Emily Bronte was born on July 30th 1818 at Thornton, Bradford in Yorkshire, fifth child of the six children. Her mother died of cancer in 1821. In 1824 she attended the newly opened Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge. While there along with her sisters Maria, Elizabeth and Charlotte they suffer the harsh regime, cold and poor food. In June 1825 Emily and her sisters were finally taken away from the school for good.
Emily and Anne write poetry and stories for their imaginary world of Gondal. Few survive, but they worked together on poems and the Gondal sagas into the 1840's
In July 1835 she enrolled at Miss Wooler's school at Roe Head Mirfield which lasted for 3 months, returning to Haworth in October.
In September 1845 Charlotte inadvertently discovers Emily's poems. Emily is angered by the intrusion into her private writings. Her sister convinces her to collaborate on a book of poems. About this time it is thought Emily started to write Wuthering Heights.
In November 1848 Emily's health was poor. Charlotte Bronte writes that her sister has difficulty in breathing and pains in her chest. On 19 December 1848 Emily Bronte died at 2 o'clock in the afternoon. She was 30 years old. On 22 December she is laid to rest in the family vault in Haworth church.
Emily Brontë has been cast as Absolute Individual, as Tormented Genius, and as Free Spirit Communing with Nature.
The Bronte's father was a withdrawn man who dined alone in his own room; their Aunt Branwell, who raised them after the early death of their mother, also dined alone in her room. For three years Emily supposedly spoke only to family members and servants.
Their brother Branwell, an alcoholic and a drug addict, went through mad ravings with threats of committing suicide or murdering their father, his physical and mental degradation, his bouts of delirium, and, finally, his death.
Almost everything that is known about Emily comes from the writings of others, primarily Charlotte.
Often Wuthering Heights is used to construct a biography of Emily's life, personality, and beliefs. Edward Chitharn equates Emily, the well-read housekeeper of the family home, with Nelly based on the similarity of their roles and the similarity of their names, "Nelly" being short for "Ellen".
The illnesses of Catherine, who stops eating after Edgar's ultimatum, and of Heathcliff, who stops eating at the end, is used as proof of Emily's own illness; support for this is found in the tendency of all four Brontë siblings not to eat when upset.
Katherine Frank argues that Emily had a hunger "for power and experience, for love and happiness, fame and fortune and fulfilment?". An interpretation of this could be that several of her characters are desperate for passion, romance and affections from others such as Hareton (from Heathcliff), Young and Elder Catherines, Heathcliff, Isabella.
Another interpretation of Wuthering Heights has been that nearly all the characters in some way are deprived of love and passion - something that Emily may have wished for herself and basing the only main character in the novel who is accepted by everybody (Nelly) on herself - could reveal her longing for love.
There is also the argument over jealousy between her and her siblings. Emily and Anne separated from Branwell and Charlotte during their adolescent writings to create their own imaginary world. Charlotte is also the only sister to marry and their brother Branwell is also a failed writer who committed adultery. It can be argued that these issues were replicated in the relationships of Wuthering Heights.
Similarly, Emily's poems are used to interpret her novel, particularly those poems discussing isolation, rebellion, and freedom.
Monday 30 November 2009
Quotes Chapter 10
Henry Jekyll's Full Statement of the Case
Hence it came about that I concealed my pleasures; and that when I reached years of reflection, and began to look round me and take stock of my progress and position in the world, I stood already committed to a profound duplicity of me.
With every day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to that truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two.
If each, I told myself, could be housed in separate identities, life would be relieved of all that was unbearable; the unjust might go his way, delivered from the aspirations and remorse of his more upright twin; and the just could walk steadfastly and securely on his upward path, doing the good things in which he found his pleasure, and no longer exposed to disgrace and penitence by the hands of this extraneous evil.
For two good reasons, I will not enter deeply into this scientific branch of my confession. First, because I have been made to learn that the doom and burthen of our life is bound for ever on man's shoulders, and when the attempt is made to cast it off, it but returns upon us with more unfamiliar and more awful pressure. Second, because, as my narrative will make, alas! too evident, my discoveries were incomplete.
The most racking pangs succeeded: a grinding in the bones, deadly nausea, and a horror of the spirit that cannot be exceeded at the hour of birth or death. Then these agonies began swiftly to subside, and I came to myself as if out of a great sickness. There was something strange in my sensations, something indescribably new and, from its very novelty, incredibly sweet. I felt younger, lighter, happier in body
There was no mirror, at that date, in my room; that which stands beside me as I write, was brought there later on and for the very purpose of these transformations.
And hence, as I think, it came about that Edward Hyde was so much smaller, slighter and younger than Henry Jekyll. Even as good shone upon the countenance of the one, evil was written broadly
and plainly on the face of the other. Evil besides (which I must still believe to be the lethal side of man) had left on that body an imprint of deformity and decay. And yet when I looked upon that ugly idol in the glass, I was conscious of no repugnance, rather of a leap of welcome. This, too, was myself. It seemed natural and human.
I made my preparations with the most studious care. I took and furnished that house in Soho, to which Hyde was tracked by the police; and engaged as a housekeeper a creature whom I knew well to be silent and unscrupulous. On the other side, I announced to my servants that a Mr. Hyde (whom I described) was to have full liberty and power about my house in the square; and to parry mishaps, I even called and made myself a familiar object, in my second character. I next drew up that will to which you so much objected; so that if anything befell me in the person of Dr. Jekyll, I could enter on that of Edward Hyde without pecuniary loss.
Henry Jekyll stood at times aghast before the acts of Edward Hyde; but the situation was apart from ordinary laws, and insidiously relaxed the grasp of conscience. It was Hyde, after all, and Hyde alone, that was guilty. Jekyll was no worse; he woke again to his good qualities seemingly unimpaired; he would even make haste, where it was possible, to undo the evil done by Hyde. And thus his conscience slumbered.
Now the hand of Henry Jekyll (as you have often remarked) was professional in shape and size: it was large, firm, white and comely. But the hand which I now saw, clearly enough, in the yellow light of a mid-London morning, lying half shut on the bedclothes, was lean, corder, knuckly, of a dusky pallor and thickly shaded with a swart growth of hair. It was the hand of Edward Hyde.
Between these two, I now felt I had to choose. My two natures had memory in common, but all other faculties were most unequally shared between them. Jekyll (who was composite) now with the most sensitive apprehensions, now with a greedy gusto, projected and shared in the pleasures and adventures of Hyde; but Hyde was indifferent to Jekyll, or but remembered him as the mountain bandit remembers the cavern in which he conceals himself from pursuit. Jekyll had more than a father's interest; Hyde had more than a son's indifference.
Yes, I preferred the elderly and discontented doctor, surrounded by friends and cherishing honest hopes; and bade a resolute farewell to the liberty, the comparative youth, the light step, leaping impulses and secret pleasures, that I had enjoyed in the disguise of Hyde. I made this choice perhaps with some unconscious reservation, for I neither gave up the house in Soho, nor destroyed the clothes of Edward Hyde, which still lay ready in my cabinet.
Instantly the spirit of hell awoke in me and raged. With a transport of glee, I mauled the unresisting body, tasting delight from every blow; and it was not till weariness had begun to succeed, that I was suddenly, in the top fit of my delirium, struck through the heart by a cold thrill of terror. A mist
dispersed; I saw my life to be forfeit; and fled from the scene of these excesses, at once glorying and trembling, my lust of evil gratified and stimulated.
A moment before I had been safe of all men's respect, wealthy, beloved--the cloth laying for me in the dining-room at home; and now I was the common quarry of mankind, hunted, houseless, a known murderer, thrall to the gallows.
Hyde in danger of his life was a creature new to me; shaken with inordinate anger, strung to the pitch of murder, lusting to inflict pain. Yet the creature was astute; mastered his fury with a great effort of the will; composed his two important letters, one to Lanyon and one to Poole; and that he might receive actual evidence of their being posted, sent them out with directions that they should be registered.
The powers of Hyde seemed to have grown with the sickliness of Jekyll. And certainly the hate that now divided them was equal on each side. With Jekyll, it was a thing of vital instinct. He had now seen the full deformity of that creature that shared with him some of the phenomena of consciousness, and was co-heir with him to death
The hatred of Hyde for Jekyll was of a different order. His terror of the gallows drove him continually to commit temporary suicide, and return to his subordinate station of a part instead of a person; but he loathed the necessity, he loathed the despondency into which Jekyll was now fallen, and he resented the dislike with which he was himself regarded. Hence the ape-like tricks that he would play me, scrawling in my own hand blasphemies on the pages of my books, burning the letters and destroying the portrait of my father; and indeed, had it not been for his fear of death, he would long ago have ruined himself in order to involve me in the ruin. But his love of me is wonderful; I go further: I, who sicken and freeze at the mere thought of him, when I recall the abjection and passion of this attachment, and when I know how he fears my power to cut him off by suicide, I find it in my heart to pity him.
Hence it came about that I concealed my pleasures; and that when I reached years of reflection, and began to look round me and take stock of my progress and position in the world, I stood already committed to a profound duplicity of me.
With every day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to that truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two.
If each, I told myself, could be housed in separate identities, life would be relieved of all that was unbearable; the unjust might go his way, delivered from the aspirations and remorse of his more upright twin; and the just could walk steadfastly and securely on his upward path, doing the good things in which he found his pleasure, and no longer exposed to disgrace and penitence by the hands of this extraneous evil.
For two good reasons, I will not enter deeply into this scientific branch of my confession. First, because I have been made to learn that the doom and burthen of our life is bound for ever on man's shoulders, and when the attempt is made to cast it off, it but returns upon us with more unfamiliar and more awful pressure. Second, because, as my narrative will make, alas! too evident, my discoveries were incomplete.
The most racking pangs succeeded: a grinding in the bones, deadly nausea, and a horror of the spirit that cannot be exceeded at the hour of birth or death. Then these agonies began swiftly to subside, and I came to myself as if out of a great sickness. There was something strange in my sensations, something indescribably new and, from its very novelty, incredibly sweet. I felt younger, lighter, happier in body
There was no mirror, at that date, in my room; that which stands beside me as I write, was brought there later on and for the very purpose of these transformations.
And hence, as I think, it came about that Edward Hyde was so much smaller, slighter and younger than Henry Jekyll. Even as good shone upon the countenance of the one, evil was written broadly
and plainly on the face of the other. Evil besides (which I must still believe to be the lethal side of man) had left on that body an imprint of deformity and decay. And yet when I looked upon that ugly idol in the glass, I was conscious of no repugnance, rather of a leap of welcome. This, too, was myself. It seemed natural and human.
I made my preparations with the most studious care. I took and furnished that house in Soho, to which Hyde was tracked by the police; and engaged as a housekeeper a creature whom I knew well to be silent and unscrupulous. On the other side, I announced to my servants that a Mr. Hyde (whom I described) was to have full liberty and power about my house in the square; and to parry mishaps, I even called and made myself a familiar object, in my second character. I next drew up that will to which you so much objected; so that if anything befell me in the person of Dr. Jekyll, I could enter on that of Edward Hyde without pecuniary loss.
Henry Jekyll stood at times aghast before the acts of Edward Hyde; but the situation was apart from ordinary laws, and insidiously relaxed the grasp of conscience. It was Hyde, after all, and Hyde alone, that was guilty. Jekyll was no worse; he woke again to his good qualities seemingly unimpaired; he would even make haste, where it was possible, to undo the evil done by Hyde. And thus his conscience slumbered.
Now the hand of Henry Jekyll (as you have often remarked) was professional in shape and size: it was large, firm, white and comely. But the hand which I now saw, clearly enough, in the yellow light of a mid-London morning, lying half shut on the bedclothes, was lean, corder, knuckly, of a dusky pallor and thickly shaded with a swart growth of hair. It was the hand of Edward Hyde.
Between these two, I now felt I had to choose. My two natures had memory in common, but all other faculties were most unequally shared between them. Jekyll (who was composite) now with the most sensitive apprehensions, now with a greedy gusto, projected and shared in the pleasures and adventures of Hyde; but Hyde was indifferent to Jekyll, or but remembered him as the mountain bandit remembers the cavern in which he conceals himself from pursuit. Jekyll had more than a father's interest; Hyde had more than a son's indifference.
Yes, I preferred the elderly and discontented doctor, surrounded by friends and cherishing honest hopes; and bade a resolute farewell to the liberty, the comparative youth, the light step, leaping impulses and secret pleasures, that I had enjoyed in the disguise of Hyde. I made this choice perhaps with some unconscious reservation, for I neither gave up the house in Soho, nor destroyed the clothes of Edward Hyde, which still lay ready in my cabinet.
Instantly the spirit of hell awoke in me and raged. With a transport of glee, I mauled the unresisting body, tasting delight from every blow; and it was not till weariness had begun to succeed, that I was suddenly, in the top fit of my delirium, struck through the heart by a cold thrill of terror. A mist
dispersed; I saw my life to be forfeit; and fled from the scene of these excesses, at once glorying and trembling, my lust of evil gratified and stimulated.
A moment before I had been safe of all men's respect, wealthy, beloved--the cloth laying for me in the dining-room at home; and now I was the common quarry of mankind, hunted, houseless, a known murderer, thrall to the gallows.
Hyde in danger of his life was a creature new to me; shaken with inordinate anger, strung to the pitch of murder, lusting to inflict pain. Yet the creature was astute; mastered his fury with a great effort of the will; composed his two important letters, one to Lanyon and one to Poole; and that he might receive actual evidence of their being posted, sent them out with directions that they should be registered.
The powers of Hyde seemed to have grown with the sickliness of Jekyll. And certainly the hate that now divided them was equal on each side. With Jekyll, it was a thing of vital instinct. He had now seen the full deformity of that creature that shared with him some of the phenomena of consciousness, and was co-heir with him to death
The hatred of Hyde for Jekyll was of a different order. His terror of the gallows drove him continually to commit temporary suicide, and return to his subordinate station of a part instead of a person; but he loathed the necessity, he loathed the despondency into which Jekyll was now fallen, and he resented the dislike with which he was himself regarded. Hence the ape-like tricks that he would play me, scrawling in my own hand blasphemies on the pages of my books, burning the letters and destroying the portrait of my father; and indeed, had it not been for his fear of death, he would long ago have ruined himself in order to involve me in the ruin. But his love of me is wonderful; I go further: I, who sicken and freeze at the mere thought of him, when I recall the abjection and passion of this attachment, and when I know how he fears my power to cut him off by suicide, I find it in my heart to pity him.
Sunday 29 November 2009
Robert Louis Stevenson Context
Stevenson's parents were both devout and serious Presbyterians, but the household was not incredibly strict. His nurse, Alison Cunningham was more fervently religious. Her Calvinism and folk beliefs were an early source of nightmares for the child; and he showed a precocious concern for religion.
At University Stevenson was moving away from his strict upbringing. His dress became more Bohemian but more importantly, he had come to reject Christianity.
In January 1873, his father came across the constitution of the LJR (Liberty, Justice, Reverence) club of which Stevenson with his cousin Bob was a member, which began "Disregard everything our parents have taught us".
