Eugene O'Neill(1888-1953)

I. His life and his works

Eugene O'Neill was born in New York City on October 16, 1888. His father, James, was a successful touring actor and Eugene O'Neill 's mother, Ella, accompanied her husband touring around the country. Eugene was born in a hotel room and spent most of his childhood on the road with his family. O'Neill was educated at boarding schools in his early years and then attended Princeton University for a year, from 1906 to 1907. After Eugene left school he began an education in, what he later called, "life experience." Over the next six years he shipped to sea, lived destitute on the waterfronts of New York, Buenos Aires and Liverpool, became alcoholic and attempted suicide. At age twenty-four, O'Neill finally began to recover from this state and held a job as a reporter for the New London Daily Telegraph. Eugene was forced to quit his reporting job when he became extremely ill with tuberculosis and was subsequently hospitalized in Gaylord Farm Sanitarium in Wallington, Connecticut for six months. While in the hospital, Eugene began to reevaluate his life in what he later termed his "rebirth." After his hospitalization, O'Neill studied the techniques of playwriting at Harvard University from 1914 to 1915 under the famous theater scholar George Pierce Baker.

In the summer of 1916, O'Neill made his first appearance as a playwright in a tiny playhouse on the wharf of Provincetown, MA. The playhouse was started as a new experimental theater by a group of young writers and painters. The playhouse produced Bound East for Cardiff, O'Neill 's first play. This same group of writers formed the Playwrights' Theater in New York's Greenwich Village, eventually Provincetown Players, where O'Neill made his New York debut. For ten years O'Neill worked as a dramatist and playwright for this company. O'Neill 's first full-length endeavor was produced on Broadway on February 2, 1920 at the Morosco Theater. Beyond the Horizon won the Pulitzer Prize for drama, the first of four awarded to O'Neill in his lifetime. O'Neill was later awarded Pulitzers for Anna Christie, Strange Interlude, and Long Day's Journey into Night. O'Neill was also the first and the only American playwright to receive the Nobel Prize for literature. Long Day's Journey into Night is somewhat autobiographical. The Tyrones of the play are in fact modeled on the O'Neill family. The four najor characters include James Tyrone, the father, a famous actor, anxious to become rich at the expense of his own talent; Mary Tyrone, the mather, a drug addict; Jamie Tyrone, their elder son, and Edmund Tyrone, their younger son. All the four suffer frustrations and wish to escape from the harsh reality, James and Jamie looking for solace in their cups, while Mary and Edmund seek the protection of the fog which they hope would screen them from the intrusion of the world outside. The long day thus journeys into night when the tragedy of the family is finally enacted. Love gives way a hate, day to night, and hope to despair. In a figurative sense, Long Day's Journey into Night. is a metaphor for O'Neill's lifelong endeavor to find truth and the way to acceptance.

Between 1920 and 1943, O'Neill completed twenty long plays and many shorter ones. All of O'Neill 's plays are written from a personal point of view and reflect on the tragedy of the human condition. There is no doubt that O'Neill's early life experence contributed to his writing. Like O'Neill as a boy, many of his characters are caught in destructive situations and paths that they cannot escape. Before O'Neill, most American plays were farce or melodrama. O'Neill embraced the theater as a venue to work out serious social issues and ideas. He transformed the American Theater into a serious and important cultural institution.
O'Neill has been compared to virtually every literary figure in the Western world and is considered the first great American playwright. His plays deal specifically with the American tragedy, rooted in American history and social movements. O'Neill had broad vision and was sometimes criticized when this vision seemed to exceed his skill. Some critics even believed that O'Neill aimed too consciously at greatness. His dramas are marked by expressionistic theatrical techniques and symbolic devices that function to express religious and philosophical ideas. O'Neill even used the Ancient Greek Chorus as a device to comment on the action of many of his plays. By bringing psychological depth, poetic symbolism and expressionistic technique to the American theatre, O'Neill raised the standards of American theatre.

The last twenty years of his life, O'Neill battled a crippling nervous disorder similar to Parkinson's disease. He died in 1953.

II. Technique

1. O'Neill was a tireless experimentalist in dramatic art. He took drama away from the old traditions of the last century and rooted it deeply in life. He was interested in type for American working class and the modern American people. Also his dramas stand for them.
2. He is good at using setting. He conveys many symbolic meanings through the setting. For example, in The Hairy Ape, cage is a very important setting. It symbolizes that the modern society is like a cage that imprisons people. The characters are just like moving from one cage to another.

III.

The Hairy Ape

1. Plot Overview

The hero in this drama is Yank who is a stoker on a luxury liner. Yank is happy with life until the day when he is forced to realize that he does not "belong" anywhere. He is disconcerted, becomes violent, and is even rejected by the radical workers. In his quest for self-identity, he wanders to the zoo where he finds affinity with the great ape there. He goes over to it, only to be crushed by its outstretched arms. Yank dies, without ever finding his place of "belonging." The general feeling is one of despair: Man is rootless in an indifferent and impersonal universe.

2. Themes

1) Human Regression by Industrialization

The resounding theme of The Hairy Ape is the effect of industrialization and technological progress on the worker. Industrialization has reduced the human worker into a machine. The men are programmed to do one task, are turned on and off by whistles, and are not required to think independently. Today, the job of the coal stoker is actually done by a machine. Workers are thus forced into jobs that require nothing but grunt work and physical labor, which has caused a general deterioration of the worker into a Neanderthal or Ape. This is made clear by O'Neill's stage direction, which indicates that the Firemen actually look like Neanderthals and one of the oldest workers, Paddy, as "extremely monkey-like." The longer the Firemen work, the further back they fall on the human evolutionary path-thus Paddy, one of the oldest, is especially "monkey-like." As a whole, the play is a close investigation of this regressive pattern through the character Yank-the play marks his regression from a Neanderthal on the ship to an actual ape at the zoo.

2) The Frustration of Class

Mildred and Yank are representatives of the highest and lowest societal classes-the bourgeois and the proletariat. However, while Mildred and Yank's lifestyles are extremely different, they share similar complaints about class. Mildred describes herself as the "waste product" of her father's steel company. She has reaped the financial benefits of the company, but has felt none of the vigor or passion that created it. Mildred yearns to find passion-to touch "life" beyond her cushioned, bourgeois world. Yank, on the other hand, has felt too much of the "life" Mildred describes. Yank desires to topple the class structure by re-inscribing the importance and necessity of the working class. Yank defines importance as "who belongs." Class restricts and determines both Mildred and Yank's financial resources, educational opportunities, outlook on life, and culture. The Hairy Ape reveals how deeply and rigidly class is inscribed into American Culture and the cultural and financial boundaries it erects.

3) Belonging

The idea of "belonging" is continually reinforced throughout The Hairy Ape. Yank equates "belonging" with power and importance and uses "belonging" as a way to reverse societal power structures. In Scene One, Yank claims that he "belongs" to the ship, as opposed to the passengers in first class who are merely "baggage." Yank also associates "belonging" with an individual's usefulness and functionality. The firemen "belong" because they make the ship run and are essential to its workings. Yank is especially affected by Mildred because she presents a world and class which he cannot belong to. After their meeting, the play essentially follows Yank in his quest to find belonging, finally leading him to the monkey- house at the zoo, and then to death.

3. Symbols

Apes

Apes are everywhere in The Hairy Ape: Yank is called an ape; Yank thinks he is an ape, Mildred thinks she sees an ape. The ape symbolizes man in a primitive state in which technology, complex language structures, complex thought or money were not necessary. The ape represents man that is not only behind in an evolutionary sense, but is free of class, technology and other elements of modern society. The ape is only concerned with survival.

Steel

Steel is both a symbol of power and oppression in The Hairy Ape. While Yank exclaims in Scene One that he is steel, "the muscles and the punch behind it," he is all the while penned in a virtual cage of steel created by the ship around him. Steel creates other cages in the play-Yank's jail cell and the cell of the ape. Steel is also oppressive because it creates jobs like Yank's; it is symbolic of the technology that forces Yank and the Firemen into slave-like jobs.

4.
Selected Reading

Scene 8
Twilight of the next day. The monkey house at the Zoo. One  
spot of clear gray light falls on the front of one cage so that  
the interior can be seen. The other cages are vague, shrouded in  
shadow from which chatterings pitched in a conversational tone can  
be heard. On the one cage a sign from which the word "gorilla"  
stands out. The gigantic animal himself is seen squatting on his  
haunches on a bench in much the same attitude asRodin's  
"Thinker." YANK enters from the left. Immediately a chorus of  
angry chattering and screeching breaks out. The gorilla turns his  
eyes but makes no sound or move.  
  
