Minutes

Hey, wäre nett wenn jemand von euch nochmal drüber gucken könnte weil ich mir an ein paar Stellen wegen der Formulierungen nicht sicher bin.

In our last lesson we talked about how a character can be captured while reading a book like “Death of a Salesman”, as well as about the end of the first act of this play.
We pointed out that there a two parts a characterization consists of.
At first there is a direct characterization where the information, that the author gives us in a direct way, is used. In these stage directions the author allegorizes the way in which a character speaks and how he dresses, the whole appearance. Also the stage setting contains much information, like Ben is carrying a valise and an umbrella as a sign of success and prosperity, for example. The second part of information are to be found in the scene it-self, by the actions of a character, dialogues, remarks by other characters and also the choice of words, like elliptical sentences and exclamation marks.
Furthermore we asserted that there is an action on two levels; the normal action and the incidents inside Willy’s mind.

During the second part of the lesson we pointed out, that this play stands for the writer’s attitude towards success, which he is criticizing permanently, by only one being successful, one who is all-right and all the others are failures.
Willy, who is definitely a looser in the fight of success, tells his sons not “fight fair with a stranger” whereas he complains about business world being to impersonally compared to former times.

We came to the result that “Death of a Salesman” is a play of social criticism and that Arthur Miller gives many hidden hints, in Willy’s flashbacks, what may be the reason for Biff having changed so suddenly and what wrong advice Willy may have given his sons.

The act ends when Willy is going to see Howard, his boss, next day to ask him for a desk-job and Biff and Happy planning to go to Oliver, because they want to found a business to sell sport articles.

Schonmal Danke im Voraus.