Loss Of The American Dream In The Era Of Consumerism

Arthur Miller (1915- ) began his career as a playwright when he was still a student at the university of Michigan, winning some prizes during this period. Toward the end of 1940s, two of his works transformed him into a national sensation. In 1947, he produced his first great success, All My Sons. Two years later, he wrote Death of a Salesman, "the first great American tragedy." Arthur Miller has since been called one of the 20th century's three great American dramatists, along with Eugene O'Neill and Tennessee Williams.Ever since then, Arthur Miller has also been active in American literary field, continuing to attack various social vices in almost all kinds of modern and contemporary literary devices. His literary interests have now extended to short novels, autobiography, and movie scripts, but his achievements chiefly lie in his drama, and in Death of a Salesman in particular.As Miller's masterpiece, Death of a Salesman addresses the painful conflicts within one family on the surface and actually tackles larger issues regarding American national values. The play examines the cost of blind faith in the American Dream. Miller charges America with selling a false myth constructed around a capitalist materialism nurtured by the postwar economy, a materialism that obscured the personal truth and moral vision of the original American Dream described by the country's founders. This materialism, which is now widely recognized as consumerism, encourages people to snatch as many commodities as possible and base the meaning of their life on the consumption of these commodities. Death of a Salesman does not directly point it out, but clearly shows that those who are falsely convinced by this materialism are at the risk of being commodities.To highlight this theme, Miller creatively applies quite a few modern stage arts, among which symbolism, stream-of-consciousness, and mix-up of illusion andreality are most conspicuous. Short play as it is, Death of a Salesman is full of symbols, which help reveal the fate of the country in the era of consumerism and even human nature through a single family's tragedy. Stream-of-consciousness has been widely adopted in modernist fiction, but its application to the stage demands both courage and skills. By mixing up the illusion and the reality in the play, Miller successfully develops a dream-like atmosphere. The symbolic meaning is too obvious to ask for any interpretation.