Exploring the Psychological Shaping of the Characters in Death of a Salesman from the Conflict of Social Relations
- DOI
- 10.2991/978-2-38476-092-3_39How to use a DOI?
- Keywords
- Death of a Salesman; Arthur Miller; the American dream
- Abstract
Death of a Salesman follows the 24 h before Willy Loman’s death. The old salesman worked all his life and had to rely on his friend Charlie to help him out. Meanwhile, he also had two sons who just sit around – Biff and Happy. He wanted to change the status quo, but was mercilessly dismissed by his boss. Finally, in desperation, he suicided in order to getting the insurance payment for his sons. In the drama, the conflicts in each scene and the shaping of the characters are very distinct. This paper examines the physical and psychological dilemmas faced by Willie through the physical, psychological and social aspects of the play, starting with the relationships between the characters and analysing the masculinity-tainted men and the othered women in the context of the play, the generation and transmission of nostalgia and the tragic ending of being first alienated and then abandoned by society.
- Copyright
- © 2023 The Author(s)
- Open Access
- Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.
Cite this article
TY - CONF AU - Yidan Shao PY - 2023 DA - 2023/09/09 TI - Exploring the Psychological Shaping of the Characters in Death of a Salesman from the Conflict of Social Relations BT - Proceedings of the 2023 9th International Conference on Humanities and Social Science Research (ICHSSR 2023) PB - Atlantis Press SP - 284 EP - 289 SN - 2352-5398 UR - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-092-3_39 DO - 10.2991/978-2-38476-092-3_39 ID - Shao2023 ER -