Questioning his son about his beliefs, he discovered the truth, leading to a long period of dissension with both parents.
Stevenson had long been interested in the idea of the duality of human nature and how to incorporate the interplay of good and evil into a story.
One night in late September or early October 1885, Stevenson had a dream, and on wakening had the intuition for two or three scenes that would appear in the story.
"In the small hours of one morning," says Mrs Stevenson, "I was awakened by cries of horror from Louis. Thinking he had a nightmare, I woke him. He said angrily, 'Why did you wake me? I was dreaming a fine bogey tale.' I had awakened him at the first transformation scene ..."
Stevenson re-wrote the story in three to six days, allegedly with the assistance of cocaine. According to Osbourne, "The mere physical feat was tremendous; and instead of harming him, it roused and cheered him inexpressibly". He refined and continued to work on it for four to six weeks afterward.
Its success was probably due more to the "moral instincts of the public" than any perception of its artistic merits; it was widely read by those who never otherwise read fiction, quoted in pulpit sermons and in religious papers.
At University Stevenson was moving away from his strict upbringing. His dress became more Bohemian but more importantly, he had come to reject Christianity.
In January 1873, his father came across the constitution of the LJR (Liberty, Justice, Reverence) club of which Stevenson with his cousin Bob was a member, which began "Disregard everything our parents have taught us".
Questioning his son about his beliefs, he discovered the truth, leading to a long period of dissension with both parents.
Stevenson had long been interested in the idea of the duality of human nature and how to incorporate the interplay of good and evil into a story.
One night in late September or early October 1885, Stevenson had a dream, and on wakening had the intuition for two or three scenes that would appear in the story.
"In the small hours of one morning," says Mrs Stevenson, "I was awakened by cries of horror from Louis. Thinking he had a nightmare, I woke him. He said angrily, 'Why did you wake me? I was dreaming a fine bogey tale.' I had awakened him at the first transformation scene ..."
Stevenson re-wrote the story in three to six days, allegedly with the assistance of cocaine. According to Osbourne, "The mere physical feat was tremendous; and instead of harming him, it roused and cheered him inexpressibly". He refined and continued to work on it for four to six weeks afterward.
Its success was probably due more to the "moral instincts of the public" than any perception of its artistic merits; it was widely read by those who never otherwise read fiction, quoted in pulpit sermons and in religious papers.
Quotes and Complete Texts
For a complete text go to:
http://www.online-literature.com/stevenson/jekyllhyde/
You can search this text as well - so if you know one of the words in the texts, you can search for it and it will find all the examples of that word.
http://www.online-literature.com/stevenson/jekyllhyde/
You can search this text as well - so if you know one of the words in the texts, you can search for it and it will find all the examples of that word.
Saturday 28 November 2009
Why does Stephenson Explore Duality.
1. New psychological ideas of having two sides: our ID which is our hedonistic, impulsive, primitive side, our SUPEREGO which aims for spiritual, psychical and social perfection and our EGO which seeks to please the two.
2. Victorian London and Edinburgh having polarity between rich and poor.
3. Impressions of the poor being small, unevolved and animalistic.
4. The rich townhouses VS the poor slums in both Edinburgh and London.
5. The scientific revolutions vs the traditional old ways.
6. The mystery of the new discoveries vs the knowledge already acquired.
7. Evolution of humanity being accepted.
2. Victorian London and Edinburgh having polarity between rich and poor.
3. Impressions of the poor being small, unevolved and animalistic.
4. The rich townhouses VS the poor slums in both Edinburgh and London.
5. The scientific revolutions vs the traditional old ways.
6. The mystery of the new discoveries vs the knowledge already acquired.
7. Evolution of humanity being accepted.
Jekyll and Hyde Dualties
How does Stevenson do it
1. The changes in Mr Utterson's character
2. The setting - in the front and back of Jekyll's house, Cavendish Square and Soho.
3. The language:
- scientific, clinical language of the murder case and then the romantic flowery language of the maid.
- The changes in Jekyll's language as he becomes more despairing.
- Changes in Hyde's and Jekyll's dialogue
4. Good actions of Jekyll and the evilness of Hyde.
5. Appearance of Jekyll and Hyde.
6. Acting morally and avoiding scandal (Utterson)
7. Jekyll appearing to do good work but no taking responsibility for Hyde's actions.
8. Lanyon's dismissal of Jeykll's discoveries as “unscientific balderdash” (rational man of science) contrasting Jekyll's language
9. Jekyll and Lanyon both leave letters which records everything they have seen and done but insist that these records not be opened until after their deaths - suggesting a reliance on reputation.
10. Jekyll’s guilt and Hyde’s apathy/indifference
11. Hyde's appearance and actions - but his furnishings and dialogue are quite refined.
12. Jekyll's repression and Hyde's outright actions.
13. The fog and mist symbolising Jekyll's hidden identity.
Added 14th December 2009
14. Chapter Two - Duality of Utterson's rational thoguhts and reporting but with a supernatural dream sequence.
15. Jekyll's house is a mansion with "a great air of wealth and comfort" that is secretly connected to the doctor's laboratory. The laboratory front (chapter 1) appears run down and neglected, and can be entered through the mysterious door described in the first chapter. we learn later that the laboratory is in fact where Dr. Jekyll undertakes his transformations into Mr. Hyde.
16. Chapter 4 - Utterson appears immediately when summoned by the police, and provides them with a great deal of information in order to find the murderous Edward Hyde. However, he stops short of telling the police of the connection between Hyde and Dr. Jekyll.
17. Utterson loyally protects his friend throughout, in contrast, Jekyll lies to Utterson, defending Hyde with a fake letter. (Chapter 5)
18. Lanyon's belief in logic and sound science is proved wrong and the supernatural starts to take over.
19. Mirroring of Chapter 1 with Chapter 7 (they start in the same way)
20. Chapter 7 contrasts chapter 8 with lack of action and lots of action.
21. The religious work that Jekyll held in great esteem that has been, "annotated in his own hand with startling blasphemies."
22. Even after witnessing death and highly strange events, Utterson wishes to delay involving the authorities in an attempt to save face.
23. Although Lanyon is very detailed in what he witnessed that night, he does not provide an explanation of how such a transformation could occur, or how Jekyll's scientific experiments advanced and progressed to this point.
24. The contrast between third and first person narrative.
25. In his letter, Jekyll clearly states that he felt no guilt about Hyde's actions, as "Henry Jekyll stood at times aghast before the acts of Edward Hyde, but the situation was apart from ordinary laws, and insidiously relaxed the grasp of conscience. It was Hyde, after all, and Hyde alone, that was guilty." To the reader, this explanation seems ridiculous, because Hyde is in fact part of Jekyll, and a being that Jekyll created.
26. The noble Utterosn lives but Jekyll/Hyde dies.
1. The changes in Mr Utterson's character
2. The setting - in the front and back of Jekyll's house, Cavendish Square and Soho.
3. The language:
- scientific, clinical language of the murder case and then the romantic flowery language of the maid.
- The changes in Jekyll's language as he becomes more despairing.
- Changes in Hyde's and Jekyll's dialogue
4. Good actions of Jekyll and the evilness of Hyde.
5. Appearance of Jekyll and Hyde.
6. Acting morally and avoiding scandal (Utterson)
7. Jekyll appearing to do good work but no taking responsibility for Hyde's actions.
8. Lanyon's dismissal of Jeykll's discoveries as “unscientific balderdash” (rational man of science) contrasting Jekyll's language
9. Jekyll and Lanyon both leave letters which records everything they have seen and done but insist that these records not be opened until after their deaths - suggesting a reliance on reputation.
10. Jekyll’s guilt and Hyde’s apathy/indifference
11. Hyde's appearance and actions - but his furnishings and dialogue are quite refined.
12. Jekyll's repression and Hyde's outright actions.
13. The fog and mist symbolising Jekyll's hidden identity.
Added 14th December 2009
14. Chapter Two - Duality of Utterson's rational thoguhts and reporting but with a supernatural dream sequence.
15. Jekyll's house is a mansion with "a great air of wealth and comfort" that is secretly connected to the doctor's laboratory. The laboratory front (chapter 1) appears run down and neglected, and can be entered through the mysterious door described in the first chapter. we learn later that the laboratory is in fact where Dr. Jekyll undertakes his transformations into Mr. Hyde.
16. Chapter 4 - Utterson appears immediately when summoned by the police, and provides them with a great deal of information in order to find the murderous Edward Hyde. However, he stops short of telling the police of the connection between Hyde and Dr. Jekyll.
17. Utterson loyally protects his friend throughout, in contrast, Jekyll lies to Utterson, defending Hyde with a fake letter. (Chapter 5)
18. Lanyon's belief in logic and sound science is proved wrong and the supernatural starts to take over.
19. Mirroring of Chapter 1 with Chapter 7 (they start in the same way)
20. Chapter 7 contrasts chapter 8 with lack of action and lots of action.
21. The religious work that Jekyll held in great esteem that has been, "annotated in his own hand with startling blasphemies."
22. Even after witnessing death and highly strange events, Utterson wishes to delay involving the authorities in an attempt to save face.
23. Although Lanyon is very detailed in what he witnessed that night, he does not provide an explanation of how such a transformation could occur, or how Jekyll's scientific experiments advanced and progressed to this point.
24. The contrast between third and first person narrative.
25. In his letter, Jekyll clearly states that he felt no guilt about Hyde's actions, as "Henry Jekyll stood at times aghast before the acts of Edward Hyde, but the situation was apart from ordinary laws, and insidiously relaxed the grasp of conscience. It was Hyde, after all, and Hyde alone, that was guilty." To the reader, this explanation seems ridiculous, because Hyde is in fact part of Jekyll, and a being that Jekyll created.
26. The noble Utterosn lives but Jekyll/Hyde dies.
Friday 27 November 2009
Jekyll and Hyde Essay Question
“My devil had been long caged, he came out roaring.” How and why does Stevenson explore the theme of duality in “The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde”?
Introduction
- What was Victorian England like at the time (e.g. changes, society, social conditions)
- Summary of why Stevenson explored it (e.g belief in new inventions, seeing Edinburgh's poor/rich, losing his faith in God)
- What kinds of things you will look at from the novel (presentation of character, settings, plot)
Introduction
- What was Victorian England like at the time (e.g. changes, society, social conditions)
- Summary of why Stevenson explored it (e.g belief in new inventions, seeing Edinburgh's poor/rich, losing his faith in God)
- What kinds of things you will look at from the novel (presentation of character, settings, plot)
Sunday 22 November 2009
Answering Extract Questions
When answering an extract/reading question you should:
1. Read the question through once and then pause, before underlining the key elements of the question. Then read it through again.
2. Now read the extract/article/poems you have been given with a pen in your hand and holding the question in your head.
3. Every time you react to (or feel like you should be reacting to) something - underline it and note the reaction - even if it's just a smiley face or a sad face.
4. Hopefully by the end of this you have noticed about six-seven things - each of these things are a paragraph you can write about and you now have a plan.
5. For each thing you noticed - start each paragraph by saying what it is or what the writer does:
- Ballard uses graphic description ...
- Miller has Willy speak about ...
- The author of the article then uses ...
- Herbertson appears to say ...
- Owen uses the flowers to ...
- Jim also starts to ...
(if you notice - some of these points don't actually mention a specific technique - you can use the topic instead)
6. The give evidence of that technique
7. You then comment on it (where you explain it's relation to the question
Useful Comment and Analysis Phrases
• This is effective because …
• The use of the word …
• This shows [theme] because …
• The use of [technique] is effective …
• However, unlike in the [story] this is used because …
• The author has used this to …
• Describing [thing] in this way make …
• This makes [thing] sound …
• We sympathise with [character] because …
• The reason for this is …
• From this, we can note that …
• The reader can see from this that …
• The author writes … because …
• Therefore …
• Significantly …
• We can see from this that …
• The writer then moves on to …
• This shows that …
• Following this …
• Then …
• This then means that …
1. Read the question through once and then pause, before underlining the key elements of the question. Then read it through again.
2. Now read the extract/article/poems you have been given with a pen in your hand and holding the question in your head.
3. Every time you react to (or feel like you should be reacting to) something - underline it and note the reaction - even if it's just a smiley face or a sad face.
4. Hopefully by the end of this you have noticed about six-seven things - each of these things are a paragraph you can write about and you now have a plan.
5. For each thing you noticed - start each paragraph by saying what it is or what the writer does:
- Ballard uses graphic description ...
- Miller has Willy speak about ...
- The author of the article then uses ...
- Herbertson appears to say ...
- Owen uses the flowers to ...
- Jim also starts to ...
(if you notice - some of these points don't actually mention a specific technique - you can use the topic instead)
6. The give evidence of that technique
7. You then comment on it (where you explain it's relation to the question
Useful Comment and Analysis Phrases
• This is effective because …
• The use of the word …
• This shows [theme] because …
• The use of [technique] is effective …
• However, unlike in the [story] this is used because …
• The author has used this to …
• Describing [thing] in this way make …
• This makes [thing] sound …
• We sympathise with [character] because …
• The reason for this is …
• From this, we can note that …
• The reader can see from this that …
• The author writes … because …
• Therefore …
• Significantly …
• We can see from this that …
• The writer then moves on to …
• This shows that …
• Following this …
• Then …
• This then means that …
Punctuation: Websites that Can Show you How
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/english/writingtoimagine/puttingitallrev5.shtml
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/cgi-shl/quiz.pl/punct_quiz.htm
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/cgi-shl/quiz.pl/punct_quiz.htm
Revising the Summary Question
This is question 1 in your Media Non-Fiction Paper
Get someone(parents/siblings/friends) to find a newspaper article (Guardian and Times are pretty good) and to ask a question on it. For example
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/22/barbara-ellen-comedy
- According to the above article - what current criticisms are there about comedians
Then you bullet point the answers to the question - taking care to make sure it's in your own words.
You could even go one further and get the person to set you a two part question (which is common in the exam) such as:
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/personal_tech/article6924233.ece
- What advancements are Google making and what are the problems that are going to be caused by this?
Get someone(parents/siblings/friends) to find a newspaper article (Guardian and Times are pretty good) and to ask a question on it. For example
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/22/barbara-ellen-comedy
- According to the above article - what current criticisms are there about comedians
Then you bullet point the answers to the question - taking care to make sure it's in your own words.
You could even go one further and get the person to set you a two part question (which is common in the exam) such as:
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/personal_tech/article6924233.ece
- What advancements are Google making and what are the problems that are going to be caused by this?
Wednesday 11 November 2009
CRISIS LiD
Analysing extracts using the CRISIS LiD method - remember it's not just enough to identify the techniques - you must explain the effect of using them too.
Character - particular things revealed about certain characters (not just the main one)
Rhetorical - Rhetorical questions, repetition, sarcasm, quotation.
Imagery - This includes simple descriptive imagery, metaphor,simile, personification, symbolism (imagery that has particular significance or meaning in the text), motif (recurrent symbols or images that build up a meaning - Willy and the flute, Jim and the American Aircraft)
Speaker - Who is narrating the story, whose perspective are we seeing on the topic?
