Over the weekend finish up your ten modernizations of themes/characters/motifs in Death of a Salesman. You don’t have the books with you so I won’t blame you if you don’t have page numbers, but all the resources we looked at in class are below:
And if you’re really ambitious, here’s a pdf of the play, though no page numbers: http://www.pelister.org/literature/ArthurMiller/Miller_Salesman.pdf
For Monday have 10 of those boxes filled out. We talk next steps after that.
Today we split into groups and studied a specific character:
Directions: Finish reading Act 1 with your group
With your group, choose a character to study:
-Charley & Bernard
As you read, track one character:
—-What do each of them want?
—-What details reveal parts of their character?
—-What are their fears, concerns, motivations, relationships and history?
—-What could this character symbolize? What symbols or objects do we associate with this character?
Use chart paper, make sure to include two or three choice quotes from your character.
Today we read pages 41 to 60 of Death of a Salesman. For homework, consider it a “second draft” of you answers to those two questions from class:
1) How does masculinity (in however you define it) play a role in the American Dream/American Way of Life of today and in the past?
2) Where do we see masculinity and emasculation in this section of Death of Salesman? How does masculinity (or lack thereof) impact the attainability of the American Dream in the play?
***As always, use quotes and line numbers in your responses
We started reading the first 27 pages of Death of Salesman today and made a list of images/symbols/ideas that represent the American Dream that we also saw in “Paradox and Dream” and Sen. Booker’s speech. Come find me tomorrow if you missed the reading.