"Evacuation was a great success" Do you agree or disagree with this interpretation? Explain your answer using the sources and knowledge from your own studies.

"Evacuation was a great success" Do you agree or disagree with this interpretation? Explain your answer using the sources and knowledge from your own studies. Evacuation was seen as both a success and a failure. It succeeded by saving many peoples lives but it failed because it was badly organised with many children arriving in the wrong places. I agree with the statement that evacuation was a success as it provided safe homes for Britain's wartime children. Source B gives evidence as to why it was a success. It shows how the children were happy, they saw evacuation as an exciting adventure and majority of them enjoyed it. The source also shows a lot of children making there way to the station; the Government were able to evacuate around 1.5 million people, saving many lives. The source is a photograph taken at the time; it is a primary source which means we can trust it. However, all the people in the photo are looking at the camera so it looks as if it has been posed and possibly used as propaganda. Furthermore, source D shows how evacuation was a success. It shows some evacuees taking a bath; they all look happy which is a sign to show that the children enjoyed themselves. The children also look very clean and healthy; this was very common for evacuees as it was a result of the clean country life. The source is a photo so it is dependable however it was used by the

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  • Level: University Degree
  • Subject: Linguistics, Classics and related subjects
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Arthur Miller’s Death Of A Salesman

Arthur Miller's Death Of A Salesman At the beginning of the play, Arthur Miller establishes Willy Loman as a troubled and misguided man, at heart a salesman and a dreamer with a preoccupation with success. However, Miller makes equally apparent that Willy Loman is no successful man. Although in his sixties, he is still a travelling salesman bereft of any stable location or occupation, and clings only to his dreams and ideals. There is a strong core of resentment within Willy Loman, whose actions assumes a more glorious and idealised past. Willy sentimentalises the neighbourhood as it was years ago, and mourns the days working for Frank Wagner, while his son Howard Wagner fails to appreciate him. Miller presents Willy as a strong and boisterous man with great audacity but little energy to support that impression of vitality. He is perpetually weary and exhibits signs of dementia, contradicting himself within his conversations and showing some memory loss. Linda, in contrast, displays little of the boisterous intensity of Willy. Rather, she is dependable and kind, perpetually attempting to smooth out conflicts that Willy might encounter. Linda has a similar longing for an idealised past, but has learned to suppress her dreams and her dissatisfaction with her husband and sons. Miller indicates that she is a woman with deep regrets about her life; she must continually reconcile

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  • Level: University Degree
  • Subject: Linguistics, Classics and related subjects
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In what ways does Miller use Willy's last day to raise questions about the validity of the American Dream?

Henry Bain In what ways does Miller use Willy's last day to raise questions about the validity of the American Dream? Death of a salesman primarily deals with the importance of consumerism and materialism, surpassing seemingly antiquated views and in this case, destroying a man who has failed in the attainment of "The American Dream." The fact that Willy dies in the play shows the effect that the delusion of unattainable greatness has on society and contradicts those who endorse it. Willy's financial status leads him to madness, talking constantly to himself and switching constantly between images of the present and past. He is more at ease with the potential and the once opportunities of the past than the difficulties and now missed opportunities of the present. He tells Charley in act 2 that after all the trains, and the appointments, and the years, "you end up worth more dead than alive." Willy seeks to justify everything in monetary terms, going as far as putting a price on his life. Charley tells Willy that no man is worth "nothin' dead," showing that a successful man can see that there is more to life than money, yet a man like Willy is constantly reminded of his inadequacy and can see nothing beyond material gain. Willy, who has failed to achieve what he wanted, lives vicariously through his sons, encouraging them to pursue money rather than happiness. When

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  • Subject: Linguistics, Classics and related subjects
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Account for the continuing popularity of ‘Death of a Salesman’ as a stage play.