Irony - The use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning
Sounds - rhyme, rhythm, onomatopoeia
Dialogue - what characters says and what they do
i - remember that you are reading this - how are you expected to react?
Language - Literally word choice
Character - particular things revealed about certain characters (not just the main one)
Rhetorical - Rhetorical questions, repetition, sarcasm, quotation.
Imagery - This includes simple descriptive imagery, metaphor,simile, personification, symbolism (imagery that has particular significance or meaning in the text), motif (recurrent symbols or images that build up a meaning - Willy and the flute, Jim and the American Aircraft)
Speaker - Who is narrating the story, whose perspective are we seeing on the topic?
Irony - The use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning
Sounds - rhyme, rhythm, onomatopoeia
Dialogue - what characters says and what they do
i - remember that you are reading this - how are you expected to react?
Language - Literally word choice
Tuesday 10 November 2009
Studying and Revising a Text
Research the Author
• Biography
• Significant Influences
• Other Writing
Research the Context
• Historical Context: what historical events might be reflected in it?
• Social Context: what factors like race, class, religion and gender might it be exploring?
• Literary Context: what other writing might have influenced it, or what writing might it have influenced?
• Cultural Context: how might it relate to other arts, like music, painting and design
Read Actively
Always read with a pencil in your hand, underlining key points, and noting significant moments at the top of the page this will make you pay more attention to details and patterns as you read.
Summarise the Plot and Map the Structure
Using the notes you have collected during your reading, write down a point-form summary of the plot. Check through the text to ensure that you have everything in order and have not missed anything.
Then see if you can divide the plot into obvious sections. This will allow you to see the structure or how the text is constructed.
• Are some parts more important than others? Which are they? And why?
• Do patterns emerge? Do some themes or characters reappear at particular times or places?
• Do some characters change at particular stages?
• Is there a climax?
• Does your emotional response vary at different stages?
Study the Characters
Identify the main characters. Give each one an A4 page, and collect notes as many notes and quotations about them as you can. Then re-arrange your notes and quotations in logical order.
Remember, however, that you are not dealing with real people. They are all literary inventions, so ask yourself how the author has defined and presented them. Usually, we understand and form views on them through:
• What the author has them say
• What the author has them do
• What the author has them think
• What the author has others say about them
Consider these factors and explore what they reveal about each character.
Identify and Explore the Themes
Identify the main themes. Give each one an A4 page, and collect notes as many notes and quotations about them as you can.
One useful way to identify themes is to try setting exam questions. Look at exams questions and list the main themes they focus on. Then try setting your own questions in the same style but for different themes.
Now try planning and writing responses to your questions to force yourself into saying something about the themes. It is important that you do this, so that they don’t remain vague. You need to be able to write about them in considerable detail.
Analyse the Techniques
In English, whenever you write about a text, you are required to write about the author’s technique. In other words, you must not only consider WHAT the author is saying, but also HOW the author says it. You cannot gain high marks without it.
As always, ask yourself questions:
• Does the author have particularly characteristic techniques?
• Does the author use a particular type of language?
• Do particular words and phrases stand out?
• Are there particularly striking images or symbols, especially ones that recur throughout the text?
• From whose perspective do you see what happens in the text?
• Why has the author chosen this particular form over all the other possible forms for expressing the same ideas?
Collect Quotes
Just as you cannot gain high marks in English without analyzing techniques, you cannot do well without supporting everything with quotations.
Go through the text and write down as many of the most important quotations as you can. Rearrange them into groups, by theme and by character. Link them on diagrams.
Analyse, Plan and Write Exam-style Essays
Use the practice questions given in the lessons or on the blog. If you run out; then set your own.
• Biography
• Significant Influences
• Other Writing
Research the Context
• Historical Context: what historical events might be reflected in it?
• Social Context: what factors like race, class, religion and gender might it be exploring?
• Literary Context: what other writing might have influenced it, or what writing might it have influenced?
• Cultural Context: how might it relate to other arts, like music, painting and design
Read Actively
Always read with a pencil in your hand, underlining key points, and noting significant moments at the top of the page this will make you pay more attention to details and patterns as you read.
Summarise the Plot and Map the Structure
Using the notes you have collected during your reading, write down a point-form summary of the plot. Check through the text to ensure that you have everything in order and have not missed anything.
Then see if you can divide the plot into obvious sections. This will allow you to see the structure or how the text is constructed.
• Are some parts more important than others? Which are they? And why?
• Do patterns emerge? Do some themes or characters reappear at particular times or places?
• Do some characters change at particular stages?
• Is there a climax?
• Does your emotional response vary at different stages?
Study the Characters
Identify the main characters. Give each one an A4 page, and collect notes as many notes and quotations about them as you can. Then re-arrange your notes and quotations in logical order.
Remember, however, that you are not dealing with real people. They are all literary inventions, so ask yourself how the author has defined and presented them. Usually, we understand and form views on them through:
• What the author has them say
• What the author has them do
• What the author has them think
• What the author has others say about them
Consider these factors and explore what they reveal about each character.
Identify and Explore the Themes
Identify the main themes. Give each one an A4 page, and collect notes as many notes and quotations about them as you can.
One useful way to identify themes is to try setting exam questions. Look at exams questions and list the main themes they focus on. Then try setting your own questions in the same style but for different themes.
Now try planning and writing responses to your questions to force yourself into saying something about the themes. It is important that you do this, so that they don’t remain vague. You need to be able to write about them in considerable detail.
Analyse the Techniques
In English, whenever you write about a text, you are required to write about the author’s technique. In other words, you must not only consider WHAT the author is saying, but also HOW the author says it. You cannot gain high marks without it.
As always, ask yourself questions:
• Does the author have particularly characteristic techniques?
• Does the author use a particular type of language?
• Do particular words and phrases stand out?
• Are there particularly striking images or symbols, especially ones that recur throughout the text?
• From whose perspective do you see what happens in the text?
• Why has the author chosen this particular form over all the other possible forms for expressing the same ideas?
Collect Quotes
Just as you cannot gain high marks in English without analyzing techniques, you cannot do well without supporting everything with quotations.
Go through the text and write down as many of the most important quotations as you can. Rearrange them into groups, by theme and by character. Link them on diagrams.
Analyse, Plan and Write Exam-style Essays
Use the practice questions given in the lessons or on the blog. If you run out; then set your own.
Woeful Wonder of Woolies - Article
That's the woeful wonder of Woolies
Only one high street store could have provided a cheap counterblast to the excesses of the boom
Giles Coren
The death of Woolworths has dealt a serious blow to those of us who had been quietly celebrating the onset of recession as a counterbalance to the recent years of greed and slickness, and had hoped that it would herald the arrival of a new austerity.
Secretly, I had been longing for a return to the stiff, cold, clip-voiced, monochromatic world of the early 1950s, or the Blitz, or the Great Depression or the three-day week section of the 1970s, or, indeed, any of the impoverished and perilous periods of our recent past, which by rights ought to have been depressing, relentless and smelly, but about which old people bang on endlessly with a tear in the eye, remembering mostly the songs and the shagging.
I was all set to crack out a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles and a flat cap, grow a pencil moustache and belt my trousers around my armpits. I was looking forward to rubbish piled high in the streets, shoeless children in grey shorts playing cricket with shards of Spitfire in bombed-out cathedrals, family gatherings round the radio to hear optimistic prognostications from Gordon Brown (delivered from his nuclear bunker 10,000ft beneath the Peak District), three-mile walks to get the milk, scratchy woollen Home Guard fatigues, boiled horsemeat and other things that could, in later years, be funnelled willy-nilly into sentences beginning: “When I were a lad...”
Because to have filled my house with stuff from Woolworths would have been to embrace properly the deflated spirit of the age. It is the place where you can get absolutely everything, but in its crappest form. The same stuff as everywhere else, only worse.
If you didn't want to spend 40 quid on fairy lights for the Christmas tree, you could spend £4 on fairy lights from Woolies. They wouldn't actually light up, of course, and when you gave one of the bulbs a tweak to check it was screwed in properly you'd get all your teeth blown out of your head and your hair set on fire. You might spend the rest of Christmas in A&E, but the main thing was you were only down £4.
And if £9 seemed too much for a glass pie dish from John Lewis then you could get one from Woolies for £2.50 that would be smashed into a thousand pieces by the time you got it home on the bus (Woolworths customers always go home on the bus). And if it wasn't, then it would shatter as soon as you turned on the oven.
Woolworths was for people who had no money but still wanted to buy things: “Only £3 for this lidless thermos flask?” “A mere fiver for this AM-only radio with a battery flap that doesn't quite close?” Best of all, it was sold to you by a surly woman wearing a badly pilled, red polyester fleece who suspected you of shoplifting. Oh, the wonder of it.
I love the crapola Britain signified by Woolies, and was so hoping that we would be driven back to it. I thought in these hard times it would be all the new shops and services that would go - all the fancy foreign imports, the good coffee, the colourful food, the sexy clothes, the slick technology - and that Britain would return to those days of long and seemingly endless yore when all things British were rubbish, and we just didn't care.
But the closure of Woolies suggests that the traditional core values of what I fondly call “Crap Britain” are going to be lost, after all. Look at Little Chef. Only yesterday the relaunch by Heston Fancy-Pants Blumenthal was unveiled at Popham in Hampshire. It's all free-range eggs, green tea trifle and 72-hour braised ox-cheeks. And there was I, looking forward to embracing the grimness of the current climate by pulling off a wet dual carriageway to sit at a greasy table, swallowing slices of clumsily slaughtered factory pig washed down with bog-water coffee, then getting knifed by a trucker in the outside loo.
Woolies, Little Chef, what next? Ginsters? Panda Pops? Mr Whippy? It's all going. Almost all gone. The grey, damp, crappy underbelly of the ancient British consumer culture is being stripped away, and when this crash reaches its lowest point, who knows now what we will find there?
Gordon Brown tried this week to keep Woolworths afloat till Christmas. At first glance it might look very strange for a government to want to sustain a chain of shops that is worthy but broken, anachronistic, shabby, grim, depressing and with no viable future. But then he's only human. And I guess he knows just how it feels.
2) What techniques does Giles Coren use to interest his readers in the recent Woolworths story?
(Adjusted from Giles Coren's Article from the Times: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/giles_coren/article5254250.ece)
Only one high street store could have provided a cheap counterblast to the excesses of the boom
Giles Coren
The death of Woolworths has dealt a serious blow to those of us who had been quietly celebrating the onset of recession as a counterbalance to the recent years of greed and slickness, and had hoped that it would herald the arrival of a new austerity.
Secretly, I had been longing for a return to the stiff, cold, clip-voiced, monochromatic world of the early 1950s, or the Blitz, or the Great Depression or the three-day week section of the 1970s, or, indeed, any of the impoverished and perilous periods of our recent past, which by rights ought to have been depressing, relentless and smelly, but about which old people bang on endlessly with a tear in the eye, remembering mostly the songs and the shagging.
I was all set to crack out a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles and a flat cap, grow a pencil moustache and belt my trousers around my armpits. I was looking forward to rubbish piled high in the streets, shoeless children in grey shorts playing cricket with shards of Spitfire in bombed-out cathedrals, family gatherings round the radio to hear optimistic prognostications from Gordon Brown (delivered from his nuclear bunker 10,000ft beneath the Peak District), three-mile walks to get the milk, scratchy woollen Home Guard fatigues, boiled horsemeat and other things that could, in later years, be funnelled willy-nilly into sentences beginning: “When I were a lad...”
Because to have filled my house with stuff from Woolworths would have been to embrace properly the deflated spirit of the age. It is the place where you can get absolutely everything, but in its crappest form. The same stuff as everywhere else, only worse.
If you didn't want to spend 40 quid on fairy lights for the Christmas tree, you could spend £4 on fairy lights from Woolies. They wouldn't actually light up, of course, and when you gave one of the bulbs a tweak to check it was screwed in properly you'd get all your teeth blown out of your head and your hair set on fire. You might spend the rest of Christmas in A&E, but the main thing was you were only down £4.
And if £9 seemed too much for a glass pie dish from John Lewis then you could get one from Woolies for £2.50 that would be smashed into a thousand pieces by the time you got it home on the bus (Woolworths customers always go home on the bus). And if it wasn't, then it would shatter as soon as you turned on the oven.
Woolworths was for people who had no money but still wanted to buy things: “Only £3 for this lidless thermos flask?” “A mere fiver for this AM-only radio with a battery flap that doesn't quite close?” Best of all, it was sold to you by a surly woman wearing a badly pilled, red polyester fleece who suspected you of shoplifting. Oh, the wonder of it.
I love the crapola Britain signified by Woolies, and was so hoping that we would be driven back to it. I thought in these hard times it would be all the new shops and services that would go - all the fancy foreign imports, the good coffee, the colourful food, the sexy clothes, the slick technology - and that Britain would return to those days of long and seemingly endless yore when all things British were rubbish, and we just didn't care.
But the closure of Woolies suggests that the traditional core values of what I fondly call “Crap Britain” are going to be lost, after all. Look at Little Chef. Only yesterday the relaunch by Heston Fancy-Pants Blumenthal was unveiled at Popham in Hampshire. It's all free-range eggs, green tea trifle and 72-hour braised ox-cheeks. And there was I, looking forward to embracing the grimness of the current climate by pulling off a wet dual carriageway to sit at a greasy table, swallowing slices of clumsily slaughtered factory pig washed down with bog-water coffee, then getting knifed by a trucker in the outside loo.
Woolies, Little Chef, what next? Ginsters? Panda Pops? Mr Whippy? It's all going. Almost all gone. The grey, damp, crappy underbelly of the ancient British consumer culture is being stripped away, and when this crash reaches its lowest point, who knows now what we will find there?
Gordon Brown tried this week to keep Woolworths afloat till Christmas. At first glance it might look very strange for a government to want to sustain a chain of shops that is worthy but broken, anachronistic, shabby, grim, depressing and with no viable future. But then he's only human. And I guess he knows just how it feels.
2) What techniques does Giles Coren use to interest his readers in the recent Woolworths story?
(Adjusted from Giles Coren's Article from the Times: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/giles_coren/article5254250.ece)
Poetry Revision Tips
General tips for looking at poems
1. What is the poem about?
Try to summarise the main subject of the poem in one or two lines
2. Who is speaking in the poem? To whom?
Is it the poet’s voice speaking in the poem or is the voice of someone else? Who is the poet speaking to? Are they speaking to you? To themselves? Is there another voice in the poem?
3. How does the poem convey its message?
Verses – what can you say about the poem’s appearance? Why has the poet presented it in this way?
Imagery – what are the main images? Which are particularly striking? Are there any comparisons? similes?, metaphors?, personification?
Alliteration/Assonance – how do repeated consonant or vowel sounds affect the sound of the poem?
Rhythm/Rhyme – what effect do the rhymes have? How does the poem move? Does it have a light rhythm, slow rhythm?
Punctuation – what does this tell you about how the poem should be read?
Mood – what is the mood of the poem?
