篇一：推销员之死英文论文
Analysis of A Tragic Character of Death of a Salesman
INRODUCTION
As is known to all, one’s personal experience of life and social environment
undoubtedly will affect his views towards life and his notions of art. As Arthur Miller’s explained, “The writer who wants to describe life must describe his own
experience(5).” In addition, “the best work that anybody ever writes is the work that is on the verge of embarrassing him---where he puts himself on the line(6).” According to Walden, Arthur Miller’s social conscience stemmed from the economic effects of the Depression which he experienced when he was a young man(189). Therefore, it is basic and necessary to know about his growing background and his works before introduction and analysis of Death of a Salesman.
Arthur Miller was a prolific American playwright, essayist, and prominent figure in twentieth-century American theater, born in New York City on October 17, 1915. He was the son of Isidore Miller who was a Jewish businessman migrated from Austria, and spent his first fourteen years of life in Harlem, a middle-class neighborhood of mixed ethic people. Miller’s childhood was comfortable, but the Great Depression of 1929 inevitably had great impact on his views about life. His career as a playwright began while he was a student at the University of Michigan. His successful plays
include All My Sons, Death of Salesman, The Crucible, A View from the Bridge, After the Fall, Broken Glass and so on, among which Death of Salesman is the most
successful one. Since its premiere in 1949, it has been widely acclaimed and won the Pulitzer Prize. Many critics described Death of Salesman as the first great American tragedy, and Miller gained eminence as a man who understood the deep essence of the United States.
The story of shows Death of Salesman the last twenty-four hour about the life of Willy Loman, an diligent traveling salesman, whose values, ideas and vanity is smashed into pieces by the fact that he is a total failure both in his family and the society. The postwar economic boom has shaken up his life, which causes that he is eventually fired and begins to hallucinate about significant events from his past. Linda, Willy’s loyal, loving wife, suffers through Willy’s grandiose dreams and
self-delusions. She has nurtured the family through all of Willy’s misguided attempts
at success, and her emotional strength and perseverance support Willy until his collapse. Biff Loman, Willy’s thirty-four-year-old elder son, represents Willy’s vulnerable, poetic and tragic side. He cannot ignore his instincts, which tell him to abandon Willy’s paralyzing dreams and move out West to work with his hands. However, he ultimately fails to reconcile his life with Willy’s expectations of him. Happy Loman, Willy’s thirty-two-year- old younger son, represents Willy’s sense of self-importance, ambition and blind servitude to societal expectations. Happy has lived in Biff’s shadow all of his life, but he compensates by nurturing his relentless sex drive and professional ambition.
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work. In the book Death of Salesman, there exists three themes. First, there is no doubt that one of themes is the American Dream. Willy believes absorbedly in what the promise of the American Dream that aspiration, hard work and individual enterprise will be rewarded with prosperity, regardless of family background. Unfortunately, Willy clings to the superficial qualities of attractiveness and popularity, which is at odds with a more gritty, more rewarding understanding of the American Dream that
identifies hard work without complaints as the key to success. Willy’s blind faith in his distorted version of the American Dream leads to his rapid psychological decline when he is unable to accept the disparity between the Dream and his own life. Second, it refers to abandonment. Willy’s life charts a course from one abandonment to the next, leaving him in greater despair each time. When Willy is very young, his father leaves him neither a tangible money nor an intangible legacy. Then his brother departs for Alaska, leaving his to lose himself in a stunted version of American Dream.
Through these experience, Willy develops a fear of abandonment. However, when his son Biff fins out about his adultery, Biff also drops Willy. Third, it’s about betrayal. Willy’s primary obsession throughout the play is what he considers to be Biff’s betrayal of his ambitions for him. However, Biff’s betrayal stems from Biff’s
discovery of Willy’s affairs with The Woman---a betrayal of Linda’s love. Besides, there is another betrayal that Willy has betrayed him with his unending stream of ego-stroking lies.
In Death of Salesman, Miller creates a colorful and vivid world and depict a society full of problems, which are all the reflection of life and the playwright’s questioning of the present social value.
Analysis of A Tragic Character
The whole play is written both in time sequence and in accordance with the
protagonist’s psychological movement. The structure of events is the direction
reflection of Willy’s view on his life and lives in his own world full of contradictions. “Young Biff and Young Happy appear from the direction Willy was addressing(Miller
68).” “Charley has appeared in the doorway (Miller 120).” Like these examples, past and present flow into one another perfectly. So in Death of Salesman, Miller not only depicts what happened in an 24 hours about the life of Willy Loman, but also
describes the whole life of Willy. Besides, from depicting past, we can see that the purpose is to escape the depressing present.