Account for the continuing popularity of 'Death of a Salesman' as a stage play. 'Death of a Salesman' is a play that has come to redefine the concept of modern tragedy, whilst simultaneously enrapturing audiences around the globe. A challenge to Philip Sydney's judgement that 'tragedy concerneth a high fellow'i, 'Death of a Salesman' is the tragedy of the common man, tragedy of Willy low man. 'One of the major texts in our time'ii, 'Death of a Salesman' does not follow the traditional Aristotelian definition of a tragedy. This has ignited passionate debate among critics as to whether it is a tragedy at all, whilst ensuring its position and popularity as the epitome of what has been dubbed 'modern tragedy'. It is not the fall of a great man through a predestined flaw (hamartia), and it has been argued that Willy even lacks the self-knowledge to be a true tragic hero. Willy is a man of 'massive dreams', not high stature, although Biff calls him a 'prince', drawing comparison with Hamlet. His self-knowledge is present, countering those who claim to the contrary. It is clearly contained in the lines 'I'm fat. I'm very - foolish' (of himself) and 'I'm always in a race with the junk yard' (of payment of manufactured goods). His flaw lies in his determination to see material wealth as the only path to success. He is swallowed by 'the corporate dream machine'iii. The idea of the

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  • Level: University Degree
  • Subject: Linguistics, Classics and related subjects
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The Salem Witch Trials

Ragan 1 The Salem Witch Trials The year 1692 was a time of horror in Salem, MA. A witch-hunt took place after a group of girls became hysterical while playing in the woods and it was proposed that they were bewitched. These girls accused older women of consorting the devil. Before the trials were over, 300 men and women had been accused. By the time the chaotic witch-hunt was finished, little enthusiasm for the persecution of witches remained in Massachusetts and the superstition of witchcraft ended the trials (Sheffield). The trouble originated in the home of Reverend Samuel Parris who was the minister of the local church. Several girls in the community started spending their afternoons there in the kitchen with Tituba, the Rev. Parris' West Indian slave, to learn magic. The girls had been up to some mischief for some time and were curious about their futures, so they read each others palms until Abigail Williams spread the word about how Tituba could float an egg white in a glass and this unusual practice could tell " what trade their sweethearts should be of" ( Watson 116). As the girls grew closer to one another Ragan 2 something seemed to have come over them. They were no longer acting like good quite Puritan maidens but more like something possessed (Roberts 26). On January 20,1962 nine year old Elizabeth Parris and eleven year old Abigail Williams began to

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  • Subject: Linguistics, Classics and related subjects
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Discuss the Role and Importance of the First "Flashback" Scene in Death of a Salesman.

Discuss the Role and Importance of the First "Flashback" Scene in Death of a Salesman The main point of this scene is to show how Willy feels and what he is thinking. It also explains to the audience the reasons for why Biff's life has been turned upside down and how Willy was connected to this. We are not entirely sure whether all of this is true: I think that Willy changes his memories to how he interprets them. The structure of the scene is a crescendo. Basically it starts off with Willy remembering the best things that he did and how good those days were. Then as he remembers more he recalls all the bad things that happened and that maybe it wasn't such a good time. Everything in his life was going well, he was successful at his job, he had respect, his family looked up to him and his two boys were also doing well. Then Willy's bad memories start to filter through. There were signs that Biff was stealing and was not performing well at school when he takes a football from school without permission and Bernard informs Willy that he is going to flunk maths. We also find out that he is not doing so well at his job as he made out to his sons when he talks to Linda: he is not selling that much when working and that people don't really take him seriously. Probably the main revelation is that we find out that he has had an affair with a woman in Boston while on business.

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  • Subject: Linguistics, Classics and related subjects
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The American Dream in Death of a Salesman and A Streetcar Named Desire

Leon Nepomniatshy American Literature II December 9th, 2002 The American Dream in Death of a Salesman and A Streetcar Named Desire The American Dream is a central aspect of the plot of the two plays in question. It serves as both the motivation for Stanley's behavior in A Streetcar Named Desire, and Willy Loman's vision that his son Biff refused to uphold in Death of a Salesman. In Miller's play, Willy turned his vision of the American dream into more of a culture. He sincerely believes that the key indicators of success are how much money and brand-name appliances you have, how "well-liked" you are, and how hard you worked to achieve all you've got. His two sons, Happy and more so Biff, are victims of their father's failed vision and his efforts to make himself look good despite his obvious failure (through lying and inflating facts). Biff's view of the American Dream is different from that of Willy's - he wants to define success for himself, and not let success define him, as it did to his father, as his words "I've always made a point of not wasting my life, and every time I come back here I know that all I've done was waste my life" (Baym 2118) indicate. Perhaps, this difference was brought about when Biff found out about his father's affair back at the age of 17, and exclaimed "You fake! You phony little fake!" (Baym 2166) at both his father and the American Dream.

