Dramatic Technique in Death of a Salesman

Discuss the salient techniques in Death of a Salesman. From a technical point of view, milling machine was welcomed by those involved in the practical craft of theatre. In his playfulnesss, we find ch entirelyenge and convention, boldness and caution, daring technical experiment and poetic dialogues. In Death of a Salesman , his new dramatic techniques- unrealistic setting, music, lighting, etc. -all generated a sense of mutation of old forms and conventions. Death of a Salesman concentrates on Willy Loman, an exhausted mediate aged salesman, who has failed to realize his dream of economic success and is defended as organism on the verge of a nervous breakdown.Failure also engulfs his wife Linda and ii sons- sack and Happy. The play is sh ard out into three main parts, act 1, act 2 and the requiem. Each section takes place in the lay out day (spring 1949). Act 1-night time Act 2-various times the next day Act 3-several long time later(prenominal) The play is largely a re ex pressation of what takes place in his mind during the last two days of his life history. In fact, Willys reminiscences allow us to understand what happened in the former(prenominal), and why things are how they are right off in the present day.Miller says The salesman impression was from the beginning absorbed with the concept that nothing in life comes next but everything exists together and at the same time within us. The story is told on two different levels. There is a public storyline (realistic) which begins late one night and ends twenty-four hours later. latitude with this, there is the private storyline (non-realistic) inside Willys mind, which wish well our own minds, does not always intent logically and chronologically but mixes up memories and imaginings with what is actually taking place in the present.Miller was kindle in expressionism but didnt want to abandon the conventions of realism. He determinationd, like O Neill, a dramatic form that combined the su bjectivity of expressionism with the illusion of objectivity afforded by realism. The firm reality of Ibsens method acting remained, but it was banded with the dream sequences or flashbacks of past life existing in the present. In whole My Sons and Death of a Salesman, Miller adopts Ibsens retrospective structure in which an explosive situation in the present is both explained and brought to a crisis by the gradual revelation of something which has happened in the past.In theatre, expressionism has been defined as a mode of writing and production in which the aim is to depict inner meaning kinda than outward appearance. For writers, this whitethorn imply the hire of poetic or stylized language and symbolic display caseization. For producers, it implies the role of non-realistic jibery and effects. In expressionistic plays like Death of a Salesman, the following effects are apt(predicate) to be used 1) The action may flow without interruption from one time period to another. t o a greater extent than one time period may co-exist.In Death of a Salesman ,the audience see present and past action at the same time when Willy dialog to Linda and sees the woman(past) in the same room, when he talks to Charley and Ben(his dead brother) at the same time. 2) The action may be presented as a dream or vision by one of the characters. In Death of a Salesman, this style is most obvious in the use of flashbacks or dream sequences . Much of the familys history and past events are revealed through with(predicate) Willys flashbacks. This is done by narration, dream sequence and memories.All these scenes, in which we have flashbacks, start in the present and then the character only visible to Willy appear. Most of the flashbacks take place during the summer after type slugs senior year at high school when all the problems began. trailer saw his return with another woman and missed faith in him. Before this, his father was a hero to him, at once he is a fraud. These fl ashbacks explain the current conflict among father and son. We see the second flashback composition Willy is playing card game with Charley.Here we see how the flashback appear gradually, usurping the present dapple by bit . He is actually talking to the remembered Ben and the real Charlie simultaneously. When Charlie finally realizes that Willy is absent-minded, he makes an exit. Here we see Willys withal much obsession of the past over present. Miller described Willy as literally at that marvellous moment when the voice of the past is no longer distant but quite as cheesy as the voice of the present. He didnt see Willys internal sequences as flashbacks.Miller says, There are no flashbacks in this play but only a mobile concurrency of past and present .. because in his desperation to justify his life Willy Loman has destroyed the boundaries between now and then. 3) The action may take place in more than one location simultaneously. In the kitchen when Willy starts talking to young Biff and Happy in the past, Linda enters the room and asks Willy about the car. 4) The Setting must be non-realistic or partly realistic. superstar part of the re-create may be set with realistic scenery, much(prenominal) as the kitchen atBrooklyn in Death of a Salesman ,but this may have an empty open stage area in breast of it into which a single piece of furniture or other item may be brought to educe a location, or the area may be left empty and used for variety of purposes, such asIn the empty space, Howard Wheels on a table with his wire recorder and his office is quick set up. To create a restaurant, Happy and the waiter bring on the ch diffuse-table the garden at Brooklyn. The plays setting contributes to the understanding of the theme. In Death of a Salesman, the realistic set is the backyard of a middle class family.We see Willys small, fragile-seeming headquarters with one dimensional roof, dwarfed by apartment blocks. Miller says An air of dream clings to t he place, a dream rising out of reality. The world outside Willys home seems oppressive and menacing, threatening to swallow up an economic reverse like Willy. Here we see the use of period of consciousness technique. The play begins and end in one basic setting, the