YANK: -  [With a hard, bitter laugh.] Welcome to your city, huh?  
Hail, hail,  de gang's all here! [At the sound of his voice the chattering dies away into an attentive silence. YANK walks up to the gorilla's cage and, leaning over the railing, stares in at its occupant, who stares back at him, silent and motionless. There is a pause of dead stillness. Then YANK begins to talk in a friendly confidential tone, half-mockingly, but with a deep undercurrent of sympathy.] Say, yuh're some hard-lookin' guy, ain't yuh? I seen lots of tough nuts dat de gang called gorillas, but yuh're de  
foist real one I ever seen. Some chest yuh got, and shoulders, and  
dem arms and mits! I bet yuh got a punch in eider fist dat'd knock  
'em all silly! [This with genuine admiration. The gorilla, as if he understood, stands upright, swelling out his chest and pounding on it with his fist. YANK grins sympathetically.] Sure, I get yuh.  
Yuh challenge de whole woild, huh? Yuh got what I was sayin' even  
if yuh muffed de woids. [Then bitterness creeping in.] And why  
wouldn't yuh get me? Ain't we both members of de same club-de  
Hairy Apes? [They stare at each other-a pause-then YANK goes on slowly and bitterly.] So yuh're what she seen when she looked at  
me, de white-faced tart! I was you to her, get me? On'y outa de  
cage-broke out-free to moider her, see? Sure! Dat's what she  
tought. She wasn't wise dat I was in a cage, too-worser'n yours-  
sure-a damn sight-'cause you got some chanct to bust loose-  
but me- [He grows confused.] Aw, hell! It's all wrong, ain't it?  
[A pause.] I s'pose yuh wanter know what I'm doin' here, huh? I  
been warmin' a bench down to de Battery-ever since last night.  
Sure. I seen de sun come up. Dat was pretty, too-all red and pink  
and green. I was lookin' at de skyscrapers-steel-and all de  
ships comin' in, sailin' out, all over de oith-and dey was steel,  
too. De sun was warm, dey wasn't no clouds, and dere was a breeze  
blowin'. Sure, it was great stuff. I got it aw right-what Paddy  
said about dat bein' de right dope-on'y I couldn't get IN it,  
see? I couldn't belong in dat. It was over my head. And I kept  
tinkin'-and den I beat it up here to see what youse was like. And  
I waited till dey was all gone to git yuh alone. Say, how d'yuh  
feel sittin' in dat pen all de time, havin' to stand for 'em  
comin' and starin' at yuh-de white-faced, skinny tarts and de  
boobs what marry 'em-makin' fun of yuh, laughin' at yuh, gittin'  
scared of yuh-damn 'em! [He pounds on the rail with his fist. The gorilla rattles the bars of his cage and snarls. All the other monkeys set up an angry chattering in the darkness. YANK goes on excitedly.] Sure! Dat's de way it hits me, too. On'y yuh're lucky,  
see? Yuh don't belong wit 'em and yuh know it. But me, I belong  
wit 'em-but I don't, see? Dey don't belong wit me, dat's what.  
Get me? Tinkin' is hard- [He passes one hand across his forehead with a painful gesture. The gorilla growls impatiently. YANK goes on gropingly.] It's dis way, what I'm drivin' at. Youse can sit and dope dream in de past, green woods, de jungle and de rest of  
it. Den yuh belong and dey don't. Den yuh kin laugh at 'em, see?  
Yuh're de champ of de woild. But me-I ain't got no past to tink  
in, nor nothin' dat's comin', on'y what's now-and dat don't  
belong. Sure, you're de best off! Yuh can't tink, can yuh? Yuh  
can't talk neider. But I kin make a bluff at talkin' and tinkin'-  
a'most git away wit it-a'most!-and dat's where de joker comes  
in. [He laughs.] I ain't on oith and I ain't in heaven, get me?  
I'm in de middle tryin' to separate 'em, takin' all de woist  
punches from bot' of 'em. Maybe dat's what dey call hell, huh? But  
you, yuh're at de bottom. You belong! Sure! Yuh're de on'y one in  
de woild dat does, yuh lucky stiff! [The gorilla growls proudly.]   
And dat's why dey gotter put yuh in a cage, see? [The gorilla roars angrily.] Sure! Yuh get me. It beats it when you try to tink  
it or talk it-it's way down-deep-behind-you 'n' me we feel it.  
Sure! Bot' members of dis club! [He laughs-then in a savage tone.] What de hell! T' hell wit it! A little action, dat's our  
meat! Dat belongs! Knock 'em down and keep bustin' 'em till dey  
croaks yuh wit a gat-wit steel! Sure! Are yuh game? Dey've looked  
at youse, ain't dey-in a cage? Wanter git even? Wanter wind up  
like a sport 'stead of croakin' slow in dere? [The gorilla roars an emphatic affirmative. YANK goes on with a sort of furious exaltation.] Sure! Yuh're reg'lar! Yuh'll stick to de finish! Me  
'n' you, huh?-bot' members of this club! We'll put up one last  
star bout dat'll knock 'em offen deir seats! Dey'll have to make  
de cages stronger after we're trou! [The gorilla is straining at his bars, growling, hopping from one foot to the other. YANK takes a jimmy from under his coat and forces the lock on the cage door. He throws this open.] Pardon from de governor! Step out and shake  
hands! I'll take yuh for a walk down Fif' Avenoo. We'll knock 'em  
offen de oith and croak wit de band playin'. Come on, Brother.  
[The gorilla scrambles gingerly out of his cage. Goes to YANK and stands looking at him. YANK keeps his mocking tone-holds out his hand.] Shake-de secret grip of our order. [Something, the tone of mockery, perhaps, suddenly enrages the animal. With a spring he wraps his huge arms around YANK in a murderous hug. There is a crackling snap of crushed ribs-a gasping cry, still mocking, from YANK.] Hey, I didn't say, kiss me. [The gorilla lets the crushed body slip to the floor; stands over it uncertainly, considering; then picks it up, throws it in the cage, shuts the door, and shuffles off menacingly into the darkness at left. A great uproar of frightened chattering and whimpering comes from the other cages. Then YANK moves, groaning, opening his eyes, and there is silence. He mutters painfully.] Say-dey oughter match him-wit  
Zybszko. He got me, aw right. I'm trou. Even him didn't tink I  
belonged. [Then, with sudden passionate despair.] Christ, where do  
I get off at? Where do I fit in? [Checking himself as suddenly.]   
Aw, what de hell! No squakin', see! No quittin', get me! Croak wit  
your boots on! [He grabs hold of the bars of the cage and hauls himself painfully to his feet-looks around him bewilderedly- forces a mocking laugh.] In de cage, huh? [In the strident tones of a circus barker.] Ladies and gents, step forward and take a  
slant at de one and only- [His voice weakening] -one and original-  
Hairy Ape from de wilds of- [He slips in a heap on the floor and dies. The monkeys set up a chattering, whimpering wail. And, perhaps, the Hairy Ape at last belongs.]  

Questions

1. Can you see any symbols in the play?

Answers

Tennessee Williams (1911-1983)

I. His life and works
Tennessee Williams was born in Columbus, Mississippi, in 1911. The name given to him at birth was Thomas Lanier Williams III. He did not acquire the nickname Tennessee until college, when classmates began calling him that in honor of his Southern accent and his father's home state. The Williams family had produced several illustrious politicians in the state of Tennessee, but Williams's grandfather had squandered the family fortune. Until Williams was seven, he lived in Mississippi. After that, the family moved to St. Louis. The family moved sixteen times in ten years, and the young Williams, always shy and fragile, was ostracized and taunted at school. During these years, he and his sister, Rose, became extremely close. Rose, the model for Laura in The Glass Menagerie, suffered from mental illness later in life.

An average student and social outcast in high school, Williams turned to the movies and writing for solace. At sixteen, Williams won five dollars in a national competition for his answer to the question "Can a good wife be a good sport?" his answer was published in Smart Set magazine. The next year, he published a horror story in a magazine called Weird Tales, and the year after that he entered the University of Missouri as a journalism major. While there, he wrote his first plays. Before Williams could receive his degree, however, his father forced him to withdraw from school and go to work at a shoe company.