4. Why do you think the poet has written the poem?
How does the poet feel about the reader? Are you being pleaded with, mocked, laughed at, preached to? Is the poem trying to move you, persuade you, entertain you?
5. What is your personal response to the poem?
How did you react to the poem? Did it move you, make you think/feel? Do you think the poem is effective?
1. What is the poem about?
Try to summarise the main subject of the poem in one or two lines
2. Who is speaking in the poem? To whom?
Is it the poet’s voice speaking in the poem or is the voice of someone else? Who is the poet speaking to? Are they speaking to you? To themselves? Is there another voice in the poem?
3. How does the poem convey its message?
Verses – what can you say about the poem’s appearance? Why has the poet presented it in this way?
Imagery – what are the main images? Which are particularly striking? Are there any comparisons? similes?, metaphors?, personification?
Alliteration/Assonance – how do repeated consonant or vowel sounds affect the sound of the poem?
Rhythm/Rhyme – what effect do the rhymes have? How does the poem move? Does it have a light rhythm, slow rhythm?
Punctuation – what does this tell you about how the poem should be read?
Mood – what is the mood of the poem?
4. Why do you think the poet has written the poem?
How does the poet feel about the reader? Are you being pleaded with, mocked, laughed at, preached to? Is the poem trying to move you, persuade you, entertain you?
5. What is your personal response to the poem?
How did you react to the poem? Did it move you, make you think/feel? Do you think the poem is effective?
War Poems
Recruiting” E.A. Mackintosh
“Recruiting” shows that the reality of war is different to the propaganda recruitment, the poem contains bitter criticism of the politicians who sent the soldiers off to war and the journalists who write about it. The poem comments on the recruitment drive in Britain; taking issue in particular with posters encouraging young men to sign up to the army. Mackintosh focuses on the discrepancy between the image of war as presented by the advertising campaign of the “fat civilians” and the reality of war as experienced by the young “lads” called up to fight.
“Joining the Colours” Katherine Tynan Hinkson
The poem tells of a regiment of soldiers leaving Dublin to fight in France; written from a female perspective the poem juxtaposes (directly contrasts) images of the innocent naivety of the young soldiers with images of death. The poet speaks of the sad realization that the love felt for these men by the women left at home “cannot save” the soldiers from their uncertain futures and likely deaths.
“The Target” Ivor Gurney
“The Target” is told from the perspective of a soldier who agonises over a man he has killed. The soldier says that his mother lives in fear of his death, the speaker suggests that it might be better for his mother if he died so that she might at least find some peace in not having to worry about him anymore. The soldier then goes on to contemplate the situation of the soldier that he shot, and remembers that the man he shot is another mother’s son. The soldier feels that God gives no guidance and does not seem to care. The speaker wonders who “felt the bullet worst” – he questions whether it is better to be the soldier shot than the soldier who did the shooting and has to live with the guilt of taking another’s life. The poem ends in disillusionment calling the war a “bloody mess indeed”.
The Send-off” Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen’s poem, “The Send-Off” was written at Ripon where there was a huge army camp. The troops in the poem have just come from a sending-off ceremony of cheering crowds, bells, drums, and flowers given by strangers; the troops are now being packed into trains for an unknown destination. From the beginning of the poem the atmosphere is sinister, the lanes are “darkening” and claustrophobic, the crowds have gone and the troops are watched only by the “dull” and uninspiring faces of a porter and lowly tramp. The flowers pinned on the chests of the soldiers in celebration become for the speaker of the poem the funeral flowers garlanding the soldiers for the slaughter that awaits them in war. The departure of the soldiers for war is secret, it is “like wrongs hushed up”, the cheering celebration of the hours before becomes a smoke screen for the harsh solemnity of war.
“Spring Offensive” Wilfred Owen
In a letter dated 25th April 1917, Wilfred Owen recalls a day in which “we were rushed up into line. Twice in one day we went over the top, gaining both our objectives. Our “ “A” company led the attack and of course lost a certain number of men. I had some extraordinary escapes from shells and bullets”. Owen’s poem “Spring Offensive” is an account of the action, its prologue and aftermath and the men involved in it. The poem is composed of six stanzas; each describes a different phase of the attack – the scene, the pause before the attack, the tension, the attack, the casualties, and the survivors.
“The Bohemians” Ivor Gurney
A bohemian is someone who is unconventional, rebellious and does not conform.
The poem discusses the different people who join up to the army satirizing the punishments the soldiers received for not wearing the correct uniform. The individuality of the soldiers is erased. The soldiers who “burnished brasses, earned promotions” - the soldiers who conformed to the army rules were promoted. However as the poem progresses the speaker suggests that the soldiers no longer need to worry about conforming or not conforming as they eventually “died off one by one”: “In Artois or Picardy they lie – free of useless fashions” – ultimately conforming proved “useless”.
Lamentations Siegfried Sassoon
Sassoon’s poem, “Lamentations”, is a funeral song. The speaker of the poem describes the pain and anguish of a young soldier, who after having been told of the death of his brother, had to be removed to the guard room. The speaker hearing the pain of the grieved man entered into the guard room where the young soldier had broken down. A sergeant looks on puzzled and patiently at the man half-naked kneeling on the floor. The guard appears to lack compassion and understanding for the situation of the grieving man.
The poem establishes a contrast between the reality of war as experienced by the grieving soldier and the sergeant who has experienced no personal cost for the war. It is ambiguous as to whether the poem’s title refers to the pain of the young soldier or laments the lack of pity and understanding of the unfeeling guard. For the speaker of the poem, men like the sergeant have lost all “patriotic feeling” since they can no longer empathise with the pain and suffering of the grieving relatives. The soldier who has lost his brother is in such despair he would not be interested in fighting for a country which has effectively killed his brother.
“The Deserter” Winifred M. Letts
In the First World War many soldiers suffered from shell shock which was not generally recognized as a condition at the time. They ran off from the guns and were shot as deserters.
The speaker of Winifred M. Letts’s poem tells of the fate of a deserter, the deserter is not named – it could be any soldier. The story of the deserter is told sympathetically, imagining the fear felt by the soldier who ran off only to be caught and shot by his own army. The speaker tells of the deserter’s mother who thinks her son died a hero, serving his country in battle. The speaker suggests that it is best for the mother not to know that her son “lies in a deserter’s grave”.
“The Falling Leavcs” Margaret Postgate Cole
The actual falling leaves in this poem symbolise the falling solidiers who are dying in the battlefield. The poet uses what we call in poetry an extended metaphor. The leaves are the soldiers. The persona is riding a horse in the autumn time. She observes the leaves turning brown and falling from the trees and her mind is cast to the young men fighting and literally falling to their deaths at war.
The poem is written in one sentence as one long stanza consisting of twelve lines. This is because it is a single thought which has consumed her there and then.
Usually when leaves die in nature they are swept away by the wind, but these leaves are falling like snowflakes from the trees on a ‘still afternoon’ and the speaker finds it odd. This prompts her to consider how the soldiers die ‘slain by no wind or age or pestilence’.
“In Flanders Fields” John McCraye
Sickened by what he had seen during the Boer War, John McCrae nevertheless signed up in August 1914, and headed for France with his horse, Bonfire, in tow. He would have found few opportunities for riding in that hell on earth. Knee deep in mud and freezing water, men's feet rotted where they stood, waiting for the next attack of gas to insinuate its way down the trenches, or the signal to go "over the top", often into direct machine gun fire.
McCrae wrote "In Flanders Fields" the day after presiding at the funeral of a friend and former student. McCrae was to number among the 9,000,000 fatalities that the war would claim.
Poppy seed will lie in the ground for years if the soil is undisturbed. That churned up cemetery known as the Western Front provided the ideal medium for masses of poppies to blanket the graves. By the 1920s, Legion Branches were selling the paper flowers to: provide assistance to needy ex-servicemen and their families, to build housing for seniors, and support programmes like meals-on-wheels, drop-in centres, etc. Buy and wear a poppy. It is simple, painless way to recognize contributions and sacrifices barely imaginable to us.
Like ‘The Falling Leaves’, the poem relies heavily on visual imagery.
“The Seed-Merchant’s Son” Agnes Grozier Herbertson
The poet chose to make the subject of her poem the son of someone who grows and sells seeds. Herbertson probably chose this occupation because seeds signify new life and the possibility of growth and renewal. The poem gives many facts about the young soldier who died, this emphasizes the youthfulness of the boy – his “bright, bright eyes” and “cheeks all red”; he is “fair and healthy and long of limb”. The seed merchant is described as being old to have such a young son. The poet sympathises with the man and the fact that his family line will now and with him and unlike the seeds will not be renewed. The speaker questions what we can say to a man in his situation. The answer to her question comes from her observations of the seed-merchant himself as she observes him looking at the seeds in his hand and the realization that life will go on. The seed-merchant manages to keep his faith in God as he thanks God – he thought that life was over but realizes it is not when he looks at the seed.
“The Parable of the Old Man and the Young” Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen chooses to base his poem on the biblical story of Abraham and his son Isaac. In the bible when Abraham has demonstrated his obedience, God sends a ram for Abraham to sacrifice rather than his son. The bible story is meant to emphasise the mercy of God. Abraham is considered the father of the Jewish people and also is important in Islam. The story parallels God’s later sacrifice of his own son Jesus Christ, to redeem the sins of the world.
Owen reworks the traditional parable setting his story in the trenches of World War One rather than in the Holy Land. Owen’s poem is a sinister reworking of the parable in which Abraham becomes representative of the British government and instead of sacrificing the Ram of Pride chooses to slay his son and “half the seed of Europe”. The failure of the Angel to persuade Abraham to slay the Ram suggests that the war could have been prevented had proper negotiations taken place. The speaker of the poem feels that the government have gone against the teachings of God.
“Spring in War-Time” Edith Nesbitt
The female speaker of the poem addresses a lost lover, she laments the passing of the seasons and the fact that she shall no longer walks down “lover’s lane” with her beau. Spring, which holds connotations of new life, only serves to remind the speaker of the poem of what she has lost and will not experience. She remembers the previous spring when she and her lover were, like the birds, ready to build a nest (home). The comparison of the lovers to the nesting birds emphasizes the lost opportunities of the women left behind. “Lover’s lane” named so because it was often frequented by lovers is evocative of the marital tradition of showering newly weds in confetti as the blossoming flowers scatter their petals on the road.
“Perhaps –“ Vera Brittain
Written in five quatrains the speaker reflects on the beauty of nature around her which she can no longer appreciate. The speaker uses nature to demonstrate the passing of time and her feelings of grief for her lost lover.
The speaker questions whether she will ever be able to appreciate the beauty of nature again after experiencing such loss. The poem is both personal and universal in its address, the capitalization of “Yon” is both the speaker’s named lover and the name of any loved one lost in the war.
The ending is poignant and optimistic at the same time and reflects the British fashion of resilience common during the period. Time is a healer and life does go on. Nature aids the process of grief as it a constant phenomenon and continues to live on and provide familiar structure for those coping with loss.
Five quatrains are used with a rhyme scheme of abab cdcd efef ghgh ijij. This reflects the monotony of the seasons and the steady rhythm of change.
The poem would have been appreciated by many young women at the time since such a vast number of men died during the war, and as a consequence the birth rate dropped significantly and many women lived their lives as spinsters or widows.
‘Reported Missing’ by Anna Gordon Keown
This is a Shakespearian sonnet since it has the structure of abba cddc effe gg. Sonnets were traditionally about love. It is ambiguous as to whether the speaker in this poem is the soldier’s mother or lover. It is moving because the speaker is in denial and will soon have to accept the death of the missing soldier. The poem can be divided into two sections – the first 12 lines express anger at the manner in which others so readily assume that the soldier is dead, the final rhyming lines express her certainty that he will he is not dead and will come again. The final lines are poignant as the reader realizes that one day the speaker will have to accept that the soldier is not returning to her.
“Recruiting” shows that the reality of war is different to the propaganda recruitment, the poem contains bitter criticism of the politicians who sent the soldiers off to war and the journalists who write about it. The poem comments on the recruitment drive in Britain; taking issue in particular with posters encouraging young men to sign up to the army. Mackintosh focuses on the discrepancy between the image of war as presented by the advertising campaign of the “fat civilians” and the reality of war as experienced by the young “lads” called up to fight.
“Joining the Colours” Katherine Tynan Hinkson
The poem tells of a regiment of soldiers leaving Dublin to fight in France; written from a female perspective the poem juxtaposes (directly contrasts) images of the innocent naivety of the young soldiers with images of death. The poet speaks of the sad realization that the love felt for these men by the women left at home “cannot save” the soldiers from their uncertain futures and likely deaths.
“The Target” Ivor Gurney
“The Target” is told from the perspective of a soldier who agonises over a man he has killed. The soldier says that his mother lives in fear of his death, the speaker suggests that it might be better for his mother if he died so that she might at least find some peace in not having to worry about him anymore. The soldier then goes on to contemplate the situation of the soldier that he shot, and remembers that the man he shot is another mother’s son. The soldier feels that God gives no guidance and does not seem to care. The speaker wonders who “felt the bullet worst” – he questions whether it is better to be the soldier shot than the soldier who did the shooting and has to live with the guilt of taking another’s life. The poem ends in disillusionment calling the war a “bloody mess indeed”.
The Send-off” Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen’s poem, “The Send-Off” was written at Ripon where there was a huge army camp. The troops in the poem have just come from a sending-off ceremony of cheering crowds, bells, drums, and flowers given by strangers; the troops are now being packed into trains for an unknown destination. From the beginning of the poem the atmosphere is sinister, the lanes are “darkening” and claustrophobic, the crowds have gone and the troops are watched only by the “dull” and uninspiring faces of a porter and lowly tramp. The flowers pinned on the chests of the soldiers in celebration become for the speaker of the poem the funeral flowers garlanding the soldiers for the slaughter that awaits them in war. The departure of the soldiers for war is secret, it is “like wrongs hushed up”, the cheering celebration of the hours before becomes a smoke screen for the harsh solemnity of war.
“Spring Offensive” Wilfred Owen
In a letter dated 25th April 1917, Wilfred Owen recalls a day in which “we were rushed up into line. Twice in one day we went over the top, gaining both our objectives. Our “ “A” company led the attack and of course lost a certain number of men. I had some extraordinary escapes from shells and bullets”. Owen’s poem “Spring Offensive” is an account of the action, its prologue and aftermath and the men involved in it. The poem is composed of six stanzas; each describes a different phase of the attack – the scene, the pause before the attack, the tension, the attack, the casualties, and the survivors.
“The Bohemians” Ivor Gurney
A bohemian is someone who is unconventional, rebellious and does not conform.
The poem discusses the different people who join up to the army satirizing the punishments the soldiers received for not wearing the correct uniform. The individuality of the soldiers is erased. The soldiers who “burnished brasses, earned promotions” - the soldiers who conformed to the army rules were promoted. However as the poem progresses the speaker suggests that the soldiers no longer need to worry about conforming or not conforming as they eventually “died off one by one”: “In Artois or Picardy they lie – free of useless fashions” – ultimately conforming proved “useless”.