At the beginning of the play, Willy suffers from crippling self-delusion. His
consciousness is so fractured that he cannot maintain a consistent fantasy. In one
moment, he calls Biff, “Biff is a lazy bum (Miller 22).” In the next, he says, “There’s one thing about Biff---he’s not lazy (Miller 23).” his later estimate of his car is at odds---one moment he calls it a piece of trash, the next “the greatest car ever built
(Miller 91).” Willy changes his interpretation of reality according to his psychological needs at the moment. Labeling Biff a lazy bum allows Willy to deflect Linda’s
criticism of his harangue against Biff’s lack of material success, ambition and focus. Besides, denying Biff’s laziness enables Willy to hold onto the hope that Biff will someday fulfill his expectations of him in some capacity. This kind of satire fully shows Willy’s self-delusion and failure.
In the meanwhile, by the time the play begins, it introduces the strangely unnatural tone of the dialogue, which appears more attractive. For example,
“Maybe it’s your glasses. You never went for your new glasses (Miller 10).”
“I’m the New England man. I’m vital in New England (Miller 14)”.
and there is persistent vexed questioning, “Why do you get American when I like Swiss (Miller 24).” The above sentences shows the particularly Jewish-American idiom. In fact, such dialogues will parallel the complex struggle of a family with a warped version of the American Dream trying to support itself.
Furthermore, in Death of Salesman, there are many symbols representing the
implications in order to deepen the theme like cars, diamonds, seeds and so on.
Cars represent freedom, mobility and social status in American. However, in this drama, Willy loses the control of his family car.
Willy: I’m tired to the death. I couldn’t make it. I just couldn’t make it, Linda.
Linda (very carefully, delicately): Where were you all day? You look terrible.
Willy: I got as far as a little above Yonkers. I stopped for a cup of coffee. Maybe it was the coffee.
Linda: What?
Willy (after a pause): I suddenly couldn’t drive any more. The car kept going offonto the shoulder, y’know?
Linda (helpfully): Oh. Maybe it was the steering again. I don’t think Angelo
knows the Studebaker.
Willy: No, it’s me, it’s me. Suddenly I realize I’m goin’ sixty miles an hour and I don’t remember the last five minutes. I’m---I can’t seem to---keep my mind to it (Miller 7-9).
As above shows, at the beginning of the play, Willy comes home exhausted, which means his car is going out of control. That is to say, his exhaustion with driving
symbolizes his tiredness from life. In addition, it also give a sense of what the end will hold.
Then, Ben’s incantation of “The jungle is dark, but full of diamonds” in Act 2 turns Willy’s suicide into a moral struggle and a matter of commerce. Diamonds stands for the material success as well as a “get-rich-quick” scheme that is the solution to all problems. According to Ben, Willy’s death likes a “diamond...rough and hard to the touch.” What’s more, what Willy really understands is that the product he sells is himself and in the end he sells his own life.
Another symbol is about seeds. Generally, seeds are regarded as a hope that Willy’s hope to his sons’ future. Besides, seeds also represents for him the opportunity to prove the worth of his labor. When Willy says, “Nothing’s planted. I don’t have a
thing in the ground” after both his sons abandon him in Act 2, we have a feeling he is a failure.
Thus, a conclusion can be drawn naturally that Willy dies as deluded as he lived.
Through the fictional character of Willy Loman, Miller manages to touch deep chords within the national psyche.
SUMMARY
To sum up, on the basis of the analysis above, we may draw a conclusion that death of salesman Willy is a corollary. In the last 24 hours of Willy’s life, he walks towards death step by step inevitably. Actually, the salesman’s condition is an enlargement of an insignificant facet of the general human condition. Miller shows that it is not an individual’s failure. While it is more like an embodiment for American’s life.
Therefore, Death of Salesman is not merely Miller’s autobiography but also an epitome of American history that represents everyone who is placed in the same situation. In Death of Salesman, the author successfully applied both literary and theatrical techniques to explore the inner world of protagonist, in order to build the dramatic atmosphere and deepen the theme of the play. In the meanwhile, readers are impressed and shocked by various conflicts and think deeply about their reality.
Through studying this book, I think this play conveys some philosophical ideas and shows more concern for humanity. It makes readers realize the value of life as well as the limited life. Therefore, we should live with more passion to discover the meaning of the life.
Works Cited
Miller Arthur. Death of Salesman. New York: Viking Penguin, 1981.