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  • Level: University Degree
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Is Willy Loman Presented as a Hero/Victim in "Death of a Salesman"?

Is Willy Loman Presented as a Hero/Victim in "Death of a Salesman"? Willy Loman is presented as both a tragic hero and an unconscious victim in "Death of a Salesman". "Death of a Salesman" is very much based upon the American Dream, and whether we are slaves or conquerors of this dream. This is an idea that the playwright Arthur Miller has very passionately pursued both through Willy's own eyes, and through his interaction with the different characters in the play. Firstly, the definitions of a hero and a victim very much influence the way that Willy is viewed by the audience. Miller has not used the play to suggest that Willy Loman is an ordinary hero, but more a tragic hero. A tragic hero, simply by definition means that the reader already begins to see Willy in a more sympathetic light. A tragic hero is somebody who cannot forget his past, and so is destroyed by the consequences of his own actions. In order to picture Willy as a victim, again one cannot think of a regular victim, but of an ignorant victim. This would mean that Willy was completely unaware of his role as a victim in the play. It would also imply that Willy was not in control of his own fate. From the beginning of "Death of a Salesman" we see Willy playing the very victimised role of the conformer. Near the end of the first scene, as he speaks to his sons in one of his flashbacks he says: "the man who

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  • Subject: Linguistics, Classics and related subjects
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Examine how the family theme is presented in “Death of a salesman".

Arthur Miller set out in "Death of a Salesman" to paint a true portrait of how one person thinks, and, in fact, his original title for the play was "The Inside of His Head." Miller wanted to show us the feelings, observations, and associations that occur daily in our "subjective process of thought-connection," as he later put it. He was striving for a believable and accurate pattern of thought and language, with all its confusions and contradictions. In the "Introduction to the Collected Plays," Miller wrote, "I was convinced only that if I could make him remember enough he would kill himself, and the structure of the play was determined by what was needed to draw up his memories like a mass of tangled roots without end or beginning." In his daily life, Willy has recently been moving uncontrollably from the present to the past and back again, much to the distress of himself and his family. Within this play, the 'family theme' is one of the major ideas which Miller wanted to portray. I feel that this theme can be clearly seen through the individual characters, the relationships between these characters, and how the family was shown in the past and the present. In an essay entitled "The Family in Modern Drama," Miller states, "We are all part of one another, all responsible to one another. The responsibility originates on the simplest level, our immediate kin." The

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  • Subject: Linguistics, Classics and related subjects
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Compare the ways in which the Miller presents John the Carpenter in 'The Miller's Tale' with the ways in which Miss Fozzard presents Bernard in 'Talking Heads 2.'

Laura Westwood Compare the ways in which the Miller presents John the Carpenter in 'The Miller's Tale' with the ways in which Miss Fozzard presents Bernard in 'Talking Heads 2.' In your answer you should pay particular attention to: * Vocabulary and style * Form * Any other features of language you consider to be important. The presentation of Bernard and John is largely different due to the narrative styles of the authors in the two stories. 'The Miller's Tale' is written in the style of third person intrusive narration, therefore the reader is influenced by the Miller's views and attitudes towards the carpenter. The Miller gives direct input to the presentation of the carpenter by expressing his feelings through comments such as "This sely carpenter goth forth his wey." This encourages the reader to agree with the suggestions the author makes, therefore in this case we believe the carpenter to be silly and naïve, this is also emphasized by the tone of the narrative voice, being quite diminutive of the carpenter. The Miller is also an omniscient narrator, so he 'knows all' and 'sees all' that is going on in the text. As there is not 'I' the story relates directly to the reader, therefore as a reader we tend to relate to the character the narrator relates to, and in the same way find humour in the way that John the carpenter is treated as the Miller obviously finds

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  • Level: University Degree
  • Subject: Linguistics, Classics and related subjects
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