Lamentations Siegfried Sassoon
Sassoon’s poem, “Lamentations”, is a funeral song. The speaker of the poem describes the pain and anguish of a young soldier, who after having been told of the death of his brother, had to be removed to the guard room. The speaker hearing the pain of the grieved man entered into the guard room where the young soldier had broken down. A sergeant looks on puzzled and patiently at the man half-naked kneeling on the floor. The guard appears to lack compassion and understanding for the situation of the grieving man.
The poem establishes a contrast between the reality of war as experienced by the grieving soldier and the sergeant who has experienced no personal cost for the war. It is ambiguous as to whether the poem’s title refers to the pain of the young soldier or laments the lack of pity and understanding of the unfeeling guard. For the speaker of the poem, men like the sergeant have lost all “patriotic feeling” since they can no longer empathise with the pain and suffering of the grieving relatives. The soldier who has lost his brother is in such despair he would not be interested in fighting for a country which has effectively killed his brother.
“The Deserter” Winifred M. Letts
In the First World War many soldiers suffered from shell shock which was not generally recognized as a condition at the time. They ran off from the guns and were shot as deserters.
The speaker of Winifred M. Letts’s poem tells of the fate of a deserter, the deserter is not named – it could be any soldier. The story of the deserter is told sympathetically, imagining the fear felt by the soldier who ran off only to be caught and shot by his own army. The speaker tells of the deserter’s mother who thinks her son died a hero, serving his country in battle. The speaker suggests that it is best for the mother not to know that her son “lies in a deserter’s grave”.
“The Falling Leavcs” Margaret Postgate Cole
The actual falling leaves in this poem symbolise the falling solidiers who are dying in the battlefield. The poet uses what we call in poetry an extended metaphor. The leaves are the soldiers. The persona is riding a horse in the autumn time. She observes the leaves turning brown and falling from the trees and her mind is cast to the young men fighting and literally falling to their deaths at war.
The poem is written in one sentence as one long stanza consisting of twelve lines. This is because it is a single thought which has consumed her there and then.
Usually when leaves die in nature they are swept away by the wind, but these leaves are falling like snowflakes from the trees on a ‘still afternoon’ and the speaker finds it odd. This prompts her to consider how the soldiers die ‘slain by no wind or age or pestilence’.
“In Flanders Fields” John McCraye
Sickened by what he had seen during the Boer War, John McCrae nevertheless signed up in August 1914, and headed for France with his horse, Bonfire, in tow. He would have found few opportunities for riding in that hell on earth. Knee deep in mud and freezing water, men's feet rotted where they stood, waiting for the next attack of gas to insinuate its way down the trenches, or the signal to go "over the top", often into direct machine gun fire.
McCrae wrote "In Flanders Fields" the day after presiding at the funeral of a friend and former student. McCrae was to number among the 9,000,000 fatalities that the war would claim.
Poppy seed will lie in the ground for years if the soil is undisturbed. That churned up cemetery known as the Western Front provided the ideal medium for masses of poppies to blanket the graves. By the 1920s, Legion Branches were selling the paper flowers to: provide assistance to needy ex-servicemen and their families, to build housing for seniors, and support programmes like meals-on-wheels, drop-in centres, etc. Buy and wear a poppy. It is simple, painless way to recognize contributions and sacrifices barely imaginable to us.
Like ‘The Falling Leaves’, the poem relies heavily on visual imagery.
“The Seed-Merchant’s Son” Agnes Grozier Herbertson
The poet chose to make the subject of her poem the son of someone who grows and sells seeds. Herbertson probably chose this occupation because seeds signify new life and the possibility of growth and renewal. The poem gives many facts about the young soldier who died, this emphasizes the youthfulness of the boy – his “bright, bright eyes” and “cheeks all red”; he is “fair and healthy and long of limb”. The seed merchant is described as being old to have such a young son. The poet sympathises with the man and the fact that his family line will now and with him and unlike the seeds will not be renewed. The speaker questions what we can say to a man in his situation. The answer to her question comes from her observations of the seed-merchant himself as she observes him looking at the seeds in his hand and the realization that life will go on. The seed-merchant manages to keep his faith in God as he thanks God – he thought that life was over but realizes it is not when he looks at the seed.
“The Parable of the Old Man and the Young” Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen chooses to base his poem on the biblical story of Abraham and his son Isaac. In the bible when Abraham has demonstrated his obedience, God sends a ram for Abraham to sacrifice rather than his son. The bible story is meant to emphasise the mercy of God. Abraham is considered the father of the Jewish people and also is important in Islam. The story parallels God’s later sacrifice of his own son Jesus Christ, to redeem the sins of the world.
Owen reworks the traditional parable setting his story in the trenches of World War One rather than in the Holy Land. Owen’s poem is a sinister reworking of the parable in which Abraham becomes representative of the British government and instead of sacrificing the Ram of Pride chooses to slay his son and “half the seed of Europe”. The failure of the Angel to persuade Abraham to slay the Ram suggests that the war could have been prevented had proper negotiations taken place. The speaker of the poem feels that the government have gone against the teachings of God.
“Spring in War-Time” Edith Nesbitt
The female speaker of the poem addresses a lost lover, she laments the passing of the seasons and the fact that she shall no longer walks down “lover’s lane” with her beau. Spring, which holds connotations of new life, only serves to remind the speaker of the poem of what she has lost and will not experience. She remembers the previous spring when she and her lover were, like the birds, ready to build a nest (home). The comparison of the lovers to the nesting birds emphasizes the lost opportunities of the women left behind. “Lover’s lane” named so because it was often frequented by lovers is evocative of the marital tradition of showering newly weds in confetti as the blossoming flowers scatter their petals on the road.
“Perhaps –“ Vera Brittain
Written in five quatrains the speaker reflects on the beauty of nature around her which she can no longer appreciate. The speaker uses nature to demonstrate the passing of time and her feelings of grief for her lost lover.
The speaker questions whether she will ever be able to appreciate the beauty of nature again after experiencing such loss. The poem is both personal and universal in its address, the capitalization of “Yon” is both the speaker’s named lover and the name of any loved one lost in the war.
The ending is poignant and optimistic at the same time and reflects the British fashion of resilience common during the period. Time is a healer and life does go on. Nature aids the process of grief as it a constant phenomenon and continues to live on and provide familiar structure for those coping with loss.
Five quatrains are used with a rhyme scheme of abab cdcd efef ghgh ijij. This reflects the monotony of the seasons and the steady rhythm of change.
The poem would have been appreciated by many young women at the time since such a vast number of men died during the war, and as a consequence the birth rate dropped significantly and many women lived their lives as spinsters or widows.
‘Reported Missing’ by Anna Gordon Keown
This is a Shakespearian sonnet since it has the structure of abba cddc effe gg. Sonnets were traditionally about love. It is ambiguous as to whether the speaker in this poem is the soldier’s mother or lover. It is moving because the speaker is in denial and will soon have to accept the death of the missing soldier. The poem can be divided into two sections – the first 12 lines express anger at the manner in which others so readily assume that the soldier is dead, the final rhyming lines express her certainty that he will he is not dead and will come again. The final lines are poignant as the reader realizes that one day the speaker will have to accept that the soldier is not returning to her.
Rules of Essay Writing
The standard structure of an essay (in this case with three major points) should look like this:
• Be direct: get straight to the point and cut out unnecessary waffle and background material.
• Be precise: think carefully about exactly what you mean and how best to say it. Don’t hope that a vague thought will work itself out as you write it.
• Be economical: Think of words as money: you need to spend enough to get the point across, but you want to spend no more than you absolutely have to.
• Be formal: this is an essay and all essays are formal. Being colloquial or casual in your writing gets you no marks and makes you look like you don’t know your stuff.
• Don’t re-narrate the story: the examiners will already know what happens and don’t need you to tell them. It simply shows you cannot analyse.
• Be objective, or impersonal: say “Willy’s speeches suggest that he lacks self-confidence”, rather than “I think Willy lacks self-confidence”. The first is a strong statement presented as fact; the second is mere opinion. Examiners are not friends; they need to be told properly!
• Write about literature in the present tense: say “Willy lacks [present] confidence throughout the play and his confidence is [present] in dependant on other characters such as Ben.”, rather than “Willy lacked [past] confidence in the. We do this because the text exists now and we are reading it text now so the characters exist now.
• Remember names and titles: The amount of students that get the title of the play wrong, the author wrong or names of characters wrong is quite shocking. Make sure you know who wrote the text, who the characters are and most importantly what the title is.
• Be direct: get straight to the point and cut out unnecessary waffle and background material.
• Be precise: think carefully about exactly what you mean and how best to say it. Don’t hope that a vague thought will work itself out as you write it.
• Be economical: Think of words as money: you need to spend enough to get the point across, but you want to spend no more than you absolutely have to.
• Be formal: this is an essay and all essays are formal. Being colloquial or casual in your writing gets you no marks and makes you look like you don’t know your stuff.
• Don’t re-narrate the story: the examiners will already know what happens and don’t need you to tell them. It simply shows you cannot analyse.
• Be objective, or impersonal: say “Willy’s speeches suggest that he lacks self-confidence”, rather than “I think Willy lacks self-confidence”. The first is a strong statement presented as fact; the second is mere opinion. Examiners are not friends; they need to be told properly!
• Write about literature in the present tense: say “Willy lacks [present] confidence throughout the play and his confidence is [present] in dependant on other characters such as Ben.”, rather than “Willy lacked [past] confidence in the. We do this because the text exists now and we are reading it text now so the characters exist now.
• Remember names and titles: The amount of students that get the title of the play wrong, the author wrong or names of characters wrong is quite shocking. Make sure you know who wrote the text, who the characters are and most importantly what the title is.
Map of an Essay
The Map of an Essay
An Introduction
• This is essentially your essay plan in sentence form.
• Begin with a clear, direct line of response to the question.
• Then briefly state the main points that will become your paragraphs.
• Your introduction should be short and should get straight to the point.
• Unless the question asks for it, do not waste time outlining the plot of the text, explaining the relationship between characters, or providing pointless details about the author’s biography – it wastes time and that’s what Wikipedia is for!
A Body of Logical Paragraphs
• In every paragraph, begin with a statement that identifies the point of the paragraph
• Then provide evidence (quotes) or examples to support your statement
• Then explain (comment) how your evidence supports your statement, and analyse the language and details of your example by focusing on:
• specific words, images, techniques, etc.
• what effects they have
• how they support your point
Optional Extra you can also follow this with a related subpoint (which might be another example, a closely related argument or a counter-argument) or simply move onto your next paragraph. (you will not lose marks if you don’t do this!)
A Conclusion
• Briefly re-state how your main points support your overall line of response to the question.
• Do not introduce any new points.
An Introduction
• This is essentially your essay plan in sentence form.
• Begin with a clear, direct line of response to the question.
• Then briefly state the main points that will become your paragraphs.
• Your introduction should be short and should get straight to the point.
• Unless the question asks for it, do not waste time outlining the plot of the text, explaining the relationship between characters, or providing pointless details about the author’s biography – it wastes time and that’s what Wikipedia is for!
A Body of Logical Paragraphs
• In every paragraph, begin with a statement that identifies the point of the paragraph
• Then provide evidence (quotes) or examples to support your statement
• Then explain (comment) how your evidence supports your statement, and analyse the language and details of your example by focusing on:
• specific words, images, techniques, etc.
• what effects they have
• how they support your point
Optional Extra you can also follow this with a related subpoint (which might be another example, a closely related argument or a counter-argument) or simply move onto your next paragraph. (you will not lose marks if you don’t do this!)
A Conclusion
• Briefly re-state how your main points support your overall line of response to the question.
• Do not introduce any new points.
Essay Writing
All I wanted to know about writing an essay but were afraid to ask
Being able to write a good essay is vital to the exam because you will be assessed not only on what you write, but also on how you write it.
Therefore, you should:
1. analyse, think, plan and draft
2. write with a clear structure: introduction, body, conclusion
3. use evidence and quotations (you will get a very low mark if you do not quote!)
4. leave a minute or two at the end to check your work (an examiner will ignore crossing out and will read any additions you make as long as you make your corrections clear!)
The first step is to analyse the question in order to determine exactly what you are being asked:
• Underline the key words in the question: e.g. Willy’s relationship with Biff is the most flawed one in the play. How far is this true?
• Think about what each word means and what it is looking for. The example question is obviously asking you to argue for a point and consider any other points of view.
Then think about your response the question:
• Brainstorm between three and six points you could analyse: e.g. Willy’s expectations of Biff, Willy’s morality issues, influence of Ben on Willy, Willy’s arguing with Biff, Biff’s lying and responses.
• Put these points into a logical order by numbering them.
• Consider alternative interpretations: e.g that Willy’s relationship with Biff is NOT the most flawed one in the play.
• Consider what sections you could relate to this to: e.g. restaurant scene, flashback to the ball game.
• Decide on a clear line of response that actually answers the question. This will become the first sentence of your essay: e.g. In Death of a Salesman Willy’s relationship with Biff is the most flawed one in the play.
Being able to write a good essay is vital to the exam because you will be assessed not only on what you write, but also on how you write it.
Therefore, you should:
1. analyse, think, plan and draft
2. write with a clear structure: introduction, body, conclusion
3. use evidence and quotations (you will get a very low mark if you do not quote!)
4. leave a minute or two at the end to check your work (an examiner will ignore crossing out and will read any additions you make as long as you make your corrections clear!)
The first step is to analyse the question in order to determine exactly what you are being asked:
• Underline the key words in the question: e.g. Willy’s relationship with Biff is the most flawed one in the play. How far is this true?
• Think about what each word means and what it is looking for. The example question is obviously asking you to argue for a point and consider any other points of view.
Then think about your response the question:
• Brainstorm between three and six points you could analyse: e.g. Willy’s expectations of Biff, Willy’s morality issues, influence of Ben on Willy, Willy’s arguing with Biff, Biff’s lying and responses.
• Put these points into a logical order by numbering them.
• Consider alternative interpretations: e.g that Willy’s relationship with Biff is NOT the most flawed one in the play.
• Consider what sections you could relate to this to: e.g. restaurant scene, flashback to the ball game.
• Decide on a clear line of response that actually answers the question. This will become the first sentence of your essay: e.g. In Death of a Salesman Willy’s relationship with Biff is the most flawed one in the play.
Layout of the English and Literature Exams
English Language Exams
Non-Fiction, Media and Information - Written Examination - 1 hour 45 minutes - 30%
Three tasks will be set in the examination:
Section A: Assessment objective: READING 20%
Task 1 will require candidates to distinguish between fact and opinion, select and collate material, and to cross-refer between texts.
Task 2 will require candidates to follow an argument, to identify implications and inconsistencies, and/or to evaluate how information is presented (e.g. to comment on the characteristic features)
Section B: Assessment Objective: WRITING 10%
Candidates will be required to produce a piece of continuous writing to inform, explain, describe, on a topic broadly linked to the reading material provided.
Different Cultures, Analysis and Argument -Written Examination – 1 hour 45 minutes - 30%
Three tasks will be set in the examination.