Loman home and the flashbacks in stream of consciousness style presents Willys present dilemma that is closely connected to the past.Harold Clurman says The play dramatizes Willys anamnesis of the past, and at times switches from a literal presentation of his memory to imaginary and semi-symbolic representation of his thought. Miller shows the tune between Willy as a salesman and Willy as a man. Willy does not actually go back to the past. It is the past, as in a hallucination, that comes back to him. Each time when he is frustrated, guilty or accused by his sons, he will be in a dream and the past appears in his mind.It shows Willys unconscious mind desire to avoid pain and to repair the bitterness, frustrations and humiliations of daily life at the present. In order to use this technique more smoothly, Miller chooses Linda and Charley, to present the whole, complete Willy what he was, what he is, and what he will be. illogical biff says, Will you let me go for Christs sake? Will you take that bogus dream and burn it before something happens? The time shifts in the setting shows Willys stream of consciousness. The set is intentional to minimize the boundaries between past and present.When we see Willys present, the characters follow the rules of stage direction, entering only through the stage door to the left. When Willy visits his past, the characters openly move through walls. As Willys mental state deteriorates, the boundaries between past and present are destroyed and the two start to exist in parallel. So the stage setting expresses Willys divided consciousness as the reality of the house walls can be breached. The foil of the setting represents the fragility of Willys hold on re ality.Miller sees Willy as living at the distasteful moment when the voice of the past is no longer distant but quite as sporty as the voice of the present. Miller uses the lighting so that the scenes could change much faster and without the actors leaving the stage. The lighting reflects the basic mood of each act and shows the mobile concurrency of past and present. It keeps moving from one scene to another scene-The light on Willy and Lindas bedroom fades down when the scene ends and the light comes up on the boys bedroom for another scene. A blue light of sky falls upon the house.The surrounding area shows an enraged glow of orange, symbolizing the anger of the helpless middle class people in a money minded society. The light in past scenes is brighter than the present scene. It means that past was far intermit for Willy than present. In an expressionistic drama, music and light might be used to indicate a characters state of mind. Here music is a contrivance for the dissol ution of time and distance limitations. Biff and Happy, dressed in high school football sweaters, are accompanied with the gay music of the boys.The line of credit of flute at the beginning evokes the spacious area of old west, where Willys father, an inventor, sold flutes . It symbolizes a lost freedom and a lost ideal. When Willy claims to be tired to the death, the flute fades away, as if unable to head with the pain of Willy. When Willy commits suicide, Miller says As the car speeds off, the music crashes down in a frenzy of sound, which becomes the piano pulsation of a single cellos string. By using the form of confession, Miller makes us think about, who is to blame?Why is biff at the age of thirty four a failure? Why biff and adroit still wonder? Symbolism is another feature of expressionism. Lindas amend of stocking, flute song displaced by childish nonsense from a wire recorder, wifes cheers erased by a whores laughter etc, are some beautiful symbols. Willy, the symbo l of second-rate American citizen, is trapped by the money-grabbing American society. The planting of seeds symbolize Willys meaningless attempt to forswear something positive for his sons. One athletic trophy symbolizes the fragment of Loman familys dream.Here we see that the real characters like Biff, Happy, and Charley cant fulfill Willys expectations. On the other hand, the imaginary presences or the characters from the past are ideal, heroic figures who embody Willys unfulfilled dream. Here we see subjective characterization. We find a unbendable imagery when Willy says, the woods are burning. Willys brother Ben compares the process of success-building to entering a hobo camp. Ben says When I was I was seventeen, I walked into the jungle and when I was twenty-one I walked out And by God I was rich The jungle was the locale of Bens success, but for Willy, the forest is burning and there is little time left. The burning woods image is symbolic of Willys feeling that he cannot bear the pressure of time, debts, human relationships. Even the apartment buildings in his nearness are closing in on him. He wants to commit suicide. When Willys mind wanders back to the happy days of his sons youth, the entire house and surroundings become covered with leaves. The present time is marked by the disappearance of these leaves. After Willys death, The leaves of day are appearing over everything.We find dialogues of typical tender Yorkers, realistic, full of repetition, hesitations and contradictions. The language of stage direction, dialogue of the characters are very poetic. Willy says Funny you know? After all the highways, and the trains, and the appointments, and the years, you end up worth more dead than alive. The title, the use of the requiem and Willys dialogue everything predict Willys death. We also find dramatic irony. Willy portrays himself as being at the top of his game in sales with countless admirers, after thirty years of experience.The biggest ir ony lies in the fact that at his funeral, secret code except his family members and Charley were present. So the dramatic techniques in Death of a Salesman impresses us as a theatrical performance triumph and provides us a new example of modern tragedy Miller didnt use either the timeswitch or the mixture of realist and expressionist technique simply for their own sakes . Actually, this was the best way to retell the story with the minimum of delay and repetition. Naturally, to be touched by the play and to realize it thoroughly are two different things.