How does Millers handling of time and memory add to our understanding of tragedy within Death of a Salesman?

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How does Miller’s handling of time and memory add to our understanding of tragedy within ‘Death of a Salesman’?

Arthur Miller clearly adopted the approach of a classical Greek tragedy by asserting that Willy Loman is ‘as appropriate as a subject for tragedy as Kings are’.  Miller portrays Willy as a hardworking man struggling to reach the intangible American dream by challenging Aristotelian convention and by using time as a structural motif to successfully portray the lead up to his demise. This ultimately portrays him as a modern tragic hero.

The mobile concurrency repeatedly used is of a great importance to the play. They serve as a recollection of his past memories, a dream world offering to escape the harsh reality of what he is facing at the current moment in time. Leah Hadomi, in “Fantasy and Reality: Dramatic Rhythm in Death of a Salesman” said :’When reality becomes too painful, Willy retreats into a dream world, consisting of his recollections of the past and of fantasies in which he fulfills the aspirations, the attainment of which has eluded him in life”. This statement is, to some extent, true as the ‘dream sequence’ seems perfect, with a repetition of ‘We’ll’ by Willy and Happy, when they discuss ‘carrying bags’, an ultimate perception of Willy’s dream world. However, even within this ordered dream world, Bernard pops the bubble in which order was maintained, as he asks Biff to ‘study’. The use of the word ‘anaemic’ is interesting, as it can mean a lack of colour on the skin. Perhaps Miller is saying how Bernard doesn’t fit into Willy’s category of ‘normal’, as normal means you have to be ‘well liked’, something that Willy maintained which ultimately lead up to his demise.  We see in this mobile concurrency how Willy is trying to maintain order by ‘dreaming’ yet this order subtly becomes disorder as the world doesn’t exist as a ‘floating balloon’, there needs to be someone to anchor us, and in this case, it is Bernard. Disorder and order are part of Aristotelian convention: the fact that in a tragedy, disorder is after the catastrophe, yet order will try to be maintained (e.g. in Othello, Lodovico will try to maintain order in society after the death of the moor). The catastrophe here can represent the delusional present state he is living in, and the ‘order’ can be maintained financially as Linda is now ‘free’. So even in his mind, there is disorder which arouses sympathy from the audience as we realise how minds are so complex.

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The use of place and atmosphere also brings out an Aristotelian convention. There is a cyclical quality in the play: the fact that the stage directions at the start promote an heavenly quality and towards the end there is some spiritual sense. Miller here challenges the classical tragedy approach by using long stage directions, whereas in a play like Othello, there wasn’t any. The “dream rising out of reality” sharply contrasts with ‘we’re free’ which Linda repeats. This reflects on the idea of the mass of the souls of the dead, and the freedom in movement. Miller clearly uses ...

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