Section A [Open Book]: Assessment Objective: READING 10%
Candidates will be required to complete one task, based on reading of Opening Worlds.
Tasks will require candidates to respond to distinctive aspects of texts from different cultures and traditions by exploring the ways in which writers use language and structure to create character/setting/theme.
Section B: Assessment Objective: WRITING
20%
Two tasks will be set.
In response to stimulus material, candidates will be required to produce two pieces of writing: one to analyse, review, comment; one to argue, persuade, advise.
English Literature Exams
Drama post 1914 - Written Examination - 45 minutes - 20%
You must answer one question.
On Death of a Salesman three questions will be set including:
• Extract – based tasks, (a question of this type will always be set);
• Tasks involving comment, criticism and analysis, (at least one question of this type will be set);
• Imaginative/ re-creative tasks, for example in which you write in role as one of the characters.
Poetry and Prose post-1914 - Written Examination - 1 hour 30 minutes 50%
You must answer two questions: one from Section A and one from Section C:
• Section A: Poetry published after 1914 – The 1914-18 War (Section H)
• Section C: Empire of the Sun
On Empire of the Sun and Poetry three questions will be set, including:
• Extract–based tasks (questions of this type will always be set on poetry).
• Tasks involving comment, criticism and analysis, including comparison where appropriate (at least one question of this type will always be set on each text)
All tasks on poetry will require comparison between texts.
Non-Fiction, Media and Information - Written Examination - 1 hour 45 minutes - 30%
Three tasks will be set in the examination:
Section A: Assessment objective: READING 20%
Task 1 will require candidates to distinguish between fact and opinion, select and collate material, and to cross-refer between texts.
Task 2 will require candidates to follow an argument, to identify implications and inconsistencies, and/or to evaluate how information is presented (e.g. to comment on the characteristic features)
Section B: Assessment Objective: WRITING 10%
Candidates will be required to produce a piece of continuous writing to inform, explain, describe, on a topic broadly linked to the reading material provided.
Different Cultures, Analysis and Argument -Written Examination – 1 hour 45 minutes - 30%
Three tasks will be set in the examination.
Section A [Open Book]: Assessment Objective: READING 10%
Candidates will be required to complete one task, based on reading of Opening Worlds.
Tasks will require candidates to respond to distinctive aspects of texts from different cultures and traditions by exploring the ways in which writers use language and structure to create character/setting/theme.
Section B: Assessment Objective: WRITING
20%
Two tasks will be set.
In response to stimulus material, candidates will be required to produce two pieces of writing: one to analyse, review, comment; one to argue, persuade, advise.
English Literature Exams
Drama post 1914 - Written Examination - 45 minutes - 20%
You must answer one question.
On Death of a Salesman three questions will be set including:
• Extract – based tasks, (a question of this type will always be set);
• Tasks involving comment, criticism and analysis, (at least one question of this type will be set);
• Imaginative/ re-creative tasks, for example in which you write in role as one of the characters.
Poetry and Prose post-1914 - Written Examination - 1 hour 30 minutes 50%
You must answer two questions: one from Section A and one from Section C:
• Section A: Poetry published after 1914 – The 1914-18 War (Section H)
• Section C: Empire of the Sun
On Empire of the Sun and Poetry three questions will be set, including:
• Extract–based tasks (questions of this type will always be set on poetry).
• Tasks involving comment, criticism and analysis, including comparison where appropriate (at least one question of this type will always be set on each text)
All tasks on poetry will require comparison between texts.
Basie
In your book, make detailed notes (with quotations) about the character of Basie. Considering:
• Jim’s attitude to him
• His attitude towards Jim
• His attitude towards the war
• His behaviour in the camp
• His way of survival
• His importance in terms of the plot
Useful passages and pages to consider.
• 95-9
• 101
• 115-20
• 165
• 216-21
• 223-4
• 225-6
• 236
• 317
• 318
• 321
• 322-4
• 329
• 332
Ext Read the following extract (page 116-7). This is where Jim and Basie are at the Open Air Cinema.
• Jim’s attitude to him
• His attitude towards Jim
• His attitude towards the war
• His behaviour in the camp
• His way of survival
• His importance in terms of the plot
Useful passages and pages to consider.
• 95-9
• 101
• 115-20
• 165
• 216-21
• 223-4
• 225-6
• 236
• 317
• 318
• 321
• 322-4
• 329
• 332
Ext Read the following extract (page 116-7). This is where Jim and Basie are at the Open Air Cinema.
Characters in Empire of the Sun
Characters
Basie
Basie is an American sailor. Jim meets him before the two of them are sent to the prison camp and describes Basie as having a "bland, unmarked face from which all the copious experiences of his life had been cleverly erased." Basie is a player and tries to make money off of the war by trading anything he can. As a result, he acquires "a complete general store" at the camp.
Jim has ambivalent feelings about Basie, perceiving him as "a parasite" feeding "on the succulent terrain of the prison camps." Yet he is sometimes generous to Jim. For instance, he is the only one who gives him presents on his birthday. In addition, his confidence in the future is encouraging. However, when Jim runs into Basie and a group of bandits outside the stadium, he recognizes that "Basie had been prepared to see him die, and only Jim's lavish descriptions of the booty waiting for the bandits in the stadium ... sustained Basie's interest in Jim."
At the end of their relationship, Basie remains "the same small, finicky man ... ignoring everything but the shortest-term advantage. His one strength was that he never allowed himself to dream, because he had never been able to take anything for granted." That is why he survives so long, because the entire experience of the war had "barely touched" him.
Father
Jim's father, a serious man, tries to remain calm in the face of threats to his firm from the Communist Labor Unions, his concern for his work with the British Residents Association, and fears for Jim and his mother.
Frank
An American sailor Jim meets as he wanders around Shanghai looking for his parents, Frank introduces Jim to Basie.
Vera Frankel
Vera is Jim's nanny at Amherst Avenue, who usually follows Jim everywhere "like a guard dog." She is "a calm girl who never smiled and found everything strange about Jim and his parents." Her family fled Poland after Hitler's invasion. They now live with thousands of Jewish refugees in "a gloomy district of tenements and faded apartment blocks." The fact that she and her parents all live together in one room amazes and fascinates Jim.
Jim
The novel, opening from the eve of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, focuses on the story of Jim, an eleven-year-old British boy who lives with his family in Shanghai. Before the Japanese take over Shanghai, Jim lives a comfortable life in the city's suburbs. He has seen some of the devastating results of the war, but seems to be detached from them. Completely absorbed in his own privileged world, he spends his days riding his bicycle around the city, dreaming of being a fighter pilot like the Japanese pilots he sees flying overhead. When he is separated from his parents after the Japanese take over the city, his world drastically changes.
At the detention center, Jim's bravery emerges as he learns important survival skills. On his way to the prison camp, Jim "already felt himself apart from the others, who had behaved as passively as the Chinese peasants. Jim realized that he was closer to the Japanese, who had seized Shanghai and sunk the American fleet at Pearl Harbor," pilots "ready to chance everything on little more than their own will." At this point, Jim retains his romantic dreams of heroism.
During his three years at the prison camp, Jim exhibits his strength, his curiosity, his energy, and his eagerness to please. Early on, he decides he won't allow himself to become too ill and so is able to perform countless errands for others. He enjoys the idea that his errands help keep the others alive. He works hard in order "to keep the camp going." Dr. Ransome often refers to him as a "free spirit" roving across the camp, "hunting down some new idea in his head."
He is curious about everything, including the war. He discovers what it takes to survive, learning how to get extra food and how to fight those who would try to take his rations. While trying to keep himself alive, he sometimes takes food meant for others and feels guilty, acknowledging that "parts of his mind and body frequently separated themselves from each other."
Jim's experiences in the camp change him from an innocent boy to an experienced man. He learns to accept the cruelty he sees around him and comes to understand the true horror of war. Yet he also learns that "having someone to care for was the same as being cared for by someone else."
Private Kimura
A Japanese guard at the camp who sometimes invites Jim into his bungalow and allows him to wear his armor.
Dr. Lockwood
Dr. Lockwood is the Vice-Chairman of the British Residents Association. He throws elaborate parties, including the "fancy-dress Christmas" party Jim and his family go to at the beginning of the novel.
Mr. Maxted
Mr. Maxted is the father of Jim's closest friend, Patrick. Jim admired this architect-turnedentrepreneur who had designed the Metropole Theater and numerous Shanghai nightclubs. He imagined himself growing up like Mr. Maxted, "the perfect type of the Englishman who had adapted himself to Shanghai, something that Jim's father, with his seriousness of mind, had never really done."
Mr. Maxted is also sent to Lunghua Camp where he helps distribute food to the prisoners. Jim runs errands for him in the camp and cares for him during the trek to the Olympic Stadium "out of nostalgia for his childhood dream of growing up one day to be like him." Mr. Maxted is also kind to Jim at the camp and encourages him to continue on the march when Jim is about to give in to death. Mr. Maxted dies soon after they get there.
Mother
Jim's mother is "a gentle and clever woman whose main purposes in life, he had decided, were to go to parties and help him with his Latin homework." After the war, when she and Jim's father return to Amherst Avenue, they take a long time to recover from their experience at the prison camp. When Jim is reunited with his parents, he decides they are too worn out from their own experiences in the camp to hear about his experiences.
Lieutenant Price
Price takes over Lunghua Camp after the Japanese leave. He shoots Private Kimura.
Dr. Ransome
When Jim first meets Dr. Ransome, the British doctor in the camp, Ransome is in his late twenties, with "the self-assured manner of the Royal Navy officers" Jim had seen at the parties. At first, Jim distrusts him and perceives Ransome as selfish and arrogant. On the way to the camp, Jim notices that the doctor is "less interested in the dying old people than he pretended."
In the camp, however, Jim's opinion of him changes. He still considers him selfish, but on oc- casion the doctor begins to reveal his generosity and spirit of self-sacrifice when he often gives Jim some of his own food. He also takes an interest in Jim's education, always coming up with homework problems for him to complete. Due to this kindness, Jim is determined to keep Dr. Ransome alive. While he shows obvious affection for Jim, he "resented [him] for revealing an obvious truth about the war, that people were only too able to adapt to it."
Mr. Tulloch
Mr. Tulloch is the chief mechanic at the Packard agency in Shanghai. He lets Jim come back into the camp and keeps him out of Price's way.
Mrs. Vincent
Jim shares a room at the camp with Mrs. Vincent, her husband, and their six-year-old son. She resents his presence and makes him feel unwelcome. In fact, she seems detached from everything around her, even her own son. Jim often has adolescent sexual fantasies about her. By the end of their stay at the camp, Jim grants her a certain respect, deciding she is "one of the few people in Lunghua Camp who appreciated the humor of it all." Mrs. Vincent dies in the march back from the stadium.
Basie
Basie is an American sailor. Jim meets him before the two of them are sent to the prison camp and describes Basie as having a "bland, unmarked face from which all the copious experiences of his life had been cleverly erased." Basie is a player and tries to make money off of the war by trading anything he can. As a result, he acquires "a complete general store" at the camp.
Jim has ambivalent feelings about Basie, perceiving him as "a parasite" feeding "on the succulent terrain of the prison camps." Yet he is sometimes generous to Jim. For instance, he is the only one who gives him presents on his birthday. In addition, his confidence in the future is encouraging. However, when Jim runs into Basie and a group of bandits outside the stadium, he recognizes that "Basie had been prepared to see him die, and only Jim's lavish descriptions of the booty waiting for the bandits in the stadium ... sustained Basie's interest in Jim."
At the end of their relationship, Basie remains "the same small, finicky man ... ignoring everything but the shortest-term advantage. His one strength was that he never allowed himself to dream, because he had never been able to take anything for granted." That is why he survives so long, because the entire experience of the war had "barely touched" him.
Father
Jim's father, a serious man, tries to remain calm in the face of threats to his firm from the Communist Labor Unions, his concern for his work with the British Residents Association, and fears for Jim and his mother.
Frank
An American sailor Jim meets as he wanders around Shanghai looking for his parents, Frank introduces Jim to Basie.
Vera Frankel
Vera is Jim's nanny at Amherst Avenue, who usually follows Jim everywhere "like a guard dog." She is "a calm girl who never smiled and found everything strange about Jim and his parents." Her family fled Poland after Hitler's invasion. They now live with thousands of Jewish refugees in "a gloomy district of tenements and faded apartment blocks." The fact that she and her parents all live together in one room amazes and fascinates Jim.
Jim
The novel, opening from the eve of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, focuses on the story of Jim, an eleven-year-old British boy who lives with his family in Shanghai. Before the Japanese take over Shanghai, Jim lives a comfortable life in the city's suburbs. He has seen some of the devastating results of the war, but seems to be detached from them. Completely absorbed in his own privileged world, he spends his days riding his bicycle around the city, dreaming of being a fighter pilot like the Japanese pilots he sees flying overhead. When he is separated from his parents after the Japanese take over the city, his world drastically changes.
At the detention center, Jim's bravery emerges as he learns important survival skills. On his way to the prison camp, Jim "already felt himself apart from the others, who had behaved as passively as the Chinese peasants. Jim realized that he was closer to the Japanese, who had seized Shanghai and sunk the American fleet at Pearl Harbor," pilots "ready to chance everything on little more than their own will." At this point, Jim retains his romantic dreams of heroism.
During his three years at the prison camp, Jim exhibits his strength, his curiosity, his energy, and his eagerness to please. Early on, he decides he won't allow himself to become too ill and so is able to perform countless errands for others. He enjoys the idea that his errands help keep the others alive. He works hard in order "to keep the camp going." Dr. Ransome often refers to him as a "free spirit" roving across the camp, "hunting down some new idea in his head."
He is curious about everything, including the war. He discovers what it takes to survive, learning how to get extra food and how to fight those who would try to take his rations. While trying to keep himself alive, he sometimes takes food meant for others and feels guilty, acknowledging that "parts of his mind and body frequently separated themselves from each other."
Jim's experiences in the camp change him from an innocent boy to an experienced man. He learns to accept the cruelty he sees around him and comes to understand the true horror of war. Yet he also learns that "having someone to care for was the same as being cared for by someone else."
Private Kimura
A Japanese guard at the camp who sometimes invites Jim into his bungalow and allows him to wear his armor.
Dr. Lockwood
Dr. Lockwood is the Vice-Chairman of the British Residents Association. He throws elaborate parties, including the "fancy-dress Christmas" party Jim and his family go to at the beginning of the novel.
Mr. Maxted
Mr. Maxted is the father of Jim's closest friend, Patrick. Jim admired this architect-turnedentrepreneur who had designed the Metropole Theater and numerous Shanghai nightclubs. He imagined himself growing up like Mr. Maxted, "the perfect type of the Englishman who had adapted himself to Shanghai, something that Jim's father, with his seriousness of mind, had never really done."
Mr. Maxted is also sent to Lunghua Camp where he helps distribute food to the prisoners. Jim runs errands for him in the camp and cares for him during the trek to the Olympic Stadium "out of nostalgia for his childhood dream of growing up one day to be like him." Mr. Maxted is also kind to Jim at the camp and encourages him to continue on the march when Jim is about to give in to death. Mr. Maxted dies soon after they get there.
