11/9/2023 0 Comments Plot analysis death of a salesman![]() ![]() In a way, Willy is schizophrenic overwork, worry and repressed guilt have caused his mental collapse. In Willy’s mind, past and present exist on the same level, Willy perceives himself both in the present and in the past – which is made up of various strata. Better than the erroneous term flashback, the phrase double exposure would be more appropriate. There are no flashbacks in Death of a Salesman. For example, Biff and Happy are seen as teenagers and adults successively. Thanks to the expressionistic technique of scrim and curtain, the characters may exist in both the present and the past. There is no clear cut boundary between them. In Death of a Salesman both past and present are given theatrical representation. ![]() Miller’s aim in Death of a Salesman is to erase any gap between a remembered past – that would be evoked through words – and a present that would be performed on stage. (The expression is by Miller, from his introduction to his Collected Plays, p.26) ‘A mobile concurrency of past and present’ This non-past/non-present is confined to Willy’s inner mind, to Willy’s subjective world. The past/present dichotomy is replaced by a non-past non-present, in which different temporal layers commingle and coalesce. Memories constantly impinge on present situations and, conversely, the present is put at some distance by the flood of recollections. In “the inside of Willy’s head”, past and present are blurred. ![]()
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