Lesson Content : Thursday 10th November : Stage Directions Assessment

In the lesson today you were given the task of analysing what you learn about the characters of Willy and Linda Loman from Miller's stage directions before their first entrance to the stage.

I will mark your books over the weekend and post some feedback once that is done.

I was browsing the web tonight and found the following observations about the stage directions we looked at last lesson - the ones introducing the setting of the play - and thought it would be useful ton share these with you. I am not sure I agree with all the points made but you can make your own minds up.....

The stage directions set the scene with a melody from a flute “telling of grass and trees and the horizon” (Miller, 7) just before the curtain rises. The set however is simple without a tree or musical instrument in sight. Several rooms are represented rather than one, and these are impressions of rooms rather than functional environments. For example, the kitchen is represented by a “table with three chairs, and a refrigerator” (Miller, 7) though four people live in the house. This representation symbolises a lack of money or perhaps a division in the family. This division is shown in other ways: the family’s bedrooms are set at different levels, and the living room is “unseen” (Miller, 7). The entire setting is sometimes transparent depending on whether Willy Loman is talking in the present, or experiencing flashbacks. In these flashbacks, characters from Willy’s past including his ‘younger’ family walk through walls like ghosts. The transparency of the walls represents a weakness in the structure of the building, described as a “small, fragile-seeming home” (Miller, 7), and is symbolic of a weakness in the unity of the family who live there.

Miller uses highly metaphorical and descriptive language to describe the set. There is an “air of the dream” that clings to the little house; and a “blue light [from] the sky” falls upon the house and the surrounding areas, revealing “an angry glow of orange” (Miller, 7). Interestingly, blue and orange are colours in the flag of the (pro-slavery) Confederacy. Although these colours symbolise an open blue sky (nature), and an angry glow of orange (pollution), they are also symbolic of Willy Loman’s slavery to the American Dream. Willy lives with his family in a small home surrounded by a “solid vault of apartment houses” (Miller, 7). The description “solid vault” shows how fragile Willy’s home actually is. The Loman’s house is unlike the other houses: Willy is depicted as an outsider.

From the description of the set in Death of a Salesman themes of fragility, madness and frustration emerge. Fragility emerges from Miller’s descriptions of the small “fragile” house; madness from Willy’s “imaginings” and the coming and going of characters through walls; and frustration through the small house surrounded by homes more “solid” (Miller, 7) emphasizing the struggle and lack of success of its owner. These themes are present throughout the play and are often depicted through highly metaphorical and symbolic language.

(Taken from Comparison of the Uses of Setting and Symbol in A Doll’s House and  Death of a Salesman at consideredcapricious.com)