Williams worked at the shoe factory for three years. After that, he returned to college, this time at Washington University in St. Louis. While he was studying there, a St. Louis theater group produced his play The Fugitive Kind and Candles to the Sun. Personal problems led Williams to drop out of Washington University and enroll in the University of Iowa. While he was in Iowa, his sister, Rose, underwent a lobotomy, which left her institutionalized for the rest of her life. Despite this trauma, Williams finally graduated in 1938. In the years that followed, he lived a bohemian life, working menial jobs and wandering from city to city. He continued to work on drama, however, receiving a Rockefeller grant and studying playwriting at the New School in New York. During the early years of World War II, Williams worked in Hollywood as a scriptwriter.

Around 1941, Williams began the work that would become The Glass Menagerie. The play evolved from a short story entitled "Portrait of a Girl in Glass," which focused more completely on Laura than the play does. In December of 1944, The Glass Menagerie was staged in Chicago, with the collaboration of a number of well-known theatrical figures. When the play first opened, the audience was sparse, but the Chicago critics raved about it, and eventually it was playing to full houses. In March of 1945, the play moved to Broadway, where it won the prestigious New York Drama Critics' Circle Award. This highly personal, explicitly autobiographical play earned Williams fame, fortune, and critical respect, and it marked the beginning of a successful run that would last for another ten years. Two years after The Glass Menagerie, Williams won another Drama Critics' Circle Award and a Pulitzer Prize for A Streetcar Named Desire. Williams won the same two prizes again in 1955, for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

Alcoholism, depression, thwarted desire, loneliness in search of purpose, and insanity were all part of Williams' world. Since the early 1940s, he had been a known homosexual, and his experiences in an era and culture unfriendly to homosexuality certainly affected his work. After 1955, Williams began using drugs. He continued to write though most critics agree that the quality of his work diminished in his later life. His life's work adds up to twenty-five full-length plays, five screenplays, over seventy one-act plays, hundreds of short stories, two novels, poetry, and a memoir; five of his plays were also made into movies. Williams died from choking in a drug-related incident in 1983.

II. His Writing Characteristics

1. He is influenced by the southern background.

2. He often uses a lot of symbols in his plays. For example in The Glass Menagerie glass menagerie is easily broken, so it symbolized fragile Laura, the family, the reality, and the world.

III. The Glass Menagerie

1. Plot Overview
The Glass Menagerie is a memory play, and its action is drawn from the memories of the narrator, Tom Wingfield.

Amanda, originally from a genteel Southern family, talks her children frequently with tales of her idyllic youth and the scores of suitors who once pursued her. She is disappointed that Laura, who wears a brace on her leg and is painfully shy, does not attract any gentleman callers. Amanda then decides that Laura's last hope must lie in marriage and begins selling newspaper subscriptions to earn the extra money she believes will help to attract suitors for Laura. Meanwhile, Tom, who dislikes his warehouse job, finds escape in liquor, movies, and literature.

Amanda and Tom discuss Laura's prospects, and Amanda asks Tom to keep an eye out for potential suitors at the warehouse. Tom selects Jim O'Connor, a casual friend, and invites him to dinner. Amanda quizzes Tom about Jim and is delighted to learn that he is a driven young man with his mind set on career advancement. She prepares an elaborate dinner and insists that Laura wear a new dress. At the last minute, Laura learns the name of her caller; as it turns out, she had a devastating crush on Jim in high school. When Jim arrives, Laura answers the door, on Amanda's orders, and then quickly disappears, leaving Tom and Jim alone. Tom confides to Jim that he has used the money for his family's electric bill to join the merchant marine and plans to leave his job and family in search of adventure. Laura refuses to eat dinner with the others, feigning illness. Amanda, wearing an ostentatious dress from her glamorous youth, talks vivaciously with Jim throughout the meal.

As dinner is ending, the lights go out as a consequence of the unpaid electric bill. The characters light candles, and Amanda encourages Jim to entertain Laura in the living room while she and Tom clean up. Laura is at first paralyzed by Jim's presence, but his warm and open behavior soon draws her out of her shell. She confesses that she knew and liked him in high school but was too shy to approach him. They continue talking, and Laura reminds him of the nickname he had given her: "Blue Roses," an accidental corruption of the word for Laura's medical condition, pleurosis. He reproaches her for her shyness and low self-esteem but praises her uniqueness. Laura then ventures to show him her favorite glass animal, a unicorn. Jim dances with her, but in the process, he accidentally knocks over the unicorn, breaking off its horn. Laura is forgiving, noting that now the unicorn is a normal horse. Jim then kisses her, but he quickly draws back and apologizes, explaining that he was carried away by the moment and that he actually has a serious girlfriend. Resigned, Laura offers him the broken unicorn as a souvenir.

Amanda enters the living room, full of good cheer. Jim hastily explains that he must leave because of an appointment with his fiancée. Amanda sees him off warmly but, after he is gone, turns on Tom, who had not known that Jim was engaged. Amanda accuses Tom of being an inattentive, selfish dreamer and then throws herself into comforting Laura. From the fire escape outside of their apartment, Tom watches the two women and explains that, not long after Jim's visit, he gets fired from his job and leaves Amanda and Laura behind. Years later, though he travels far, he finds that he is unable to leave behind guilty memories of Laura.

2. Themes
The Difficulty in Accepting Reality
Among the most prominent and urgent themes of The Glass Menagerie is the difficulty the characters have in accepting and relating to reality. Each member of the Wingfield family is unable to overcome this difficulty, and each, as a result, withdraws into a private world of illusion where he or she finds the comfort and meaning that the real world does not seem to offer. Of the three Wingfields, reality has by far the weakest grasp on Laura. The private world in which she lives is populated by glass animals-objects that, like Laura's inner life, are incredibly fanciful and dangerously delicate. Unlike his sister, Tom is capable of functioning in the real world, as we see in his holding down a job and talking to strangers. But, in the end, he has no more motivation than Laura does to pursue professional success, romantic relationships, or even ordinary friendships, and he prefers to retreat into the fantasies provided by literature and movies and the stupor provided by drunkenness. Amanda's relationship to reality is the most complicated in the play. Unlike her children, she is partial to real-world values and longs for social and financial success. Yet her attachment to these values is exactly what prevents her from perceiving a number of truths about her life. She cannot accept that she is or should be anything other than the pampered belle she was brought up to be, that Laura is peculiar, that Tom is not a budding businessman, and that she herself might be in some ways responsible for the sorrows and flaws of her children. Amanda's retreat into illusion is in many ways more pathetic than her children's, because it is not a willful imaginative construction but a wistful distortion of reality. Even Jim, who represents the "world of reality," is banking his future on public speaking and the television and radio industries-all of which are means for the creation of illusions and the persuasion of others that these illusions are true. The Glass Menagerie identifies the conquest of reality by illusion as a huge and growing aspect of the human condition in its time.

The Impossibility of True Escape

At the beginning of Scene Four, Tom regales Laura with an account of a magic show in which the magician managed to escape from a nailed-up coffin. Clearly, Tom views his life with his family and at the warehouse as a kind of coffin-cramped, suffocating, and morbid-in which he is unfairly confined. The promise of escape, represented by Tom's missing father, the Merchant Marine Service, and the fire escape outside the apartment, haunts Tom from the beginning of the play, and in the end, he does choose to free himself from the confinement of his life.

The play takes an ambiguous attitude toward the moral implications and even the effectiveness of Tom's escape. As an able-bodied young man, he is locked into his life not by exterior factors but by emotional ones-by his loyalty to and possibly even love for Laura and Amanda. Escape for Tom means the suppression and denial of these emotions in himself, and it means doing great harm to his mother and sister. The magician is able to emerge from his coffin without upsetting a single nail, but the human nails that bind Tom to his home will certainly be upset by his departure. One cannot say for certain that leaving home even means true escape for Tom. As far as he might wander from home, something still "pursue[s]" him. Like a jailbreak, Tom's escape leads him not to freedom but to the life of a fugitive.

The Unrelenting Power of Memory

According to Tom, The Glass Menagerie is a memory play-both its style and its content are shaped and inspired by memory. As Tom himself states clearly, the play's lack of realism, its high drama, its overblown and too-perfect symbolism, and even its frequent use of music are all due to its origins in memory. Most fictional works are products of the imagination that must convince their audience that they are something else by being realistic. A play drawn from memory, however, is a product of real experience and hence does not need to drape itself in the conventions of realism in order to seem real.  

