Analysis of “Death of a Salesman” opening stage directions Essay

Arthur Millers Death of a Salesman (1949) opens with an extensive translation of the Loman house. Miller uses extremely precise and detailed stage directions, including prop placement, sound and lighting, giving heavy importee to each of these elements and painting an unchangeable picture to ensure that it is preserved in every interpretation of his work. passim the opening stage directions of Act 1, despite the structure and tone being very f real, composed of short, put one across sentences, Miller hints at underlying themes and messages through a range of stylistic devices, preparing the audience for the play, and setting the scene. As the play is set in Brooklyn, New York some years after the great depression, many references atomic number 18 made already at this early stage to idealism and the American dream the desperate and hungriness vision of many Americans at that time of a better life.This permeating theme becomes apparent at once even to the introduction of the chara cters, as the mere scenery and props act as symbolic elements, which mull this motif. Miller however subliminally makes it evident that this dream is purely an illusion, through emblematic phrases in his stage directions such(prenominal) as rising out of reality and physical representations, for instance the broken boundaries where characters enter or bring out a room by stepping through a wall onto the forestage which create an aura of delusion.The premiere stage directions include a melody played on a flute, telling of grass and trees and the view. This natural imagery encompassing three physical elements accompanied by the soft and harmonious sound, sets a serene tone which is then highly juxtaposed with the following depiction of the house and its neighborhood, feature with darkness and hostility.This heavy contrast may be symbolic of the conflict between the dreams to which the individual aspires and the actual harshness of societys reality. The description of the surround ing cluster of apartment blocks seems almost to have a greater prominence than the house itself, as this is the first thing the audience becomes aware of. The tall and angular silhouette of Manhattan that lies in the backdrop has expressionistic features andsurrounds the Loman house in a way that suggests some nonliteral form of oppression or confinement.The glow of orange that falls upon the fragile-seeming house is personified as angry, maybe reflecting the hostile times in which the play is set. This enclosing and intimidating hostility is in part what makes the house appear so fragile, a fragility that may represent impuissance in family bonds or equally, weakness in he who represents the house, condemning him immediately to the role of a tragic protagonist. Willy clings to his dreams just as an standard pressure of the dream clings to the place.This idea becomes present again in the description of Lindas feelings towards her husband and his traits. his gigantic dreams are the source of his tragic nature, dreams that he shares with the rest of society, but that for him become an unhealthy obsession. Willy is cursed with the eonian desire to pursue his dreams to their end and these words forebode a fate that unfolds as a subject of this fixation.Overall the opening of this play provides the audience with a sense of the themes that will permeate throughout, by sprucely using stage schemes and elements that insinuate profounder significance of what is to come.