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1、Arthur Miller(1915-2005),who is he,Arthur Asher Miller(October 17,1915 February 10,2005)12 was an American playwright and essayist.He was a prominent figure in American theatre,writing dramas that include plays such as All My Sons,Death of a Salesman,and The Crucible.Notable award(s)Pulitzer Prize f
2、or Drama(1949),Kennedy Center Honors(1984),米勒的名字也为许多中国人所熟悉。他的推销员之死和萨勒姆的女巫等多部剧作曾与中国读者和观众见面。1978年阿瑟-米勒和夫人来到中国参观访问，接待他的是曹禺先生。推销员之死1983年在北京人艺上演，由米勒亲自导演。该剧是文革后第一个在中国上演的外国戏剧。,Acceptance of Miller in China,Beijing in Millers 1979 Writing,As we drive away down the quiet Peking back streets,mazelike and narr
3、ow,the thought returns that hardly more than ten percent of Chinese live in cities,and that.Quoted from Chinese Encounters Included in Echoes Down the Corridor(179),his early life,Arthur Asher Miller,the son of a womens clothing company owner,was born in 1915 in New York City.His father lost his bus
4、iness in the Depression and the family was forced to move to a smaller home in Brooklyn.,After graduating from high school,Miller worked jobs ranging from radio singer to truck driver to clerk in an automobile-parts warehouse.Miller began writing plays as a student at the University of Michigan,join
5、ing the Federal Theater Project in New York City after he received his degree.,Influence of The Great Depression on Miller,Although none of Millers theater work is specifically autobiographical,it has been strongly influenced by his particular life experiences.An early influential event was the Grea
6、t Depression of the 1930s,Miller told the New York Times:“It the Depression made you want to search for ultimate values,for things that would not fall apart under pressure.,Profoundly influenced by the Depression and the war that immediately followed it,Miller tapped into a sense of dissatisfaction
7、and unrest within the greater American psyche.His probing dramas proved to be both the conscience and redemption of the times,allowing people an honest view of the direction the country had taken.,Theme,A typical theme of Arthur Millers plays concerns the dilemma of modern man in relation to his fam
8、ily and work.(常耀信，美国文学简史299）,When Arthur Miller began reading plays in college,Greek tragedies made a profound impression on him.He says that he was drawn to the Greeks“for their magnificent form,the symmetry.”,What occurs often in a miller play is that the hero finds himself under a pressure form h
9、is society and its ethics,tries in vain to extricate himself from the physical and spiritual quandary into which he has fallen and finds release only in death,often in the form of actual or virtual suicide.However,miller is not completely pessimistic.There is always a faith in the character and his
10、life,though very often gloom overweighs hope,Other themes of his play,Millers realistic dramas explore the complex psychological and social issues that plague humankind in the wake of World War II:the dangers of rampant materialism,the sins committed in the name of free enterprise,the struggle for d
11、ignity in a dehumanizing world,the erosion of the family structure,e.g.sibling rivalry and the perils besetting human rights.and moral responsibility to family and community,What are Arthur Millers main works?,All My Sons 全是我儿子 1947 Death of a Salesman 推销员之死1949The Crucible 炼狱1953the Salem witch tri
12、als;Relates to“the Red Scare”;McCarthyism麦卡锡主义；Opened at the Martin Beck(1/12)for 197,After the Fall 坠落之后1964A View From the Bridge 桥头眺望1955 one-act version paired with another one actor,A Memory of Two Mondays.Opened at the Coronet(9/29)for 149 performances.The archbishops ceiling 大主教的天花板1977,New Y
13、ork Drama Critics Circle Award as the best play of 1947,All my sons,Background,All My Sons is based upon a true story,which Arthur Millers then mother-in-law pointed out in an Ohio newspaper.The story described how a woman informed on her father who had sold faulty parts to the U.S.military during W
14、orld War II.,Background,Henrik Ibsens influence on Miller is evidenced from the Ibsen play The Wild Duck,where Miller took the idea of two partners in a business where one is forced to take moral and legal responsibility for the other.This is mirrored in All My Sons.He also borrowed the idea of a ch
15、aracters idealism being the source of a problem.,Joe Keller,In Joe Keller,Arthur Miller creates just a representative type.Joe is a very ordinary man,decent,hard-working and charitable,a man no-one could dislike.But,like the protagonist of the ancient drama,he has a flaw or weakness.This,in turn,cau
16、ses him to act wrongly.He is forced to accept responsibility-his suicide is necessary to restore the moral order of the universe,and allows his son,Chris,to live free from guilt and persecution.,Four themes of all my sons,Responsibility,Society and the Generation Gap,The play focuses on Joe Kellers
17、conflict of responsibilities,his responsibility to his family and that to wider society To Keller there is nothing greater than the family Unlike his father,Chris feels society and other people play a main part in a persons responsibility Chris shows moral responsibility while his father Joe shows i
18、ntense family responsibility.,American Dream,All My Sons is a criticism of the American Dream Keller has apparently achieved the American Dream-he lives in a comfortable house despite being an uneducated man.Miller is emphasizing the hollowness of the American Dream and that one should think about t
19、he consequences of our actions.,However,this material comfort which Keller has worked to provide his family with the very best is of little consequence.His strong family unit is an illusion-his wife is ill,Chris is discontent and Larry has committed suicide as a result of his fathers narrow-minded d
20、ecision the American Dream has become more like an American Nightmare,Wartime Profiteering,As there were large contracts when America entered the war on two fronts,the conditions were created for what Arthur Miller described as profiteering on a vast scale.Chris Keller is particularly angry that his