The story that the play tells is told because of the inflexible grip it has on the narrator's memory. Thus, the fact that the play exists at all is a testament to the power that memory can exert on people's lives and consciousness.  The narrator, Tom, is not the only character haunted by his memories. Amanda too lives in constant pursuit of her bygone youth, and old records from her childhood are almost as important to Laura as her glass animals. For these characters, memory is a crippling force that prevents them from finding happiness in the present or the offerings of the future. But it is also the vital force for Tom, prompting him to the act of creation that culminates in the achievement of the play.

3. Symbols

Laura's Glass Menagerie

As the title of the play informs us, the glass menagerie, or collection of glass animals, is the play's central symbol. Laura's collection of glass animal figurines represents a number of facets of her personality. Like the figurines, Laura is delicate, fanciful, and somehow old-fashioned. Glass is transparent, but, when light is shined upon it correctly, it refracts an entire rainbow of colors. Similarly, Laura, though quiet and bland around strangers, is a source of strange, multifaceted delight to those who choose to look at her in the right light. The menagerie also represents the imaginative world to which Laura devotes herself-a world that is colorful and enticing but based on fragile illusions.

The Glass Unicorn

The glass unicorn in Laura's collection-significantly, her favorite figure-represents her peculiarity. As Jim points out, unicorns are "extinct" in modern times and are lonesome as a result of being different from other horses. Laura too is unusual, lonely, and ill-adapted to existence in the world in which she lives. The fate of the unicorn is also a smaller-scale version of Laura's fate in Scene Seven. When Jim dances with and then kisses Laura, the unicorn's horn breaks off, and it becomes just another horse. Jim's advances endow Laura with a new normalcy, making her seem more like just another girl, but the violence with which this normalcy is thrust upon her means that Laura cannot become normal without somehow -shattering. Eventually, Laura gives Jim the unicorn as a "souvenir." Without its horn, the unicorn is more appropriate for him than for her, and the broken figurine represents all that he has taken from her and destroyed in her.

"Blue Roses"

Like the glass unicorn, "Blue Roses," Jim's high school nickname for Laura, symbolizes Laura's unusualness yet allure. The name is also associated with Laura's attraction to Jim and the joy that his kind treatment brings her. Furthermore, it recalls Tennessee -Williams's sister, Rose, on whom the character of Laura is based.

IV. Selected Reading

[IMAGE: HIGH SCHOOL HERO.]

TOM: And so the following evening I brought Jim home to dinner. I had known Jim slightly in high school. In high school Jim was a hero. He had tremendous Irish good nature and vitality with the scrubbed and polished look of white chinaware. He seemed to move in a continual spotlight. He was a star in basket-ball, captain of the debating club, president of the senior class and the glee club and he sang the male lead in the annual light operas. He was always running or bounding, never just walking. He seemed always at the point of defeating the law of gravity. He was shooting with such velocity through his adolescence that you would logically expect him to arrive at nothing short of the White House by the time he was thirty. But Jim apparently ran into more interference after his graduation from Soldan. His speed had definitely slowed. Six years after he left high school he was holding a job that wasn't much better than mine.

[IMAGE: CLERK.]

He was the only one at the warehouse with whom I was on friendly terms. I was valuable to him as someone who could remember his former glory, who had seen him win basketball games and the silver cup in debating. He knew of my secret practice of retiring to a cabinet of the washroom to work on poems when business was slack in the warehouse. He called me Shakespeare. And while the other boys in the warehouse regarded me with suspicious hostility, Jim took a humorous attitude toward me. Gradually his attitude affected the others, their hostility wore off and they also began to smile at me as people smile at an oddly fashioned dog who trots across their path at some distance.

I knew that Jim and Laura had known each other at Soldan, and I had heard Laura speak admiringly of his voice. I didn't know if Jim remembered her or not. In high school Laura had been as unobtrusive as Jim had been astonishing. If he did remember Laura, it was not as my sister, for when I asked him to dinner, he grinned and said, 'You know, Shakespeare, I never thought of you as having folks !'
He was about to discover that I did.

[LIGHT UPSTAGE.]
[LEGEND ON SCREEN: "THE ACCENT OF A COMING FOOT".]
The light dims out Tom and comes up in the Wingfield living room-a delicate lemony light. It is about five o'clock of a late spring evening which comes "scattering poems in the sky."

AMANDA has worked like a Turk in preparation for the gentleman caller. The results are astonishing. The new floor lamp with its rose-silk shade is in place, a coloured paper lantern conceals the broken light fixture in the ceiling, new billowing white curtains are at the windows, chintz covers are on chairs and sofa, a pair of new sofa pillows make their initial appearance.
Open boxes and tissue paper are scattered on the floor.
LAURA stands in the middle with lifted arms while Amanda crouches before her, adjusting the hem of the new dress, devout and ritualistic. The dress is colored and designed by memory. The arrangement of Laura's hair is changed; it is softer and more becoming. A fragile, unearthly prettiness has come out in LAURA: she is like a piece of translucent glass touched by light, given a momentary radiance, not actual, not lasting.]

AMANDA [impatiently]: Why are you trembling?
LAURA: Mother, you've made me so nervous!
A M A N D A: How have I made you nervous?
LAURA: By all this fuss! You make it seem so important!
AMANDA: I don't understand you, Laura. You couldn't be satisfied with just sitting home, and yet whenever I try to arrange something for you, you seem to resist it. [She gets up.] Now take a look at yourself. No, wait! Wait just a moment - I have an idea!
LAURA: What is it now?

[AMANDA produces two powder puffs which she wraps in handkerchiefs and stuffs in LAURA's bosom.]

LAURA: Mother, what are you doing?
AMANDA: They call them 'Gay Deceivers'!
LAURA: I won't wear them !
AMANDA: YOU Will !
LAURA: Why should I?
AMANDA: Because, to be painfully honest, your chest is flat.
LAURA: You make it seem like we were setting a trap.
AMANDA: All pretty girls are a trap, a pretty trap, and men expect them to be!

[LEGEND ON THE SCREEN: ' A PRETTY TRAP']

Now look at yourself, young lady. This is the prettiest you will ever be! I've got. To fix myself now! You're going to be surprised by your mother's appearance! [She crosses through portières, humming gaily.]
[LAURA moves slowly to the long mirror and stares solemnly at herself. A wind blows the white curtains inward in a slow, graceful motion and with a faint, sorrowful sighing.]
AMANDA [off stage]: It isn't dark enough yet. [LAURA turns slowly before the mirror with a troubled look.]

