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Example research essay topic: Death Of A Salesman Biff And Happy - 1,966 words

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Marginalization of Women It s been over 50 years since the release of Arthur Miler s play Death of a Salesman. Written in 1949, Death of a Salesman is widely regarded by many as one of the masterpiece play of 20 th century. It has seen countless reprisal performances spanning across the globe in such unlikely places such as China, and Japan for over 50 years. Its impact on our society has been so great that students, ranging from high school students to university students study Death of a Salesman and attempt to interpret its message. After reading this compelling play about a failed American dream of an ordinary man, a careful examination of characters reveals an aspect of the play that cannot be ignored. Miller s play reveals gender discrimination between female and male characters that is permeates palpably throughout the play.

In contrast to male characters of the play, female characters lack the vivid, multi-layered human quality that male characters seem to possess. They are flat, two dimensional, lifeless, stereotypical portrayals of such women as a devoted mother, a mistress, and a barfly. Given the complex and compelling traits of the male characters in Death of a Salesman, it is surprising that Miller chose to give so little attention to the female characters. In stereotypical fashion, Miller has conveniently concocted these female characters to serve the men in the play. Linda Loan, central male character s wife merely suffices as the acceptable notion of generic mother figure from its era. Loyal to her husband, loving to her sons, that is the extent of her significance to the play.

For all intents and purposes, she merely exists as a periphery character to complete Willy s family unit. Linda role is to simply server her men in her family. What a woman: They broke the mold when they made her. (660) Happy exclaims. Perhaps this statement is Miller s feeble attempt to justify that such a woman can exist in the context of richly developed, multi-dimensional male characters in the play. marginalization of women (Smith, Susan H. ) permeates throughout the Death of a Salesman. Linda Loan is a prime example of this premise.

Linda s role in the play is characterized as the devoted wife of Willy. She displays blind devotion and love to her husband, this despite constant degradation and belittling she endures from Willy. Don t interrupt! (661), Will you stop! (660), Stop interrupting! (660) Willy shouts at Linda. In this passage Linda s futile attempt to speak her mind is squashed repeatedly despite Linda s support of Willy s views. Smith writes, Willy s repeated interruption of Linda s speech anticipates silencing of women by men. (Smith, Susan H. ) Incapable of her own thoughts and opinions, Linda s character is relegated to submissive wife of Willy. Despite this de-humanizing treatment from Willy, Linda asks, Just rest, should I sing to you? (661) Infinitely loving and devoted to her husband, Linda appears to possess no identity of her own.

Moreover, when we examine Linda s dialog in the play, her only concern and preoccupation seems to be about the men in her life. Linda seems incapable of her own feelings, desires, anger, and frustrations. She does not talk about herself, only about the men. (Smith, Susan). Smith reinforces this premise. As the play unravels before us, I m constantly reminded of this seemingly stereotypical portrayal of Linda. Her sole purpose seems to be to agree with the men in her family and offer words of encouragement.

Isn t that wonderful! (659), Marvelous! (660) She gleefully exclaims to her family. Her passive, attentive domesticity places her in direct subordination to Willy, Biff, and Happy. (Smith, Susan H. ) Linda is stripped of her identity. It is as though her only function in the play is to provide an obligatory role of a wife and a mother as Miller saw fit but nothing more. Consider for a moment the monumental influence a mother has on her child. But in Linda s world, we see no indication of such maternal influence on Biff and Happy. They appear to have inherited only Willy s flawed teachings of life.

Miller wants us to accept that Linda contributed virtually nothing in shaping Biff and Happy s personality and values. This premise is even less likely since as a traveling salesman, Willy s role as a parent would have been less significant compared to Linda s homemaker role. Children learn from the environment adults create whether children believe they are strong of weak, smart or stupid largely depends on the signals they get from parents. (Macionis, John) Biff and Happy s values can only be justified if we accept that Linda as a character who offers no philosophy, no opinion on how life ought to be lived (Smith, Susan H. ) It s truly difficult to accept such premise that Linda s contribution to her son s upbringing amounts to virtually nothing. Then we have the generic mistress character. Her lack of importance is such that she is not even dignified with a name.

Miller demotes her title to simply the woman. You know you ruined me, Willy? From now on, whenever you come to the office, I ll see that you go right through to the buyers. No waiting at my desk anymore, Willy. You ruined me. (675) In this passage, we see the mistress character being treated as an object to be ruined and manipulated by Willy. Willy ruins her, thus she is implying that she s not capable of determining her own fate.

Although she is treated as an object, she possesses a stereotypical immoral character trait that we tend to associate with mistresses. In a scene, we witness her careless behavior when she intentionally foils Willy s attempt to hide his affair with her to his son Biff by coming out of hiding from the bathroom of Willy s hotel room. (676) What motive is given for this indiscretion? We get no explanation or motive behind this behavior. We are to believe that because she is a mistress, this type of behavior is to be accepted as norm without any explanation of her motive. Of whom he knows two types. One is the wicked slut. (Bigsby, Christopher) Miller s depiction of this woman fits our generic perception of a stereotypical mistress character.

