death of a salesman willy and howard scene script

In showing off the audio of his daughter, son and wife, Howard shows his pride and fascination for the machine. Howard is totally occupied with his new gadget, the wire recorder. In Act Two, where Willy goes to his young boss Howard, the son of his former employer, to ask for a desk job, we find that the bond and affinity amongst humans has been lacerated by the machine. Howard’s wire recorder is the most noticeable technological device and the most complex machine in the play. A re-evaluation of the machines featured in the play will reveal the influence of machines on human beings and will deepen our understanding of the characters in the play. However, the negative effects that technological advancement could impose on human identity and personal relationship are often neglected.

Another critic holds that Willy is able to resist social mechanisation, distinguishing between the actions of humans and the influence of the machine (Sterling, 114).

With technological development, some say that it is natural for human beings to become almost obsolete (Sterling, 100-102).

For example, some think that Willy’s helplessness before the wire recorder in Act Two represents those who are restrained by materialistic American culture (Jerz, 126). This paper holds that it is machines that lacerate personal relationships and deprive people of their self-identity, which also contributes to Willy’s collapse in the play.Ĭritics have commented on the machine-related imagery from various angles. Through analysis of the imagery surrounding machines in the play, we can see the complex relationship formed between man and machine. Other characters also lose themselves in the changing world.

Trapped in the past and full of self-contradiction, the protagonist Willy Loman loses his identity in face of the technological wave. In Death of a Salesman, the most successful of Arthur Miller’s plays, Miller insightfully foresees the negative effects that the technological advancement embodied in various machines could impose on human beings, especially on human identity and personal relationships. Arthur Miller The use of machines in Arthur Miller’s ‘Death of a Salesman’ She is interested in fiction, psychology and cross-cultural communication. Dong Liu is a postgraduate in British and American Literature from Beihang University in Beijing.

Death of a salesman willy and howard scene script