[LEGEND ON SCREEN: ' THIS IS MY SISTER: CELEBRATE HER WITH STRINGS!' MUSIC PLAYS.]
AMANDA [laughing, still not visible]: I'm going to show you something. I'm going to make a spectacular appearance!
LAURA: What is it, Mother?
AMANDA: Possess your soul in patience-you will see!
Something I've resurrected from that old trunk! Styles haven't changed so terribly much after all.
[She parts the portieres.]
Now just look at your mother!
[She wears a girlish frock of yellowed voile with a blue silk sash. She carries a bunch of jonquils - the legend of her youth is nearly revived. Now she speaks feverishly]: This is the dress in which I led the cotillion, won the cakewalk twice at Sunset Hill, wore one spring to the Governor's ball in Jackson! See how I sashayed around the ballroom, Laura? [She raises her skirt and does a mincing step around the room.] I wore it on Sundays for my gentlemen callers! I had it on the day I met your father I had malaria fever all that spring. The change of climate from East Tennessee to the Delta - weakened resistance I had a little temperature all the time - not enough to be serious - just enough to make me restless and giddy I Invitations poured in - parties all over the Delta! - 'Stay in bed,' said mother, 'you have fever!' - but I just wouldn't. - I took quinine but kept on going, going! Evenings, dances! - Afternoons, long, long rides! Picnics. - lovely! - So lovely, that country in May. - All lacy with dogwood, literally flooded with jonquils! - That was the spring I had the craze for jonquils. Jonquils became an absolute obsession. Mother said, 'Honey, there's no more room for jonquils.' And still I kept on bringing in more jonquils. Whenever, wherever I saw them, I'd say, "Stop! Stop! I see jonquils! I made the young men help me gather the jonquils! It was a joke, Amanda and her jonquils! Finally there were no more vases to hold them, every available space was filled with jonquils. No vases to hold them? All right, I'll hold them myself - And then I - [She stops in front of the picture. M U S I C.] met your father ! Malaria fever and jonquils and then - this - boy.... [She switches on the rose-coloured lamp.] I hope they get here before it starts to rain. [She crosses upstage and places the jonquils in bowl on table.] I gave your brother a little extra change so he and Mr. O'Connor could take the service car home.
LAURA [with altered look]: What did you say his name was?
AMANDA: O'Connor.
LAURA: What is his first name?
AMANDA: I don't remember. Oh, yes, I do. It was - Jim!
[Laura sways slightly and catches hold of a chair.]
[LEGEND ONSCREEN: ' NOT JIM!']
LAURA [faintly]: Not - Jim!
AMANDA: Yes, that was it, it was Jim! I've never known a Jim, that wasn't nice!
[THE MUSIC BECONES OMINOUS.]
LAURA: Are you sure his name is Jim O'Connor?
AMANDA: Yes. Why?
LAURA: Is he the one that Tom used to know in high school?
AMANDA: He didn't say so. I think he just got to know him at the warehouse.
LAURA: There was a Jim O'Connor we both knew in high school - [Then, with effort.] If that is the one that Tom is bringing to dinner - you'll have to excuse me, I won't come to the table.
AMANDA: What sort of nonsense is this?
LAURA: You asked me once if I'd ever liked a boy. Don't you remember I showed you this boy's picture?
AMANDA: You mean the boy you showed me in the yearbook?
LAURA: Yes, that boy.
AMANDA: Laura, Laura, were you in love with that boy?
LAURA: I don't know, Mother. All I know is I couldn't sit at the table if it was him!
AMANDA: It won't be him! It isn't the least bit likely. But whether it is or not, you will come to the table. You will not be excused.
LAURA: I'll have to be, Mother.
AMANDA: I don't intend to humour your silliness, Laura. I've had too much from you and your brother, both!
So just sit down and compose yourself till they come. Tom has forgotten his key so you'll have to let them in, when they arrive.
LAURA [panicky]: Oh, Mother - you answer the door!
AMANDA [lightly]: I'll be in the kitchen - busy!
LAURA: Oh, Mother, please answer the door, don't make me do it !
AMANDA [crossing into kitchenette]: I've got to fix the dressing for the salmon. Fuss, fuss - silliness! Over a gentleman caller!
[Door swings Shut. LAURA is left alone]
[LEGEND: ' TERROR!'
She utters a low moan and turns off the lamp - sits stiffly on the edge of the sofa, knotting her fingers together.
[LEGEND ON SCREEN: ' THE OPENING OF A DOOR!']
T0M and JIM appear on the fire-escape steps and climb to landing. Hearing their approach, LAURA rises with a panicky gesture. She retreats to the portières.
The doorbell, LAURA catches her breath and touches her throat. Low drums.]
AMANDA [calling]: Laura, sweetheart! The door!
[LAURA stares at it without moving.]
JIM: I think we just beat the rain.
TOM: Uh - huh. [He rings again, nervously. JIM whistles and fishes for a cigarette.]
AMANDA [very gaily]: Laura, that is your brother and Mr. O'Connor! Will you let them in, darling?
[LAURA Crosses toward kitchenette door.]
LAURA [breathlessly]: Mother - you go to the door!
[AMANDA steps out of kitchenette and stares furiously at Laura. She points imperiously at the door.]
LAURA: Please, please!
AMANDA [in a fierce whisper]: What is the matter with you, you silly thing?
LAURA [desperately]: Please, you answer it, please!
AMANDA: I told you I wasn't going to humor you, Laura. Why have you chosen this moment to lose your mind?
LAURA: Please, please, please, you go!
A M A N D A: You'll have to go to the door because I can't!
LAURA [despairingly]: I can't either!
AMANDA: Why?
LAURA: I'm sick!
AMANDA: I'm sick, too - of your nonsense! Why can't you and your brother be normal people? Fantastic whims and behavior!
[Tom gives a long ring.]
Preposterous goings on! Can you give me one reason - [Calls out lyrically] COMING! JUST ONE SECOND! - Why you should be afraid to open a door? Now you answer it, Laura!
LAURA: Oh, oh, oh ... [She returns through the portières. Darts to the victrola and winds it frantically and turns it on.]
AMANDA: Laura Wingfield, you march right to that door!
LAURA: Yes - yes, Mother!
[A faraway, scratchy rendition of "Dardanella" softens the air and gives her strength to move through it. She slips to the door and draws it cautiously open. TOM enters With the caller, JIM O'CONNOR.]
TOM: Laura, this is Jim. Jim, this is my sister, Laura.
JIM [stepping inside]: I didn't know that Shakespeare had a sister!
LAURA [retreating stiff and trembling from the door]: How - how do you do?
JIM [heartily extending his hand]: - Okay!
[LAURA touches it hesitantly with hers.]
JIM: Your hand's cold, Laura!
LAURA: Yes, well- I've been playing the Victrola....
JIM: Must have been playing classical music on it! You ought to play a little hot swing music to warm you up!
LAURA: Excuse me - I haven't finished playing the Victrola. ... [She turns awkwardly and hurries into the front room. She pauses a second by the Victrola. Then catches her breath and darts through the portières like a frightened deer.]
JIM: [grinning]: What was the matter?
TOM: Oh - with Laura? Laura is - terribly shy.
JIM: Shy, huh? It's unusual to meet a shy girl nowadays. I don't believe you ever mentioned you had a sister.
TOM: Well, now you know. I have one. Here is the Post Dispatch. You want a piece of it?
JIM: Uh-huh.
TOM: What piece? The comics?
JIM: Sports! [Glances at it.] Ole Dizzy Dean is on his bad behavior.
T0M [disinterested]: Yeah? [Lights cigarette and crosses back to fire-escape door.]
JIM: Where are you going?
TOM: I'm going out on the terrace.
JIM [goes after him]: You know, Shakespeare - I'm going to sell you a bill of goods!
TOM: What goods?
JIM: A course I'm taking.
TOM: Huh?
JIM: In public speaking! You and me, we're not the warehouse type.
TOM: Thanks - that's good news. But what has public speaking got to do with it?
JIM: It fits you for - executive positions!
TOM: Awww.
JIM: I tell you it's done a helluva lot for me.
[IMAGE: EXECUTIVE AT DESK.]
TOM: In what respect?
JIM: In every! Ask yourself what is the difference between you an' me and men in the office down front? Brains? No! - Ability? - No! Then what? Just one little thing
TOM: What is that one little thing?
JIM Primarily it amounts to - social poise! Being able to square up to people and hold your own on any social level!
AMANDA [off stage]: Tom?
TOM: Yes, Mother?
AMANDA: Is that you and Mr. O'Connor?
AMANDA: Well, you just make yourselves comfortable in there.
TOM: Yes, Mother.
AMANDA: Ask Mr. O'Connor if he would like to wash his hands.
JIM Aw, no - no - thank you - I took care of that at the warehouse. Tom-
TOM: Yes?
JI M: Mr. Mendoza was speaking to me about you.
TOM: Favorably?
JIM: What do you think?
TOM: Well
JIM: You're going to be out of a job if you don't wake up.
TOM: I am waking up
JIM: You show no signs.
TOM: The signs are interior.
[IMAGE ON SCREEN: THE SAILING VESSEL WITH JOLLY ROGER AGAIN.]
TOM: I' m planning to change. [He loans over the rail speaking with quiet exhilaration. The incandescent marquees and signs of the first-run movie houses light his face from across the alley. He looks like a voyager.] I'm right at the point of committing myself to a future that doesn't include the warehouse and Mr. Mendoza or even a night-school course in public speaking.
JIM: What are you gassing about?
TOM: I'm tired of the movies.
J IM: Movies!
TOM: Yes, movies! Look at them? [A wave toward the marvels of Grand Avenue.] All of those glamorous people-having adventures-hogging it all, gobbling the whole thing up! You know what happens? People go to the movies instead of moving! Hollywood characters are supposed to have all the adventures for everybody in America, while everybody in America sits in a dark room and watches them have them! Yes, until there's a war. That's when adventure becomes available to the masses! Everyone's dish, not only Gable's! Then the people in the dark room come out of the dark room to have some adventure themselves Goody, goody! - It's our turn now, to go to the South Sea Islands - to make a safari - to be exotic, far-off! - But I'm not patient. I don't want to wait till then. I'm tired of the movies and I am about to move!
JIM [incredulously]: Move?
TOM: Yes.
JIM: When?
TOM: Soon!
JIM: Where? Where?
[THEME THREE MUSIC SEEMS TO ANSWER THE QUESTION, WHILE TOM THINKS IT OVER. HE SEARCHES AMONG HIS POCKETS.]
TOM: I'm starting to boil inside. I know I seem dreamy, but inside - well, I'm boiling! - Whenever I pick up a shoe, I shudder a little thinking how short life is and what I am doing! - Whatever that means, I know it doesn't mean shoes - except as something to wear on a traveler's feet! [Finds paper.] Look
JIM: What?
TOM: I'm a member.
JIM [reading]: The Union of Merchant Seamen.
TOM: I paid my dues this month, instead of the light bill.
JIM: You will regret it when they turn the lights off.
TOM: I won't be here.
JIM: How about your mother?
TOM: I'm like my father. The bastard son of a bastard! See how he grins? And he's been absent going on sixteen years!
JIM: You're just talking, you drip. How does your mother feel about it?
TOM: Shhh! -
Here comes mother! Mother is not acquainted with my plans!
AMANDA [enters portieres]: Where are you all?
TOM: On the terrace, Mother.
[They start inside. She advances to them. TOM is distinctly shocked at her appearance. Even JIM blinks a little. He is making his first contact with girlish Southern vivacity and in spite of the night-school course in public speaking is somewhat thrown off the beam by the unexpected outlay of social charm.
Certain responses are attempted by JIM but are swept aside by Amanda's gay laughter and chatter. TOM is embarrassed but after the first shock JIM reacts very warmly. Grins and chuckles, is altogether won over.

