Number 5

Certainly one of the main themes in "The Death of a Salesman" is living, or at least attempting to live, the American dream. This theme is also very prevalent in "The Glass Menagerie" and many parallels can be made. Willy is a man with a lot of pride. This pride used to be at least somewhat deserved when Willy was a successful salesman when Biff and Happy where children. However, his pride did not change when his circumstances changed and he even lied about his wages. In fact, when the Lomans did not have as much money as they used too Willy saw Linda making herself some stockings and he told her to stop because he would buy her some. This all compares well with the Glass Managerie because Tom and Laura are trapped with their unsuccessful mother with no good way out. Also the fathers are somewhat important in both stories. In The Death of a Salesman he is the spark that starts all of the drama whereas in the Glass Menagerie his picture often lights up at key moments.

Flashbacks

Throughout The Death of Salesman there are many instances where flashbacks are used. It seems like every time Will tries have a legitimate conversation with someone in his family, he recalls a memory from his life where he is a different person. It's kind of like he's scitsafrantic or something. His alter ego seems to just rip into his present reality and drag him through this memory. Willy is trying to live "the American dream" but he realizes, from these memories that he isn't cut out to live it. These flashbacks also contain Willy's sons. It seems in these flashbacks, that they are only seeking their father's approval and acceptance but Willy finds a way not to give it to them.

Who names their kid Biff?

Ok so the whole time we've been talking about this story I, and I'm sure many others have all been thinking the same thing. . . who on earth names their kids Biff and Happy? I mean maybe they named one and didn't realize how horrible of a name it was then when the other came along they didn't want to give him a better name so they went with Biff. Which segways nicely into my next point which is that Biff is a foil character to Willy and Happy. This is pretty apparent but I thought maybe I should find out what a "biff" is, so I pulled up dictionary.com and low and behold it is a noun or verb that means "To strike or punch." This seems like it might be an odd coincidence but oh no, this is a drama, there are no coincidences. While Willy (willing) and Happy (happy) carry a more positive connotation, Biff means to hit or punch. This difference is made real in the play because unlike Willy and Happy, Biff is actually trying to go somewhere, he wants to reconcile his mistakes and make something of his life and Willy makes a lot of jabs or punches, if you will, at Biff for his unsuccessfulness.

The Glass Menagerie

Amanda is definitely an overbearing parent if I've ever seen one. I thought it was funny right after her and Tom's argument when they made up and then immediately she went right back to correcting every little thing he did with the way he ate his food and they got right back into their argument again. That is also something about the play that seems fairly realistic. I'm pretty sure I've seen the exact same thing happen in real life. Throughout a lot of the play though really she seems to make little pokes at Tom and his imperfections, she says things like "...Tom is a total loss when it comes to mechanics" or "I don't know why my son is so stand-offish." On the other side there's the way that Amanda deals with Laura, at first she seems to defend Laura whenever possible like when she tells Tom not to call her "crippled." However, later, she goes on to warn Laura that she is the prettiest she'll ever look which is kind of a backhanded compliment really if not just an insult.

#6 How do stage directions/music/descriptions reinforce the play's meaning and emotions?

The stage directions in this play are extremely precise and leave nothing to interpretation. This leaves very little freedom for the actor and the director however that is probably the way that it is intended to be. When he was writing this he had an image in his head and instead of just putting the text and minor direction he decided to include an overwhelming amount of detail in order to produce exactly the play he wanted every time. I think that all of this extreme detail also is a way to make the play as realistic as possible. I really wanna hear this "Glass Menagerie" music though since it comes on so much. For some reason I'm picturing it being like the twilight zone music even though that wouldn't fit the situation.

Realistic vs. non realistic

This play is full of things that are both realistic and non realistic its just important to be able to distinguish between the two. Originally i was using non realistic and unrealistic as synonyms and I thought that it was unrealistic that Tom would go to the movies every night since they don't release movies that often. Because of this I assumed that Tom was lying about what he did when he went out at night and that was a poor assumption. I feel like all the details in the stage directions make the play more more realistic. The setting seems very appropriate for the time period. Also I think that the family's situation is fairly realistic with the dad leaving and Laura's disability. The narrator is really one of the only non realistic things that jumps out at me. Obviously no one walks around narrating their life and in addition to this Toms "memories" include scenes that he isn't even in so how does he remember that?