enforce the idea of it being a memory play.
The writer of both of these plays made effective use of similar nonrealistic techniques to get different ideas across while having actors perform actions from the past based on a memory. In “The Death of a Salesman”, Miller uses these nonrealistic techniques to emphasize the ideas produced in Willy’s memory. In “The Glass Menagerie”, Williams also uses them to emphasize ideas but he used them more to emphasize the fact that it is a memory play.
Works Cited
Miller, Arthur. “Death of a Salesman” The compact Bedford Introduction to Literature. 8th ed. Ed. Michael Meyer. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009. 1372-1436. Print.
Williams, Tennessee. “The Glass Menagerie.” The compact Bedford Introduction to Literature. 8th ed. Ed. Michael Meyer. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009. 1438-1482. Print.
“Miller has said that he originally conceived do something Death of a Salesman within Willy’s mind and that Willy’s psychological state dictated the structure of the play” (Leone 97). The flash back technique in death of a salesman is organized preparation, climax, and resolution. The play focuses on Willy’s actions with his family and the themes of the play.
Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman. The Bedford Introduction to Literature. 8th ed.Ed. Michael Meyer. Boston: Bedford, 2008. 1908-1972. Print.
The Glass Menagerie is a play about the character Tom trying to escape his living situation that traps him. He is doing to best to cope with his dependent, demanding mother Amanda and take care of his quiet sister Laura. Amanda and Laura solely depend on Tom’s income from his warehouse job, but Tom is desperately wanting to leave both his mother and sister to lead his own adventurous life. Laura is mainly embodied by her precious glass menagerie and Jim O’Connor’s nickname for her, “Blue Roses.” Her livelihood revolves around taking care of her glass animals and protecting them, and in doing so, she isolates herself from the normal world around her. In Tennessee William’s play The Glass Menagerie, symbolism is use to uncover the unearthly beauty and delicacy of Laura and to portray Tom’s need to escape from his oppressive responsibilities.
Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie is a profound play that uses symbolism as a way to remember his personal life but to add depth to each character. Each character brings a symbol that is essential to plot of the story. All of the symbolic elements come together at the end of the play. Tom has escaped his life with Amanda and Laura and is riddled with guilt as everything around him serves as a reminder of his old life, especially Laura.
Miller’s interpretations on these subjects were not only true of the changing world at the time of the plays inception but have with an eerily truth echoed through to the present day. According to the cultural context in the LIT Student Edition “at the time, Death of a Salesman was written in 1949 the United States was experiencing the largest economic expansion in its history. After World War II, soldiers were returning home and women were leaving the factories where they held jobs while the men were away fighting the war. More and more consumer goods were being made and manufactured and as a result, companies were being consolidated, large impersonal corporations were taking over the mom and pop businesses.
The Glass Menagerie is an eposidic play written by Tennesse Williams reflecting the economic status and desperation of the American people in the 30s.He portrays three different characters going through these hardships of the real world,and choosing different ways to escape it.Amanada,the mother,escapes to the memories of the youth;Tom watches the movies to provide him with the adventure he lacks in his life;and laura runs to her glass menagerie.
Tennessee Williams’ play, “The Glass Menagerie”, depicts the life of an odd yet intriguing character: Laura. Because she is affected by a slight disability in her leg, she lacks the confidence as well as the desire to socialize with people outside her family. Refusing to be constrained to reality, she often escapes to her own world, which consists of her records and collection of glass animals. This glass menagerie holds a great deal of significance throughout the play (as the title implies) and is representative of several different aspects of Laura’s personality. Because the glass menagerie symbolizes more than one feature, its imagery can be considered both consistent and fluctuating.
Hadomi, Leah. Fantasy and Reality: Dramatic Rhythm in Death of a Salesman. Thesis. 1988. N.p.: N.p., N.d. Gale. Web. 6 May 2014.
Generally when some one writes a play they try to elude some deeper meaning or insight in it. Meaning about one's self or about life as a whole. Tennessee Williams' "The Glass Menagerie" is no exception the insight Williams portrays is about himself. Being that this play establishes itself as a memory play Williams is giving the audience a look at his own life, but being that the play is memory some things are exaggerated and these exaggerations describe the extremity of how Williams felt during these moments (Kirszner and Mandell 1807). The play centers itself on three characters. These three characters are: Amanda Wingfield, the mother and a women of a great confusing nature; Laura Wingfield, one who is slightly crippled and lets that make her extremely self conscious; and Tom Wingfield, one who feels trapped and is looking for a way out (Kirszner and Mandell 1805-06). Williams' characters are all lost in a dreamy state of illusion or escape wishing for something that they don't have. As the play goes from start to finish, as the events take place and the play progresses each of the characters undergoes a process, a change, or better yet a transition. At the beginning of each characters role they are all in a state of mind which causes them to slightly confuse what is real with what is not, by failing to realize or refusing to see what is illusioned truth and what is whole truth. By the end of the play each character moves out of this state of dreamy not quite factual reality, and is better able to see and face facts as to the way things are, however not all the characters have completely emerged from illusion, but all have moved from the world of dreams to truth by a whole or lesser degree.
Murray, Edward. “The Thematic Structure in Death of a Salesman.” Readings on Arthur Miller: Death of a Salesman. San Diego: Greenhaven Press Inc., 1999.
Williams, Tennessee. The Glass Menagerie. In Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing, 4th ed. Ed. Edgar V. Roberts and Henry E. Jacobs. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1995. 1519-1568.
An example of this is the way in which the characters are represented. They speak in an English that is realistic to its location and time period without using artificial “memorable speech”. This conveyance of realism to the audience is vital for Willy’s motives to seem plausible, and for Willy to be believed in as a character. On the other hand however, “Death of a Salesman” offers the audience another aspect of the play in which the inner mind of a character is symbolically represented in an expressionistic way on stage. Arthur Miller however succeeds in combining these seemingly contradictory techniques, by conveying a sense of realism in the way the protagonist’s mind is portrayed, creating what sets it aside from anything alike.
In the original 1949 play of Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller was the American playwright. Death of a Salesman was a tragic play that presents a story about a salesman named Willy who believes that personality and being “well-liked” will achieve his American Dream. The play premiered on February 10, 1949 at the Morosco Theatre in Manhattan, New York (Avery). Miller’s play reflected on his relationship with uncle, Manny Newman who was also a salesman like the protagonist of the story and two sons who he took great pride on (Tierney). Through his characterization of Willy and Biff Loman, Miller presents contrasting (or surprising similar) illustra...
Eisinger, Chester E. "Focus on Arthur Miller's 'Death of a Salesman': The Wrong Dreams," in American Dreams, American Nightmares, (1970 rpt In clc. Detroit: Gale Research. 1976 vol. 6:331
Williams, Tennessee. The Glass Menagerie. Masterpieces of the Drama. Ed. Alexander W. Allison, Arthus J. Carr, Arthur M. Eastman. 5th ed. NY: Macmillan, 1986. 779- 814.