IMAGE: AMANDA AS A GIRL.]
AMANDA [coyly smiling, shaking her girlish ringlets ]: Well, well, well, so this is Mr. O'Connor. Introductions entirely unnecessary. I've heard so much about you from my boy. I finally said to him, Tom - good gracious! - why don't you bring this paragon to supper? I' d like to meet this nice young man at the warehouse! - Instead of just hearing you sing his praises so much!
I don't know why my son is so stand-offish-that's not Southern behavior!
Let's sit down and - I think we could stand a little more air in here! Tom, leave the door open. I felt a nice fresh breeze a moment ago. Where has it gone to?
Mmm, so warm already! And not quite summer, even. We're going to bum up when summer really gets started. However, we're having - we're having a very light supper. I think light things are better fo' this time of year. The same as light clothes are. Light clothes an' light food are what warm weather calls fo'. You know our blood gets so thick during th' winter - it takes a while fo' us to adjust ou'selves!-when the season changes ...
It's come so quick this year. I wasn't prepared. All of a sudden-heavens! Already summer! -I ran to the trunk an' pulled out this light dress-Terribly old! Historical almost! But feels so good-so good an' co-ol, y' know....
TOM: Mother
AMANDA: Yes, honey?
TOM: How about-supper?
A M A N D A: Honey, you go ask Sister if supper is ready! You know that Sister is in full charge of supper! Tell her you hungry boys are waiting for it.
[To JIM]
Have you met Laura?
JIM: She-
AMANDA: Let you in? Oh, good, you've met already! It's rare for a girl as sweet an' pretty as Laura to be domestic! But Laura is, thank heavens, not only pretty but also very domestic. I'm not at all. I never was a bit. I never could make a thing but angel-food cake. Well, in the South we had so many servants. Gone, gone, gone. All vestige of gracious living! Gone completely! I wasn't prepared for what the future brought me. All of my gentlemen callers were sons of planters and so of course I assumed that I would be married to one and raise my family on a large piece of land with plenty of servants. But man proposes and woman accepts the proposal! - To vary that old, old saying a little bit - I married no planter! I married a man who worked for the telephone company! - That gallantly smiling gentleman over there! [Points to the picture.] A telephone man who - fell in love with long distance I - Now he travels and I don't even know where! - But what am I going on for about my - tribulations?
Tell me yours? I hope you don't have any! Tom?
TOM [returning]: Yes, Mother?
AMANDA: Is supper nearly ready?
TOM: It looks to me like supper is on the table.
AMANDA: Let me look - [She rises prettily and looks through portières.] Oh, lovely! - But where is Sister?
TOM: Laura is not feeling well - and she says that she thinks she'd better not come to the table.
AMANDA: What? - Nonsense! - Laura? Oh, Laura!
LAURA [off stage, faintly]: Yes, Mother.
AMANDA: You really must come to the table. We won't be seated until you come to the table!
Come in, Mr. O'Connor. You sit over there, and I'll Laura - Laura Wingfield!
You're keeping us waiting, honey! We can't say grace. Until you come to the table!
[The back door is pushed weakly open and LAURA comes in. She is obviously quite faint, her lips trembling, her eyes wide and staring. She moves unsteadily toward the table.
LEGEND: ' TERROR!'
Outside a summer storm is coming abruptly. The white curtains billow inward at the windows and there is a sorrowful murmur and deep blue dusk.
LAURA suddenly stumbles - she catches at a chair with a faint moan.]
TOM: Laura!
AMANDA: Laura!.
LEGEND: ' AH!']
[Despairingly] Why, Laura, you are sick, darling! Tom, help your sister into the living-room, dear!
Sit in the living-room, Laura - rest on the sofa. Well!
[To the gentleman caller.]
Standing over the hot stove made her ill! - I told her that was just - too warm this evening, but -
[Tom comes back in. LAURA is on the sofa.]
Is Laura all right now?
TOM: Yes.
AMANDA: What is that? Rain? A nice cool rain has come up!
[She gives the gentleman caller a frightened look.]
I think we may - have grace - now...
[Tom looks at her steadily.]
Tom, honey - you say grace!
TOM: Oh...
'For these and all thy mercies-'
[They bow their heads, AMANDA stealing a nervous glance at JIM. In the living-room LAURA, stretched on the sofa, clenches her hand to her lips, to hold back a shuddering sob.]
God's Holy Name be praised

THE SCENE DIMS OUT

Question and Answer
Please analysis Amanda in The Glass Menagerie
Answer

Arthur Miller (1915---)

I. His Life and Works

Arthur Miller, the son of a women's clothing company owner, was born in 1915 in New York City. His father lost his business in the Depression and the family was forced to move to a smaller home in Brooklyn. After graduating from high school, Miller worked at 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, joining the Federal Theater Project in New York City after he received his degree. His first Broadway play, The Man Who Had All the Luck, opened in 1944 and his next play, All My Sons, received the Drama Critics' Circle Award. Arthur Miller's first success came in 1947 with All My Sons for which he won the New York Drama Critics Circle award. Although it lacked the originality of some of his later works, this family drama, which told the story of a factory owner who caused the death of several American pilots during World War I by selling defective parts to the government, dealt with issues of guilt and dishonesty that Miller would revisit and expand upon in some of his more memorable plays.

His next play, Death of a Salesman, stunned audiences with its brilliance and was quickly earmarked as a classic of the modern theatre. It also sparked heated debates over the true nature of tragedy. Some critics criticized Miller for infusing the play with a deep sense of pity for the commonplace salesman Willy Loman. They insisted that Willy was a "little man" and therefore not worthy of the pathos reserved for such tragic heroes as Oedipus and Medea. Miller, however, argued that the tragic feeling is invoked whenever we are in the presence of a character, any character, who is ready to sacrifice his life, if need be, to secure one thing--his sense of personal dignity. And the "little" salesman was determined to do just that, no matter what the cost. Arthur Miller was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1949 for Death of a Salesman, which he directed at the People's Art Theatre in Beijing in 1983. He has come to be considered one of the greatest dramatists in the history of the American Theatre, and his plays, a fusion of naturalistic and expressionistic techniques, continue to be widely produced.

In 1956 and 1957, Miller was summoned by the House Un-American Activities Committee and was convicted of contempt of Congress for his refusal to identify writers believed to hold Communist sympathies. The following year, the United States Court of Appeals overturned the conviction. In 1959 the National Institute of Arts and Letters awarded him the Gold Medal for Drama. Miller has been married three times: to Mary Grace Slattery in 1940, Marilyn Monroe in 1956, and photographer Inge Morath in 1962, with whom he lives in Connecticut. He and Inge have a daughter, Rebecca. Among his works are A view from the Bridge, The Misfits, After the Fall,  The Price, The American Clock, Broken Glass and Timebends, his autobiography. Miller's writing has earned him a lifetime of honors, including the Pulitzer Prize, seven Tony Awards, two Drama Critics Circle Awards, an Obie, an Olivier, the John F. Kennedy Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Dorothy and Lillian Gish prize. He holds honorary doctorate degrees from Oxford University and Harvard University.