21、 selflessness in fighting in the war is contrasted by the selfishness of those making money off the war,Death,When Chris finds out his father is responsible for killing the 21 pilots,he replies I was dying every day and you were killing my boys-and it is very notable Chris refers to the pilots as hi
22、s boys and says I was dying every day;making them closer to himself and trying to indicate to the audience the extent of which he feels he has moral obligation to society.,Film,death of salesman,Historical Background,The United States emerged from World War II with unrivaled economic power.wartime i
23、mprovements in technology had increased productivity so greatly that production of consumer goods and foodstuffs soared,and the price levels were soon fully stabilized.Likewise,after a brief recession,the economy experienced a prolonged boom.,A peacetime value system of the pursuit of personal happi
24、ness replaced the wartime one of sacrifice.GI Bill of Rights.The single-minded pursuit of delayed careers and the devotion to deferred families that the GI Bill allowed became the American dream of success.,It was against this social and economic background that Arthur Miller wrote Death of a Salesm
25、an.Acknowledging the capacity and opportunity for the average person to fulfill the American dream,Miller shows the perversion of the fantasy.Willy Loman and his sons epitomize the failure of middle-class values inherent in the expectation of success-phony advertising,backslapping,and flashy salesma
26、nship at the expense of personal honor.,The play centers on the emotional deterioration of Willy Loman,an aging and not too successful salesman,who can hardly distinguish between his memories of a brighter past and his setbacks in the dismal present.,Introduction,In the course of the play Willy grap
27、ples with the loss of his job and the failure of his two grown sons to achieve wealth,and with it,presumably,happiness,Major Characters,Willy Loman-the salesman who is past his prime,and who was never an exceptional businessman in his prime in his Linda Loman-Willys wife who loves him despite all of
28、 his difficulties Biff Loman-Willys eldest son for whom he had dreams of greatness Happy Loman-Willys younger son,Willy Loman,Willy Loman-An insecure,self-deluded traveling salesman.Willy believes wholeheartedly in the American Dream of easy success and wealth,but he never achieves it.Nor do his son
29、s fulfill his hope.When Willys illusions begin to fail under the pressing realities of his life,his mental health begins to unravel（瓦解）.The overwhelming tensions caused by this despair,as well as those caused by the societal imperatives that drive Willy,form the essential conflict of Death of a Sale
30、sman.,Linda Loman,Linda Loman，Willys loyal,loving wife.Linda suffers through Willys grandiose dreams and self-delusions.Occasionally,she seems to be taken in by Willys self-deluded hopes for future glory and success,but at other times,she seems far more realistic and less fragile than her husband.Sh
31、e has nurtured the family through all of Willys misguided attempts at success,and her emotional strength and perseverance support Willy until his collapse.,Biff Loman,Willys thirty-four-year-old elder son.Biff led a charmed life in high school as a football star.Biff represents Willys vulnerable,poe
32、tic,tragic side.He cannot ignore his instincts,which tell him to abandon Willys paralyzing dreams and move out West to work with his hands.He ultimately fails to reconcile(顺从)his life with Willys expectations of him,Happy Loman,business ethics and sleeps with the girlfriends of his superior s.Willys
33、 thirty-two-year-old younger son.Happy represents Willys sense of self-importance,ambition,and blind servitude to societal expectations.Although he works as an assistant in a department store,Happy presents himself as supremely important.Additionally,he practices bad,Themes,The American DreamAbandon
34、ment/BetrayalThe Dangers of Modernity Gender Relations Madness Nostalgia Opportunity Growth,The American Dream,Willys view:American Dreamthat a“well liked”and“personally attractive”man in business will indubitably and deservedly acquire the material comforts offered by modern American life.,Superfic
35、ialWillys interpretation of likeability is superficialhe childishly dislikes Bernard because he considers Bernard a nerd,blind Willys blind faith in his stunted version of the American Dream leads to his rapid psychological decline when he is unable to accept the disparity between the Dream and his
36、own life.,Abandonment/Betrayal,Biffs betrayal of willys ambitions for himWilly believes that he has every right to expect Biff to fulfill the promise inherent in him.When Biff walks out on Willys ambitions for him,Willy takes this rejection as a personal affront(he associates it with“insult”and“spit
37、e”).,Biff feels that Willy,a“phony little fake,”has betrayed him with his unending stream of ego-stroking lies,The Dangers of Modernity,1950s consumerism and technical advances in America.Many innovations applied specifically to the homeTV and the washing machine,ambivalence toward modern objects an
38、d the modern mindset.Modernity accounts for the obsolescence of Willy Lomans career-travelling salesman are rapidly becoming out-of-date.Significantly,Willy reaches for modern objects,the car and the gas heater,to assist him in his suicide attempts.,Gender Relations,woman are sharply divided into tw
39、o categories:Linda and other.Madonna/whore complex,The men curse themselves for being attracted to the whore-like women but are still irrepressibly drawn to themin an Oedipal moment,Happy laments that he cannot find a woman like his mother,Women themselves are two-dimensionaloutside the male sphere
40、of business,no thoughts or desires other than those pertaining to men.Even Linda,the strongest female character,is only fixated on a reconciliation between her husband and her sons,selflessly subordinating herself to serve to assist them in their problems.,Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe(Second Wife),1956,London,reference,常耀信，2008,美国文学简史 M南开出版社，299佚名，2010，Arthur miller http:/fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Miller佚名，2010，death of salesmanhttp:/,Thank you,