Walden Daniel. Critical Essays on Arthur Miller, Massachusetts: G. K. Hall & Co., 1979: 189-96
陶洁，《美国文学选读》（第三版）。北京：高等教育出版社，2011：281-292。 刘凡群 译，《推销员之死》。天津：天津科技翻译出版公司，2003。
姚克 译，思果 评，《推销员之死：选评》。北京：中国对外翻译出版公司，2004。
篇二：英语论文-论推销员之死的悲剧意义
英语论文-论推销员之死的悲剧意义
附表6：
本科毕业设计(论文)开题报告
课题名称：
浅析中国学生英语阅读理解中的沟通障碍
系 别：
专 业：
英 语 教 育
指导教师：
作者姓名：
一、综述本课题国内外研究动态，说明选题的依据和意义
1.国内外研究动态：
英语阅读是掌握语言知识、获取信息、提高语言运用能力的基础，其核心地位在我国英语课程设置中早已确立，在各种英语标准化测试中也占有重要比重。英语阅读能力对二语习得具有非常重要的作用，如何促进有效的英语阅读也一直是语言学家、心理学家和广大教育工作者研究的热点之一。
研究者们根据信息加工的认知心理学的观点和方法，对整个阅读过程进行研究和分析，提出了许多关于阅读过程的模式。第一种是“自下而上”模式。该模式认为，阅读是读者对字母\单词及越来越大的语言单位做准确\详尽\连续的感知和辨认。第二种是 “自上而下”模式。该模式强调读者在阅读过程中的主动作用。并认为，阅读是一种心理语言学的猜测游戏。在阅读过程中，读者并不需要所有的语言线索。第三种是“相互作用”模式。 该模式认为，阅读过
程并不是一个机械被动的单向过程，而是一个复杂主动的读者和作者之间双向互动的过程，是读者采用“自下而上”和“自上而下”相结合的方法，把自己的已有知识和读物进行联系，从而重构意义的过程。
2.选题的依据和意义
从以上研究动态来看，关于阅读模式理论的研究至“相互作用”模式已经基本成熟。而关于阅读实践的研究还有比较大的空间。因此，本文从语言性和非语言性两个层面对英语阅读理解中的沟通障碍进行分析，并提出一些可行性较强的阅读策略，对阅读教与学的理论与实践都具有十分重要的意义。
二、研究的基本内容，拟解决的主要问题：
1.研究的基本内容：第一， 理论研究概述，重点介绍心理语言观和交际法语言教学的基本理论;第二， 基于以上理论，从语言性和非语言性两个层次对中国学生阅读理解中的沟通障碍产生的原因进行分析;第三，基于分析，本文提出一些可行性较强的策略供中国英语学生使用。
2.解决的主要问题：经过分析，弄清楚导致英语阅读理解沟通障碍的语言性因素和非语言性因素，并以次为基础，提出促进有效阅读的策略。
三、研究步骤、方法及措施：
1.选题，定题。
2.大量查阅相关理论文献，作好理论积累；并搜集第一手资料，即中国学生在阅读理解中由于沟通障碍而不能有效阅读的实例，并归纳整理。
3.理清思路，写出开题报告和论文提纲；
4.开始论文写作，从语言性层次和非语言性层次两个大的方面对造成阅读理解沟通障碍的原因进行分析，并提出一些实用性强的阅读策略。
5.在指导老师帮助下对论文初稿反复修改、校正，不断完善以至定稿。
篇三：论文范文-推销员之死
1. Introduction
For the 1948-1949 theatrical season Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman won the coveted Pulitzer Prize. It also received the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award, the Antoinette Perry Award, as well as general critical acclaim. His play have long been examined from the perspective of social criticism, realism, politics, and psychology, but later critics focus their attention on analyzing his work from feminist and cross-cultural perspectives and on exploring their theatrical innovation and figurative language.
A half century after it was written, Death of a salesman remains a powerful drama. Its indictment of fundamental American values and the American Dream of material success may seem somewhat tame in today’s age of constant national and individual self-analysis and criticism, but its challenge was quite radical for its time. After World War II, the United States faced profound and irreconcilable domestic tensions and contradictions. This paper looks at how Arthur Miller’s play of 1949, Death of a Salesman, offers a strong commentary on capitalism’s expectation that all persons can and will participate strongly in a capitalist environment. It discusses how some personalities are not at all suited to this range of activities and also, how capitalism will always leave behind some persons who for whatever reason cannot compete ably, or cannot summon all of their resources for the very competitive approach that is required. Death of a Salesman also poses questions about the basic relationship between man and his social environment, specifically the individual entrepreneur and the sea of competition to achieve the ―American Dream.‖
The tragedy of Willy’s death made people mourn for him and simultaneously it was the social system he was in that caused his death. In capitalist society, everybody was controlled under a law—law of success. Willy’s tragic mistake, according to Miller, was that he broke the unwritten but very powerful ―law of success,‖ which declared, ―that a failure in society and in business had no right to live.‖ (Miller 120)
This play happened almost in 1940s, a social revolution unnoticeably broke out. The whole society was running for money and wealth. Such social system forced
people to produce more profit and keep on working, just like machines with all day’s working but without thinking and desire to receive other people’s admittance. The social system rightly collided with human being’s innate capacity—desires to receive other’s recognition. However, with the development of the society, people slowly changed this capacity and changed to be more biddable to this system.