Throughout his life and work, Miller has remained socially engaged and has written with conscience, clarity, and compassion. As Chris Keller says to his mother in All My Sons, "Once and for all you must know that there's a universe of people outside, and you're responsible to it." Miller's work is infused with his sense of responsibility to humanity and to his audience. "The playwright is nothing without his audience," he writes. "He is one of the audience who happens to know how to speak."

II. Introduction to Death of a Salesman(电影片段)

The drama focuses on the life of a middle-aged salesman, Willy Loman, who, at the outset of the play is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. He lives with his adoring but over protective wife, Linda, who acts as a buffer between her husband and their two adult sons, Biff and Happy, whose relationship with their father is permanently under tension. The play plots the tragic collapse of a man who cannot face up to his moral responsibilities in a society whose false values attach a dangerous importance to success as measured in such transient terms as income and material possessions. Living according to these values means that failure is likewise defined in economic terms.

1. Major Theme---a Sad Version of American Dream

In the play, Willy has a brother called Ben, who goes to make his own fortune and then becomes rich. Willy also believes that it is possible to become wealthy and popular. But all through his life, he achieves neither at all.  At the last moment of his life, he clings to his dream,but still fails to realize it.

2. Techniques

2.1.Setting

The stage setting is half-transparent with a kind of frame. Therefore, it gives characters more freedom in space.

2.2. Use of Light

The artful manipulation of light helps to change the setting in time and space in a highly flexible manner.

2.3. Music

To some extent, music helps to make play more expressionistic than realistic. To be specific, it seems to break the line between reality and illusion, and between present and past.

2.4. Use of Past

Similar to Anderson's moment of  illumination, in the play, the past has a direct effect on the present. Besides, it also forms the sharp contrast between them.

Selected Reading of Death of a Salesman (ActII)

Music is heard, gay and bright. The curtain rises as the music fades away. Willy, in shirt sleeves, is sitting at the kitchen table, sipping coffee, his hat in his lap. Linda is filling his cup when she can.

Willy: Wonderful coffee. Meal in itself.