Mother
Jim's mother is "a gentle and clever woman whose main purposes in life, he had decided, were to go to parties and help him with his Latin homework." After the war, when she and Jim's father return to Amherst Avenue, they take a long time to recover from their experience at the prison camp. When Jim is reunited with his parents, he decides they are too worn out from their own experiences in the camp to hear about his experiences.
Lieutenant Price
Price takes over Lunghua Camp after the Japanese leave. He shoots Private Kimura.
Dr. Ransome
When Jim first meets Dr. Ransome, the British doctor in the camp, Ransome is in his late twenties, with "the self-assured manner of the Royal Navy officers" Jim had seen at the parties. At first, Jim distrusts him and perceives Ransome as selfish and arrogant. On the way to the camp, Jim notices that the doctor is "less interested in the dying old people than he pretended."
In the camp, however, Jim's opinion of him changes. He still considers him selfish, but on oc- casion the doctor begins to reveal his generosity and spirit of self-sacrifice when he often gives Jim some of his own food. He also takes an interest in Jim's education, always coming up with homework problems for him to complete. Due to this kindness, Jim is determined to keep Dr. Ransome alive. While he shows obvious affection for Jim, he "resented [him] for revealing an obvious truth about the war, that people were only too able to adapt to it."
Mr. Tulloch
Mr. Tulloch is the chief mechanic at the Packard agency in Shanghai. He lets Jim come back into the camp and keeps him out of Price's way.
Mrs. Vincent
Jim shares a room at the camp with Mrs. Vincent, her husband, and their six-year-old son. She resents his presence and makes him feel unwelcome. In fact, she seems detached from everything around her, even her own son. Jim often has adolescent sexual fantasies about her. By the end of their stay at the camp, Jim grants her a certain respect, deciding she is "one of the few people in Lunghua Camp who appreciated the humor of it all." Mrs. Vincent dies in the march back from the stadium.
Themes in Empire of the Sun
Themes
Coming of Age
The main focus of Empire of the Sun is Jim's maturation from child to man during World War II. After the war begins and he is separated from his parents, he spends the remainder of the book trying to reunite with them. He learns to survive the brutal conditions he faces in detention and prison camps. As a result of these experiences, he learns important lessons about himself and human nature.
Change and Transformation
As Ballard traces Jim's maturation, he explores the transformations he experiences. The biggest change occurs when Jim is wrenched from his comfortable, privileged life in Shanghai and forced to live, as do the Chinese, with deprivation and the constant threat of death. This experience brings Jim to new levels of self-discovery as he realizes his ingenuity, courage, and resilience in the face of tragedy.
Alienation and Loneliness
Jim must learn to cope with the alienation and loneliness that result when he is separated from his parents. As an only child, Jim had used his imagination to fill lonely days, envisioning himself as a Japanese fighter pilot. His imagination also helped Jim combat the loneliness he suffered after losing his parents.
While in camp, Jim tries to erase his sense of alienation through his interaction with the other prisoners. He considers the prisoners to be almost an extended family, and thus comes to feel a measure of safety while he is interned there. In this way, he tries to create order in a chaotic and dangerous world.
Strength and Weakness
Jim's ability to cope with his harsh surroundings reveals his strength of character and the nature of human adaptability. While others escape through death, Jim resolves to survive. In order to do this, he learns how to eat insects and to ingratiate himself with his captors.
Violence and Cruelty
Jim is able to recognize the capacity for violence and cruelty in others as well as himself. After seeing so much cruelty, Jim comes to understand its causes. For example, "Jim knew that Lieutenant Price would have liked to get him alone and then beat him to death, not because he was cruel, but because only the sight of Jim's agony would clear away all the pain that he himself had endured."
Jim often struggles with his own capacity for cruelty. In order to survive, he obtains extra food, which sometimes means less for others. He also learns how to defend himself against others trying to take food from him. As a result, "few boys of his own age dared to touch" him and "few men." Sometimes stealing food makes him feel guilty and he acknowledges that "parts of his mind and body frequently separated themselves from each other."
Appearances and Reality
By the end of the novel, Jim has let go of his innocent ideas about the nature of war. As a child, he had considered war to be "an heroic adventure filled with scenes of sacrifice and stoicism, of countless acts of bravery" like those detailed on the newsreels he watches and the magazines he reads. By the end of the novel, however, Jim recognizes the devastating reality of war.
Coming of Age
The main focus of Empire of the Sun is Jim's maturation from child to man during World War II. After the war begins and he is separated from his parents, he spends the remainder of the book trying to reunite with them. He learns to survive the brutal conditions he faces in detention and prison camps. As a result of these experiences, he learns important lessons about himself and human nature.
Change and Transformation
As Ballard traces Jim's maturation, he explores the transformations he experiences. The biggest change occurs when Jim is wrenched from his comfortable, privileged life in Shanghai and forced to live, as do the Chinese, with deprivation and the constant threat of death. This experience brings Jim to new levels of self-discovery as he realizes his ingenuity, courage, and resilience in the face of tragedy.
Alienation and Loneliness
Jim must learn to cope with the alienation and loneliness that result when he is separated from his parents. As an only child, Jim had used his imagination to fill lonely days, envisioning himself as a Japanese fighter pilot. His imagination also helped Jim combat the loneliness he suffered after losing his parents.
While in camp, Jim tries to erase his sense of alienation through his interaction with the other prisoners. He considers the prisoners to be almost an extended family, and thus comes to feel a measure of safety while he is interned there. In this way, he tries to create order in a chaotic and dangerous world.
Strength and Weakness
Jim's ability to cope with his harsh surroundings reveals his strength of character and the nature of human adaptability. While others escape through death, Jim resolves to survive. In order to do this, he learns how to eat insects and to ingratiate himself with his captors.
Violence and Cruelty
Jim is able to recognize the capacity for violence and cruelty in others as well as himself. After seeing so much cruelty, Jim comes to understand its causes. For example, "Jim knew that Lieutenant Price would have liked to get him alone and then beat him to death, not because he was cruel, but because only the sight of Jim's agony would clear away all the pain that he himself had endured."
Jim often struggles with his own capacity for cruelty. In order to survive, he obtains extra food, which sometimes means less for others. He also learns how to defend himself against others trying to take food from him. As a result, "few boys of his own age dared to touch" him and "few men." Sometimes stealing food makes him feel guilty and he acknowledges that "parts of his mind and body frequently separated themselves from each other."
Appearances and Reality
By the end of the novel, Jim has let go of his innocent ideas about the nature of war. As a child, he had considered war to be "an heroic adventure filled with scenes of sacrifice and stoicism, of countless acts of bravery" like those detailed on the newsreels he watches and the magazines he reads. By the end of the novel, however, Jim recognizes the devastating reality of war.
Empire of the Sun Plot Summary
Eleven-year-old Jamie — or Jim as he prefers to be called — his father and his mother live in a wealthy European area within the city and are preparing to go to a party.
With the threat of war, most of the European women and children have been evacuated to Hong Kong and Singapore. Jim's family remains. While riding his bicycle through the streets of Shanghai, he dreams of being a fighter pilot like the Japanese pilots that fly over the city.
On the morning of the 7th, Jim witnesses the Japanese attack on British and American warships docked at Shanghai (which occurred at the same time as the attack on Pearl Harbor), and in the ensuing turmoil he becomes separated from his parents.
After the attack, the Japanese intern the Europeans living in the city. For the next few months, Jim roams the city on his bicycle in constant search for food, shelter, and a recognizable face. Exhausted from long trips around the city and a lack of food, he decides to give himself up to the Japanese.
As he roams the city, Jim meets Frank and Basie, two American sailors. The three are soon captured and Basie and Jim are sent to a detention center. On arrival at the camp, Jim becomes seriously ill. With Basie's help, he learns how to get enough food to keep himself alive.
Jim and Basie are transported outside the city to the prison camp at Lunghua. During his three years there, Jim faces hunger, disease, and death. As the American bombing raids intensify, their meager rations are reduced.
Jim spends his time running errands for Basie, Dr. Ransome, and others. He tries to ingratiate himself with both prisoners and guards to gain company, food, and gifts, like a shiny pair of golf shoes. However, his boundless energy and unflagging determination to survive sometimes annoy the other prisoners.
He enjoys visiting the American prisoners, and reads copies of Reader's Digest and Popular Mechanics. He plays chess and does homework problems assigned by Dr. Ransome. Over time, he forgets what his parents looked like.
In August 1945, after American air attacks become a daily event, the Japanese evacuate the camp to the Olympic Stadium outside Shanghai. Jim finds it hard to leave the relative security of the camp. During the difficult journey there, many of the prisoners die. At one point, Jim becomes seduced by the idea of death, and decides to stop along the side of the road. Mr. Maxted, however, coaxes him on, insisting, "we need you to lead the way."
Mr. Maxted dies after they are herded inside the stadium. Jim acknowledges that "he had been trying to keep the war alive, and with it the security he had known in the camp. Now it was time to rid himself of Lunghua, and face up squarely to the present, however uncertain, the one rule that had sustained him through the years of the war."
That night the Japanese soldiers vanish and Jim sees a strange flash of light that floods the stadium. Later he is told the light came from the atomic bomb explosion at Nagasaki, reflected across the China Sea. Not knowing where to go, Jim decides to walk back to Lunghua.
As he walks back to Lunghua, American planes drop canisters of food and magazines that contain tales of the heroic exploits of the American soldiers. Jim devours the food and eagerly reads the magazines; the cans of Spam and candy bars make the "most satisfying" meal of his life. Back in the camp, unsure of what to do next, he notes that "peace had come, but it failed to fit properly." At times he is not sure that the war is really over.
Jim soon leaves with Lieutenant Price, an American who had taken control of Lunghua. Price, however makes a detour to the Olympic Stadium, hoping to steal some looted cars and furniture. After they arrive, a Chinese soldier shoots Price. As a threatening gang of bandits surrounds Jim, he recognizes Basie among them. After Basie and the gang strand him on a mud flat, he returns to the camp where he is reunited with Dr. Ransome.
Two months later Jim has been reunited with his parents and is preparing for his departure for England. As his parents slowly recover from their years at a prison camp in Soochow, Jim returns by bicycle to his old haunts in the city. He realizes that "only part of his mind would leave Shanghai. The rest would remain there forever, returning on the tide like the coffins launched from the funeral piers at Nantao."
With the threat of war, most of the European women and children have been evacuated to Hong Kong and Singapore. Jim's family remains. While riding his bicycle through the streets of Shanghai, he dreams of being a fighter pilot like the Japanese pilots that fly over the city.
On the morning of the 7th, Jim witnesses the Japanese attack on British and American warships docked at Shanghai (which occurred at the same time as the attack on Pearl Harbor), and in the ensuing turmoil he becomes separated from his parents.
After the attack, the Japanese intern the Europeans living in the city. For the next few months, Jim roams the city on his bicycle in constant search for food, shelter, and a recognizable face. Exhausted from long trips around the city and a lack of food, he decides to give himself up to the Japanese.
As he roams the city, Jim meets Frank and Basie, two American sailors. The three are soon captured and Basie and Jim are sent to a detention center. On arrival at the camp, Jim becomes seriously ill. With Basie's help, he learns how to get enough food to keep himself alive.
Jim and Basie are transported outside the city to the prison camp at Lunghua. During his three years there, Jim faces hunger, disease, and death. As the American bombing raids intensify, their meager rations are reduced.
Jim spends his time running errands for Basie, Dr. Ransome, and others. He tries to ingratiate himself with both prisoners and guards to gain company, food, and gifts, like a shiny pair of golf shoes. However, his boundless energy and unflagging determination to survive sometimes annoy the other prisoners.
He enjoys visiting the American prisoners, and reads copies of Reader's Digest and Popular Mechanics. He plays chess and does homework problems assigned by Dr. Ransome. Over time, he forgets what his parents looked like.
In August 1945, after American air attacks become a daily event, the Japanese evacuate the camp to the Olympic Stadium outside Shanghai. Jim finds it hard to leave the relative security of the camp. During the difficult journey there, many of the prisoners die. At one point, Jim becomes seduced by the idea of death, and decides to stop along the side of the road. Mr. Maxted, however, coaxes him on, insisting, "we need you to lead the way."
Mr. Maxted dies after they are herded inside the stadium. Jim acknowledges that "he had been trying to keep the war alive, and with it the security he had known in the camp. Now it was time to rid himself of Lunghua, and face up squarely to the present, however uncertain, the one rule that had sustained him through the years of the war."
That night the Japanese soldiers vanish and Jim sees a strange flash of light that floods the stadium. Later he is told the light came from the atomic bomb explosion at Nagasaki, reflected across the China Sea. Not knowing where to go, Jim decides to walk back to Lunghua.
As he walks back to Lunghua, American planes drop canisters of food and magazines that contain tales of the heroic exploits of the American soldiers. Jim devours the food and eagerly reads the magazines; the cans of Spam and candy bars make the "most satisfying" meal of his life. Back in the camp, unsure of what to do next, he notes that "peace had come, but it failed to fit properly." At times he is not sure that the war is really over.
Jim soon leaves with Lieutenant Price, an American who had taken control of Lunghua. Price, however makes a detour to the Olympic Stadium, hoping to steal some looted cars and furniture. After they arrive, a Chinese soldier shoots Price. As a threatening gang of bandits surrounds Jim, he recognizes Basie among them. After Basie and the gang strand him on a mud flat, he returns to the camp where he is reunited with Dr. Ransome.
Two months later Jim has been reunited with his parents and is preparing for his departure for England. As his parents slowly recover from their years at a prison camp in Soochow, Jim returns by bicycle to his old haunts in the city. He realizes that "only part of his mind would leave Shanghai. The rest would remain there forever, returning on the tide like the coffins launched from the funeral piers at Nantao."
Death of a Salesman - Sample Essay
What impressions do we get of Willy in Act One?
Within Act One we are introduced to Willy Loman as the protagonist of the play Death of a Salesman. He is given several roles within the act such as father, husband, brother, salesman and – from the flashbacks he has to the past – how Willy was in the past.
Willy’s role as a father is one of the most prominent in the play. Miller initially presents him as a disappointed father who is unhappy with the lack of achievement in his son. Willy states: “Biff is a lazy bum!” however he soon retracts this later in the act saying “He’ll come good”. This constant changing of opinion is significant to both Willy’s other actions and Miller’s own view of American society at the time; namely the ever-changing opinion of the American Dream.
The American Dream is something that Miller examines throughout and uses irony to emphasises his criticism of it. As a salesman, Willy is hard-working, often driving thousands of miles each day to sell items which are unnamed in the play. However, he is regularly failing as his job and reveals that he is working on purely on commission and is forced to make excuses for his failings. He says “Three stores were half closed for inventory in Boston. Otherwise I woulda broke records”. The use of the word “otherwise” shows Willy’s constant excuses for his failings.