In the same manner as the other female characters in the play, Miller depicts Miss. Forsythe as gullible and vain barfly characters that lack utter common sense. Does intelligence gap between genders contribute this unlikely behavior? Of course we know the answer to this obvious question. According to research, there are no overall differences in intelligence between males and females. (Macionis, John) Scientific research conducted by researchers clearly shows this to be false. Would you object to a compliment from a stranger?

You ought to be on a magazine cover. (671) It s hard to imagine any woman being receptive to such tired and patronizing pick-up lines in the real world. But in Death of a Salesman, Miss Forsythe is easily influenced and manipulated by such improbable dialog between her and Happy. At West Point, they called me Happy. (671), Biff is a quarterback with the New York Giants. (671) She is easily swayed by blatant lies Happy feeds her. At the mention of West Point, Ms. Forsythe shows immediate interest in Happy.

I suppose we are to accept that Miss Forsythe lacks the common sense and social experience to see through Happy s outrageous statements. In stark contrast to detailed, realistic, and dynamic interactions of male characters, Miller forces us to accept this marginalized version of Miss Forsythe. Miss Forsythe s character seems more probable in soap operas that dominate our daytime Television. At least in the soap opera context, along with other unrealistic, sensationalized, and shallow characters, her behavior would seem plausible. Again as with other female characters in the play, we are presented with this trite, two-dimensional portrayal of Miss Forsythe.

Miller s marginalization of women (Smith, Susan H. ) in the Death of a Salesman becomes more prevalent when we examine the general attitude male characters have towards women. In particular, Happy views women as something to conquer and possess. In Happy s mind, they are objects to be possessed. Take those two we had tonight. Now weren t they gorgeous creatures? (648) Happy says to Biff. Creatures, that s how Happy sees them.

I went and ruined her, and furthermore I can t get rid of her. (649) Happy boasts to Biff about his conquests. Implication here is that these women, lacking identity of their own, fall prey to Happy s conquests like puppets on a string. Happy describes Miss Forsythe as Look at that mouth, Oh, God. And the binoculars. (671) This statement clearly shows that Happy is incapable of seeing beyond a woman s physical attributes. He is obsessed by Miss Forsythe s binoculars. (671) Such demeaning attitude toward women exists in Death of a Salesman because Miller fails to inject nary a meaningful substance or character development into his female characters thus creating objectification of women. Moreover, Willy s view of his wife Linda reinforces the premise of marginalization of women (Smith, Susan H. ) in Death of a Salesman.

Willy treats Linda with utter disrespect and contempt. Willy discounts every word Linda attempts to interject in family conversations by interrupting her and accuses Linda of interrupting him. Stop Interrupting! (660) Willy shouts at Linda. It s ironic that Willy doesn t realize that in fact it s he who interrupts Linda when she attempts to speak. The depiction of woman as objects rather than as subject. (Smith, Susan H. ) It s clear that Willy sees Linda as objects rather than as a subject.

Willy has relegated Linda to submissive, silent, insignificant role to his family. There is a popular phrase in our culture that states, behind every successful man, there is a great woman. This statement equally applies to an opposite situation of failure. The significance of this statement is that a woman s role in a family is not to be discounted and her contribution plays a significant role in success or failure of a man.

Miller s portrayal of Willy s family contradicts this view and relegates Linda s character to a periphery role of insignificance. In many respects, I am torn between compelling and tragic story telling of the play and the neglect of female character development in Miller s play, Death of a Salesman. Can I accept the claims of countless critics as hailing this work as a masterpiece? The answer to this question is difficult to answer. There s no question in my mind that the play as a whole succeeds in conveying its audience including myself the tragedy of an ordinary man. But at the same time, it is abundantly clear that this is a tragedy of an ordinary man, specifically the tragedy of Willy and his lost sons, Biff and Happy.

The neglect of female characters reveals the weakness to the play. I found myself difficult to fully accept the stark disparity between the stereotyped, shallow female characters co-existing with such vivid and realistic male characters of the play. Ultimately, Miller s neglect of this aspect of the play compromises the full impact of Death of a Salesman. Bigsby, Christopher. Afterward. Arthur Miller Death of a Salesman 50 th Anniversary Edition.

New York: Penguin Books, 1998. 111 - 129 Macionis, John. Society the Basics 4 th Edition. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1998 Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman. 1949. Smith, Susan H. Conceptualizing Death of a Salesman as an American Play.

Approaches to Teaching Miler s Death of a Salesman. Ed. Matthew C. Routine. 1995. web


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