Willy, on the contrary, still held his notion, and never wanted to accept that change, even was eager to persuade others to follow his thought. Nevertheless, human beings could never win social force. Consistent confusion, which resulted from the collision between reality and his thought, leaded to his ultimate death. So Willy’s death was, in fact, caused by the conflict between the social system or capitalism and individual belief.
2. Changes in living conditions
Technical advances like the car and the refrigerator made life easier and comfortable. But ant the same time there are feelings of anxiety and disquiet.
2.1 Country versus city
Nineteenth-century Romantic poets, such as William Wordsworth, wrote that those who lived in the country, close to Nature and its wonders, were likely to be happier, nobler people than those who forced to endure the ugliness of crowded cities.
When the younger Willy and Linda first started making payments on their Brooklyn house, it was in a pleasant semi-rural area with grass and flower gardens, Vegetables, too, were grown in the back yard. Since then, however, tall apartment houses have been built that shut out the light so that plants will not grow and substitute unpleasant odors for the fragrance of lilac and wisteria:
WILLY. 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. (Luo Xuanmin 512)
Willy’s little house and the hammock he and Biff swung between the elms thus becomes the symbol of an earlier, more individualistic, more easy-going America. The big apartments in turn suggest to Willy a population ―out of control‖ and the new ―maddening‖ competition. Only a few buildings in a small area are involved here, but the playwright seems to suggest that the changes may be more or less typical in America.
2.2 The hard struggle of the average family
There is much detailed reference to nagging bills for car, roof, and household appliances. Much is made of the painfully slow business of paying on the installment plan for household appliances and the car and keeping everything in repair. Insurance premiums must be met before the grace period expires, and mortgage payments must be met over a quarter of a century:
LINDA. And you got one more payment on the refrigerator…
WILLY. 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!
WILLY. To weather a twenty-five years mortgage is—
LINDA. It’s an accomplishment. (Luo Xuanmin 514)
From their conversation, we can learn that the average family always struggle hard for living.
2.3 Lament for the past
The tone of the play is often nostalgic. Willy looks back to better times when his house had a flourishing garden. He recalls how much admired the light-hearted Biff was as a boy and how beautiful the red Chevrolet looked when polished. The present, by contrast, is a time of darkness and suffocation, of weariness and bewilderment, of blighted hopes and bitter quarrels.
3. Changes in business conditions
The play suggests that modern business is so coldly competitive that decent human values are ignored.
3.1 The reason for being a salesman
As Willy said that their family had a little a streak of self-reliance, he want to approve himself that he had the ability to achieve success through another way different from his brother. Maybe it was Willy’s destination that he happened to hear from a story about a salesman—David Singleman:
WILLY. And he was eighty-four years old, and he’d drummed merchandise
in thirty-one states. And old Dave, He’d go up 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 ever leaving his
room, at the age of eighty-four, he made his living. When he died—and
in the way he die 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 salesman and buyers were at his
funeral. Things were sad on a lotta trains for months after that. (Luo
Xuanmin 524)
When he saw that, he realized that selling was the greatest satisfying than to be able to go. In his own words, that was ―selling was the greatest career a man could want.‖ Thus, he decided to be a successful salesman.
3.2 The earlier accomplishments of Willy
When Willy began selling for the Wagner Company, he virtually ―discovered‖ New England for them. As a young man he opened up whole new territories and was properly commended by his employer, a ―prince,‖ who was ―masterful.‖
WILLY. I averaged a hundred and seventy dollars a week in the year of
1928! (Luo Xuanmin 523)
He was an excellent salesman at that time and had the warm association between himself and Howard’s father. Howard, senior, came to him the day Howard was born and asked him what he thought of the name of Howard.
3.3 Corruption in modern business
Willy has worked for almost thirty-six years for the company. During that time he has opened up new markets and served them faithfully. The company, however, shows no gratitude. As his production slows up with increasing age, he is deprived of a steady salary and put back on straight commission like a beginner.
WILLY. (stopping him) I’m talking about your father! There were promises
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