Linda: Can I make you some eggs?
Willy: No. Take a breath.
Linda: You look so rested, dear.
Willy: I slept like a dead one. First time in months. Imagine, sleeping till ten on a Tuesday morning. Boys left nice and early, heh?
Linda: They were out of here by eight o’clock.
Willy: Good work.
Linda: It was so thrilling to see them leaving together. I can’t get over the shaving lotion in his house.
Willy, smiling: Mmm---
Linda: Biff was very changed this morning. His whole attitude seemed to be hopeful. He couldn’t wait to get downtown to see Oliver.
Willy: He’s heading for a change. There’s no question, there simply are certain men that take longer to get---solidified. How did he dress?
Linda: his blue suit. He’s so handsome in that suit. He could be anything in that suit.
Willy gets up from the table. Linda holds his jacket for him.
Willy: There’s no question, no question at all. Gee, on the way home tonight I’d like to buy some seeds.
Linda, laughing: That’d be wonderful. But not enough sun gets back there. Nothing’ll grow any more.
Willy: You wait, kid, before it’s all over we’re gonna get a little place out in the country, and I’ll raise some vegetables, a couple of chickens…
Linda: You’ll do it yet, dear.
Willy walks out his jacket. Linda follows him.
Willy: And they’ll get married, and come for a weekend. I’ll build a little guest house. Cause I got so many fine tools, all I’ll need would be a little lumber an d some peace of mind.
Linda joyfully: I sewed the lining…
Willy: I could build two guest houses, so they’d both come. Did he decide how much he’s going to ask Oliver for?
Linda, getting him into the jacket: He didn’t mention it, but I imagine ten or fifteen thousand. You going to talk to Howard today?
Willy: Yeah. I’ll put it to him straight and simple.He’ll just have to take me off the road.
Linda: And Willy, don’t forget to ask foe a little advance, because we’ve got the insurance premium. It’s the grace period now.
Willy: That’s a hundred…?
Linda: A hundred and eight, sixty-eight. Because we’re a little short again.
Willy: Why are we short?
Linda:Well, you had the motor job on the car…
Willy: That goddam Studebaker!
Linda: And you got one more payment on the refrigerator…
Willy: But it  just broke again.
Linda: Well, it’s old, dear.
Willy: I told you we should’ve bought a well-advertised machine. Charley boughta General Electric and it’s twenty tears old and it’s still good, that son-of-a-bitch.
Linda: But, Willy---
Willy: Whoever heard of a Hastings refrigerator
Willy: whoever heard of a Hastings refrigerator? Once in my life I would like to own something outright before it broken! I’m always in a race with the junkyard! I just finished paying for the car and it’s on its last legs. The refrigerator consumes belts like a goddam maniac. They time those things. They time them so when you finally paid for them, they’re used up.
Linda, buttoning up his jacket as he unbuttons it: All told, about two hundred dollars would carry us, dear. But that includes the last payment on the mortgage. After this payment, Willy, the house belongs to us.
Willy: It’s twenty-five years!
Linda: Biff was nine years old when we bought it.
Willy: Well, that’s a great thing. To weather a twenty-five year mortgage is---
Linda: It’s an accomplishment.
Willy: All the cement, the lumber, the reconstruction I put in this house! There ain’t a crack to be found in it any more.
Linda: Well, it served its purpose.
Willy: What purpose? Some stranger’ll come along, move in, and that’s that. If only Biff would take this house, and raise a family…He starts to go. Good-by, I’m late.
Linda, suddenly remembering: Oh, I forgot! You’re supposed to meet them for dinner.
Willy: Me?
Linda: At Frank’s Chop House on Forty-eighth near Sixth Avenue.
Willy: Is that so! How about you?
Linda: No, just three of you. They’re gonna blow you to a big meal!
Willy: Don’t say! Who thought of that?
Linda: Biff came to me this morning, Willy, and he said, “tell Dad, we want to blow him to a big meal.” Be there six o’clock. You and your two boys are going to have dinner.
Willy: Gee whiz! That’s really sometnin’. I’m goona knock Howard for a loop, kid. I’ll get an advance, and I’ll come home with a New York job. Goddammit, now I’m gonna do it!
Lind: Oh, that’s the spirit, Willy!
Willy: I will never get behind a wheel the rest of my life.
Linda: It’s changing, Willy, I can feel it changing.
Willy:  Beyond a question. G’by, I’m late. He starts to go again.
Linda, calling after him as she runs to the kitchen table for a handkerchief: You got your glasses?
Willy, feels for them, then comes back in: Yeah, yeah, got my glasses.
Linda, giving him the handkerchief: And a handkerchief.
Willy: Yeah, handkerchief.
Linda: And your saccharine?
Willy: Yeah, my saccharine.
Linda: Be careful on the subway stairs.
She kisses him, and silk stocking is seen hanging from her hand. Willy notices it.
Willy: Will you stop mending stockings? At least while I’m in the house. It gets me nervous. I can’t tell you, please.
Linda hides the stocking in her hand as she follows Willy across the forestage in front of the house.
Linda: Remember, Frank’s Chop House.
Willy, passing the apron: Maybe beets would grow out there.
Linda, laughing: But you tried so many times.
Willy: Yeah. Well, don’t work hard today. He disappears around the right corner of the house.
Linda: Be careful!
As Willy vanishes, Linda waves to him. Suddenly the phone rings. She runs across the stage and into the kitchen and lifts it.
Linda: Hello? Oh, Biff! I’m so glad you called, I just… Yes, sure, I just told him. Yes, he’ll be there for dinner at six o’clock, I didn’t forget. Listen, I was just dying to tell you. You know that little rubber pipe I  told you about? That he connected to the gas heater? I finally decided to go down the cellar this morning and take it away and destroy it. But it’s gone! Imagine? He took it away himself, it isn’t there! She listens. When? Oh, then you took it. Oh---nothing, its just that I’d hoped he’d taken it away himself. Oh I’m not worried, darling, because this morning he left in such high spirits, it was like the old days! I’m not afraid any more. Did Mr. Oliver see you? … Well, you wait there then. And make a very nice impression on him, darling. Just don’t perspire too much before you see him. And have a nice time with Dad. He may have big news too!… that’s right, a New York job. And be sweet to him tonight, dear. Be loving to him. Because he’s only a little boat looking for a harbor. She is trembling with sorrow and joy. Oh, that’s wonderful, Bill, you’ll save his life. Thanks, darling. Just put your arm around him when he comes to the restaurant. Give him a smile. That’s the boy… Good-by, dear… You got your comb?… that’s fine. Good-by. Biff dear.
In the middle of her speech, Howard Wagner, thirty-six, wheels on a small typewriter table on which is a wire-recording machine and proceeds to play it in. this is on the left forestage. Light slowly fades on Linda as it rises on Howard. Howard is intent on threading the machine and only glances over his shoulder as Willy appears.
Willy: Pst! Pst!
Howard: Hello, Willy , come in.
Willy: Like to have a little talk with you, Howard.
Howard: Sorry to keep you waiting. I’ll be with you in a minute.
Willy: What’s that, Howard?
Howard: Didn’t you ever see one of these? Wire recorder.
Willy: Can we talk a minute?
Howard: Records things. Just got delivery yesterday. Been driving me crazy, the most terrific machine I ever saw in my life. I was up all night with it.
Willy: What do you do with it?
Howard: I bought it for dictation, but you can do anything with it. Listen to this. I had it home last night. Listen to what I picked up. The first one is my daughter. Get this. He flicks the switch and “Roll out the Barrel”is heard being whistled. Listen to that kid whistle.
Willy: That is lifelike, isn’t it?
Howard: Seven years old. Get that one.
Willy: Ts, ts. Like to ask a little favor if you…
The whistling breaks off, and the vice of Howard’s daughter is heard.
His daughter: “Now you, Daddy.”
Howard: She is crazy for me! Again the same song is whistled. That’s me! Ha! He winks.
Willy: You’re very good.
The whistling breaks off again. The machine runs silent for a moment.
Howard: Sh! Get this now, this is my son.
His Son: “The capital of Alabama is Montgomery; the capital of Arizona is Phoenix; the capital of Arkansas is Little Rock; the capital of California is Sacramento…” and on, and on.
Howard, holding up five fingers: Five years old, Willy!
Willy: He’ll make an announcer some day!
His Son, continuing: “ the capital …”
Howard: Get that---alphabetical order! The machine breaks off suddenly.
Wait a minute. The maid kicked the plug out.
Willy: It certainly is a---
Howard: Sh, for God’s sake!
His Son: “ It’s nine o’clock, Bulova watch time. So I have go to sleep.”
Willy: That really is---
Howard: Wait a minute! Next is my wife.
They wait.
Howard’s voice: “Go on, say something.” Pause. “Well, you gonna talk?”
His Wife: “ I can’t think of anything.”
Howard’s Voice: “ Well, talk---it’s turning.”
His Wife, shyly, beaten: “Hello.” Silence. “Oh, Howard, I can’t talk into this…”
Howard, snapping the machine off: That was my wife.
Willy: That is a wonderful machine. Can we---
Howard: I tell you, Willy, I’m gonna take my camera, and my bandsaw, and all my hobbies, and out they do. This is the most fascinating relaxation I ever found.
Willy: I think I’ll get one myself.
Howard: Sure, they’re only a hundred and a half. You can’t do anything without it. Supposing you wanna hear Jack Benny, see? But you can’t be at home at that hour. So you tell the maid to turn the radio on when Jack Benny comes on, and this automatically goes on with the radio…
Willy: And when you come home you…
Howard: You can come home twelve o’clock, one o’clock, any time you like, and you get yourself a Coke and sit yourself down, throw the switch, there’s Jack Benny’s program in the middle of the night!
Willy: I’m definitely going to get one. Because lots of time I’m on the radio, and I think to myself, what I must be missing on the radio!
Howard: Don’t you have a radio in the car?
Willy: Well, yeah, but who ever thinks of turning it on?
Howard: Say, aren’t you supposed to be in Boston?
Willy: That’s what I want to talk to you about, Howard. You got a minute? He draws a chair in from the wing.
Howard: What happened? What’re you doing here?
Willy: Well…
Howard: Geez, you had me worried there for a minute. What’s the trouble?
Willy:  Well, tell you the truth, Howard. I’ve come to the decision that I’d rather not travel any more.
Howard: Not travel! Well, what’ll you do?
Willy: Remember, Christmas time, when you had the party here? You said you’d try to think of some spot for me here in town.
Howard: With us?
Willy: Well, sure.
Howard: Oh, yeah, yeah. I remember. Well, I couldn’t think of anything for you, Willy.
Willy: I tell ya, Howard. The kids are all grownup, y’know. I don’t need much any more. If I could take home---well, sixtyfive dollars a week, I could swing it.
Howard: yeah, but Willy, see I---
Willy: I tell ya why, Howard. Speaking frankly and between the two of us, y’know---I’m just a little tired.
Howard: Oh, I could understand that, Willy. But you’re a road man, Willy, and we do a road business. We’ve only got a half-dozen salesmen on the floor here.
Willy: God knows, Howard, I never asked a favor of any man. But I was with the firm when your father used to carry you in here in his arms.
Howard: I know that, Willy, but---
Willy: Your father came to me the day you were born and asked me what I thought of the name of Howard, may he rest in peace.
Howard: I appreciate that, Willy, but there just is no spot here for you. If I had a spot I’d slam you right in, but I just don’t have a single solitary spot.
He looks for his lighter. Willy has picked it up and gives it to him. Pause.
Willy, with increasing anger: Howard, all I need to set my table is fifty dollars a week.
Howard: But where am I going to put you, kid?
Willy: Look, it isn’t a question of whether I can sell merchandise, is it?
Howard: No, but it’s a bushiness, kid, and everybody’s gotta pull his own weight.
Willy, desperately: Just let me tell you a story, Howard---
Howard: ‘Cause you gotta admit, business is business.
Willy, angrily: Business is definitely business, but just listen for a minute. You don’t understand this. When I was a boy---eighteen, nineteen---I was already on the road. And there was a question in my mind as to whether selling had a future for me. Because in those days I had a yearning to go to Alaska. See there were three gold strikes in one month in Alaska, and l felt like going out. Just for the ride, you might say.
Howard, barely interested: Don’t say.
Willy: Oh, yeah, my father lived many years in Alaska. He was an adventurous man. We’ve got quite a little streak of self-reliance in our family. I thought I’d go out with my older brother and try to locate him, and maybe settle in the North with the old man.  And I was almost decided to go, when I met a salesman in the Parker House. His name was David Singleman. And he was eighty- four years old, and he’d drummed merchandise in thirty-on states. And old Davie, he’d go to his room, y’understand, put on his green velvet slippers---I’ll never forget---and pick up his phone and call the buyers, and without leaving his room, at age of eighty-four, he made his living. And when I saw that, I realized that selling was the greatest career a man could want. ‘cause what could be more satisfying than to be to go, at age of eighty-four, into twenty or thirty different cities, and pick up a phone, and be remembered and loved and helped by so many different people? Do you know? When he died---and by the way he died the death of a salesman, in his green velvet slippers in the smoker of the New York, New Haven and Hartford, going into Boston---when he died, hundreds of salesmen and buyers were at his funeral. Things were sad on a lotta(trains for months after that. He stands up. Howard has not looked at him. In those days there was personality in it, Howard. There was respect, and comradeship, and gratitude in it. Today, it’s cut and tried, and there’s no chance for bringing friendship to bear---or personality. You see what I mean? They don’t know me any more.
Howard, moving away, to the right: That’s just the thing, Willy.
Willy, If I had forty dollars a week---that’s all I’d need. Forty dollars, Howard.
Howard: Kid, I can’t take blood from a stone, I---
Willy, desperation is on him now: Howard, the year AI Smith was nominated, your father came to me and---
Howard, starting to go off: I’ve got to see some people, kid....


Topic Discussion
Do some introduction about Willy Loman, please.




Reference Books：
1. 李宜燮、常耀信主编,《美国文学史》， 南开大学出版社，1991年。
2. 李宜燮、常耀信主编,《美国文学选读》， 南开大学出版社，1991年。
3. 吴伟仁, 《美国文学史及选读》，外语教学与研究出版社，2003年。