American Dream Or Human Weakness

In the history of postwar American drama and literature,Arthur Miller' plays serve as a mirror of America and its shifting values.Miller is traditionally considered as a socially-conscious realistic playwright,for the theme of social duties and personal responsibilities lay at the center of his plays.In All My Sons and Death of a Salesman,Arthur Miller tells two tragic stories of the Kellers and the Lomans during the turbulent forties in which their families fall apart and home-based businesses cease to flourish,revealing how the promising American dream turns sour into American nightmare.Miller addresses the painful conflicts within a family on the surface yet actually tackles larger issues regarding American national values and human nature with the dramatic technique of integrated realism and expressionism.Miller's plays seem to have challenged the most fundamental assumptions of the American dream,the belief that diligence,perseverance,and loyalty are to be rewarded by economic prosperity and social stability.However,such a thematic classification does reduce the actual complexity of All My Sons and Death of a Salesman in that it is fairly tempting to approach the dramatic action from the perspective of broad socio-cultural generalizations and consequently oversimplifies the subtlety of characterization.The integration of dramatic realism and expressionism already points out to the actual causes of Miller's tragedy.Both All My Sons and Death of a Salesman are more than the story of one man's failure or a family's failure.It also demonstrates how a fear to know oneself and a refusal to acknowledge others can lead to ruin,which is the core conflict of tragedy.The first chapter of this thesis inspects what constitutes the essence of the American dream and demonstrates how this notion fits into the narrative structure of All My Sons and Death of a Salesman.This session rejects the viewpoint that Miller's play marks a downfall of American Dream in the postwar society,and in this respect it might be regarded as reshaping the conditions necessary for success.In chapter two,a search into the main culprit to account for the tragic hero's misfortune is made from the dramaturgy perspective.With the employment of expressionist techniques to indicate psychological reality,Miller places the blame on human weaknesses such as self-blindness and self-deception as they manifest themselves in pursuit of the American Dream.The third chapter defines Miller's plays as modern tragedies instead of social drama.Previous criticisms tend to blame the American Dream for the failure of Miller's protagonists,which greatly reduces the tragic spirits regarding human nature and the surviving plight of mankind.A conclusion thus drawn is that Miller has actually captured human weaknesses as the primary reason for human downfalls.Based on the tragic family stories,this thesis analyzes Joe's and Willy's failure of replicating American dream in modern society,and Miller's profound meditation over it.Through further exposing the discrepancies between fa?ade and reality regarding the devastating suicide of the Joe Keller and Willy Loman,this thesis argues that it is human weaknesses shown in the pursuit of American dream such as self-delusion,self-importance,and self-deception about success rather than American dream itself that Miller intends to criticize.