Willy’s obsession with success is not just in the present. Miller uses a series of flashbacks to show this, introducing Willy’s brother, Ben, in flashbacks. Ben is used as a contrast to Willy: being a successful businessman who left America to find opportunities in diamond mining in Africa. Within the flashbacks; Willy is determined to gain Ben’s approval, especially with his sons: “Ben, how should I teach them?”. The distinct child-like tone of Willy’s dialogue towards his brother gives the audience the view that he is unsure of his own identity.
In Willy’s marriage, Miller uses Willy’s wife Linda as his main grip of reality, but also keeping him in his fantasy world. She indulges Willy’s assertions of success: “But you’re doing wonderful dear”. However in her use of the word “but”, she is also is his constant reminder of his failings in that within the flashbacks she details their debts and their bills on the items they bought through hire purchase.
Within act one, Miller portrays Willy as an extreme character and uses contrast to this effect. Willy’s moods fluctuate throughout and he incorporates his flashbacks into reality. This causes the play to feel disjointed and mirrors Willy’s own mental state. However his roles as father, brother, husband and salesman, both present and present appear to revolve around success and Willy’s failure at attaining this.
Within Act One we are introduced to Willy Loman as the protagonist of the play Death of a Salesman. He is given several roles within the act such as father, husband, brother, salesman and – from the flashbacks he has to the past – how Willy was in the past.
Willy’s role as a father is one of the most prominent in the play. Miller initially presents him as a disappointed father who is unhappy with the lack of achievement in his son. Willy states: “Biff is a lazy bum!” however he soon retracts this later in the act saying “He’ll come good”. This constant changing of opinion is significant to both Willy’s other actions and Miller’s own view of American society at the time; namely the ever-changing opinion of the American Dream.
The American Dream is something that Miller examines throughout and uses irony to emphasises his criticism of it. As a salesman, Willy is hard-working, often driving thousands of miles each day to sell items which are unnamed in the play. However, he is regularly failing as his job and reveals that he is working on purely on commission and is forced to make excuses for his failings. He says “Three stores were half closed for inventory in Boston. Otherwise I woulda broke records”. The use of the word “otherwise” shows Willy’s constant excuses for his failings.
Willy’s obsession with success is not just in the present. Miller uses a series of flashbacks to show this, introducing Willy’s brother, Ben, in flashbacks. Ben is used as a contrast to Willy: being a successful businessman who left America to find opportunities in diamond mining in Africa. Within the flashbacks; Willy is determined to gain Ben’s approval, especially with his sons: “Ben, how should I teach them?”. The distinct child-like tone of Willy’s dialogue towards his brother gives the audience the view that he is unsure of his own identity.
In Willy’s marriage, Miller uses Willy’s wife Linda as his main grip of reality, but also keeping him in his fantasy world. She indulges Willy’s assertions of success: “But you’re doing wonderful dear”. However in her use of the word “but”, she is also is his constant reminder of his failings in that within the flashbacks she details their debts and their bills on the items they bought through hire purchase.
Within act one, Miller portrays Willy as an extreme character and uses contrast to this effect. Willy’s moods fluctuate throughout and he incorporates his flashbacks into reality. This causes the play to feel disjointed and mirrors Willy’s own mental state. However his roles as father, brother, husband and salesman, both present and present appear to revolve around success and Willy’s failure at attaining this.
Death of a Salesman - Symbolism
Why are these items in the play and what do they symbolise?
Linda’s Stockings
Laughter
Football
The Red Chevvy
Wire Recorder
Garden
Africa/Alaska
Adonis, Hercules
Flute
Linda’s Stockings
Laughter
Football
The Red Chevvy
Wire Recorder
Garden
Africa/Alaska
Adonis, Hercules
Flute
Death of a Salesman - Essay Questions
You have a choice of three questions in the exam and here are the pros and cons of each.
1. The extract question
Pros: You only really need to analyse that extract, you can look closer at language, you don’t have to find quotes because they are already there.
Cons: You can only focus on the extract, you may not know that bit well, you have to examine language and word choice more closely.
2. The character question.
Pros: You can use a lot of points for that character; you can link it to the play as a whole; you can go into detail on one character.
Cons: If you don’t know the character it’s difficult, limits you to one character focus.
3. In-role writing
Pros: Creative writing, it seems easier to do, don’t have to analyse language too in depth.
Cons: Have to know the plot REALLY well, have to write in character voice, incorporate quotations directly into your writing without copying the play.
1. The extract question
Pros: You only really need to analyse that extract, you can look closer at language, you don’t have to find quotes because they are already there.
Cons: You can only focus on the extract, you may not know that bit well, you have to examine language and word choice more closely.
2. The character question.
Pros: You can use a lot of points for that character; you can link it to the play as a whole; you can go into detail on one character.
Cons: If you don’t know the character it’s difficult, limits you to one character focus.
3. In-role writing
Pros: Creative writing, it seems easier to do, don’t have to analyse language too in depth.
Cons: Have to know the plot REALLY well, have to write in character voice, incorporate quotations directly into your writing without copying the play.
Death of a Salesman Quotations
Important Quotations
Find each of these quotations. Who says them? To whom? What is the significance of these quotations within the play as a whole?
… he thinks I’m nothing, see, and so he spites me. But the funeral … Ben, that funeral will be massive.
A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory.
A small man can be just as exhausted as a great man.
Be liked and you will never want.
Gee, look at the moon moving between the buildings.
He had the wrong dreams. All, all wrong.
He’s a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine.
I can see it like a diamond, shining in the dark, hard and rough, that I can pick up and touch in my hand. Not like – like an appointment.
I know you laugh at me behind my back.
I never got anywhere because you blew me so full of hot air I could never stand taking orders from anybody!
I realised what a ridiculous lie my whole life has been.
I still feel kinda temporary about myself.
I thank Almighty God that you’re both built like Adonises. Because the man who creates an appearance in the business world is the man who gets ahead.
I’m a dime a dozen, and so are you.
I’m not a leader of men, Willy, and neither are you.
I’m not interested in stories about the past or any crap of that kind because the woods are burning, boys, you understand? There’s a big blaze going on all around. I was fired today.
I’ve got to get some seeds, right away. Nothing’s planted. I don’t have a thing in the ground.
In those days there was personality in it, … There was respect, and comradeship, and gratitude in it.
It’s Brooklyn, I know, but we hunt too.
Nothing’ll grow any more.
The gist of it is that I haven’t got a story left in my head.
The only thing you got in this world is what you can sell.
They time them so when you finally paid for them, they’re used up.
Why must everybody conquer the world?
Will you take that phoney dream and burn it before something happens?
Willy Loman did not die in vain. He had a good dream. It’s the only dream you can have – to come out number-one man.
Willy, dear, what has he got against you?
You can’t eat the orange and throw the peel away – a man is not a piece of fruit.
You fake! You phoney little fake! You fake!
Find each of these quotations. Who says them? To whom? What is the significance of these quotations within the play as a whole?
… he thinks I’m nothing, see, and so he spites me. But the funeral … Ben, that funeral will be massive.
A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory.
A small man can be just as exhausted as a great man.
Be liked and you will never want.
Gee, look at the moon moving between the buildings.
He had the wrong dreams. All, all wrong.
He’s a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine.
I can see it like a diamond, shining in the dark, hard and rough, that I can pick up and touch in my hand. Not like – like an appointment.
I know you laugh at me behind my back.
I never got anywhere because you blew me so full of hot air I could never stand taking orders from anybody!
I realised what a ridiculous lie my whole life has been.
I still feel kinda temporary about myself.
I thank Almighty God that you’re both built like Adonises. Because the man who creates an appearance in the business world is the man who gets ahead.
I’m a dime a dozen, and so are you.
I’m not a leader of men, Willy, and neither are you.
I’m not interested in stories about the past or any crap of that kind because the woods are burning, boys, you understand? There’s a big blaze going on all around. I was fired today.
I’ve got to get some seeds, right away. Nothing’s planted. I don’t have a thing in the ground.
In those days there was personality in it, … There was respect, and comradeship, and gratitude in it.
It’s Brooklyn, I know, but we hunt too.
Nothing’ll grow any more.
The gist of it is that I haven’t got a story left in my head.
The only thing you got in this world is what you can sell.
They time them so when you finally paid for them, they’re used up.
Why must everybody conquer the world?
Will you take that phoney dream and burn it before something happens?
Willy Loman did not die in vain. He had a good dream. It’s the only dream you can have – to come out number-one man.
Willy, dear, what has he got against you?
You can’t eat the orange and throw the peel away – a man is not a piece of fruit.
You fake! You phoney little fake! You fake!
Key Topics in Death of a Salesman
SYMBOLISM / IMAGERY
• Willy symbolizes the common man
• Biff's football game = a symbol of success for the future to Willy
• Ben represents all that Willy wishes the boys to be, yet his actions in the past are not firmly established. He is, for Willy, a symbol of all that is "good in the land of opportunity"
• The garden is symbolic of Willy needing to leave something behind for people to remember him by.
SOCIETY
• consumer society and pressures of advertising persuade people to acquire goods and to do so by paying for them by instalments
• money defines success: people are judged by the amount they acquire that is why Willy feels he has to succeed, and the only way to show his success is to acquire money and material goods.
• Willy's America: a land of opportunity in which people like Biff can accomplish great things
• Real America; although it still may be the land of opportunity, it seems to have acquired a new set of values
• countryside is different from modern consumer society: the structure of society there is much simpler and different - it is an image of an older America
• Willy feels that he has to be within society yet looks back to a golden age when life was simpler.
• Society in which the Lomans live is governed by people like Ben- people who care little for the opinions of others, and in such a society the Lomans, although they only occasionally realize it, are out of place.
• There are many forms of failure as well as success. Lomans are all an example of what life is like if you continually live in a dream world. Ben is the exception in the Loman family.
• However, Charlie and his son Bernard were able to achieve greatness and to make the system work for them. In the end, the decision to make it in this American system is, ironically, up to the individual.
ABSURDITY OF LIFE
• DS attempts to explore the implications of life for which men-not gods-are wholly responsible.
• Willy is disturbed by the element of rapid obsolescence which is an oppressive aspect of life
• the play in general is a study of the things which affect human destiny in the moral universe
DEATH
• Loman's suicide is obviously intended as a gesture of the hero's victory over circumstances
• it is an act of love, intended to redeem his house
• The exhausted, idealistic man who has visions of a great future for his sons does not in the end come to terms with reality, but retains his hopes. To Willy, death is the only answer.
EXTERNAL CONFLICTS
• Loss of job and money defines success; by losing his job, Willy has let everyone down, most of all himself.
INTERNAL CONFLICTS
• inconsistencies which Willy displays shows the conflict inside of him. e.g. Willy says that his car is "the greatest car ever built", but later contradicts himself
• He has always been a figure of several faces to the boys he must be the successful father, to Linda the provider, and to himself the great salesman.
• needs to believe in himself in order to survive
• cannot accept the supposed hurt to his pride that a job offered by Charley might inflict upon him
IMPORTANCE OF MINOR CHARACTERS
Biff
• lacks self assurance because of the uncertainty about his father's attitude towards him, and his doubts about his own life and future
• has not found his place in society, but realizes that he doesn’t fit into society.
• is a result of Willy's lies he is undisciplined and disillusioned
• sees the city as a concrete jungle, but reuses to conform to the city's demands
Linda
• tries to share in Willy's ideals, and suffers great torment as she observes Willy's decline knowing that she is unable to help
• Fails to understand what happens to Willy, and fails to fathom what has occurred between him and Biff, but still manages to retain a belief in the need to treat human beings properly
• loyal and supportive
• anger stems from her beliefs in the Loman family, and memories of happy times in the past
• she is a woman struggling to come to terms with the city, her husband, and her sons
• "Linda, as the eternal wife and mother, the fixed point of affection both given and received, the woman who suffers and endures, is in many ways, the earth mother who embodies the play's ultimate moral value, love. But in the beautiful, ironic complexity of her creation, she is also Willy's and their sons' destroyer. In her love Linda has accepted Willy's Greatness and his dream, but while in her admiration for Willy her love is powerful and moving, in her admiration for his dreams, it is lethal. She encourages Willy's dream, yet she will not let him leave her for the New Continent, the only realm where the dream can be fulfilled. She want to reconcile father and son, but she attempts this in the context of Willy's false values. She cannot allow her sons to achieve that selfhood that involves denial of these values"
Happy
• similar to Willy - lost because he has never allowed himself to turn his face toward defeat
• regular guy has a job, hopes for promotion, committed to conform
• needs to pretend to more than he really is (like father like son)
• likes women
• never acquires Biff's ultimate self-knowledge and realization of the truth
• remains the Loman that he always was, incapable of interpreting the message of Willy's failure
Ben
• Willy's foil
• ruthless business man, rich adventurous, not confined by any psychological restraints
• acts as a mentor for Willy, Willy want Ben's story of success to happen to him
• is an example of the very small population who are successful without much work the dream of everyone is to have that happen to themselves
Charley
• Willy cannot understand Charley's success, his own formula seems to have broken down, and yet he can never admit this.
• helps break down Willy's belief that to be well liked is the most important quality in a salesman
Bernard
• Biff's foil
Woman
• at first makes Willy feel wanted, has made him feel as though he were the salesman that he imagines himself as being
• Willy's longing to be seen as a successful man and to be placed in a position where he can reach all the to buyers is obviously connected to the woman, while it also reveals the superficiality of Willy's family life
• his concern for Linda is genuine but his need for success overcomes his feelings of loyalty
• Howard represents the professional business man-consideration for the firm must come first. He has no sentiment which probably accounts for his success.
PROTAGONIST
Willy Loman(the common man)
• Miller attempted to personify certain values which civilized men in the twentieth century share.
• Symbolizes the cruel paradox of human existence
• Seen as ritual head of his family
• Seeks to discover a design in the paradoxical movement of life; to impose upon it a sense of meaning greater than that conferred upon it by reality.
• His life's experiences seem to intermingle and disturb the logical flow of reality
• Views his life as a totality. conventions of time and place are not relevant for him.
• Has high ideals-perhaps unattainable ones
• Wants to be loved by all; wants to succeed by terms that do not suit his nature; wants to leave his mark upon the world.
• Feels he has to succeed, and the only way to show his success is to acquire money and material goods. He does not want to face the fact that he is not earning enough.
• When he finally evaluates his performance, he realizes that he has fallen far short of his goals at that point, suicide becomes an at of valour for him
PLOT STRUCTURE
• Follows an aesthetic, rather than a logical mode of development
• Represents the protagonist's attempt to reconstitute the progression of his experience
• "stream-of-consciousness"
• Miller does not divide his vision of reality into discrete unit. He conceives Will's mind as a place out of time, as a state in which all boundaries have been erased, in which all things are coexistent.
• Aesthetic progression: a reconstruction of the movement of consciousness.
• Return to the past in Willy's mind happens because: the family is all important to him, he is becoming deranged, and it portrays his frame of mind to the audience, shows the extent of Willy's disillusionment, flashbacks reveal the truth, adds to understanding of characters and relationship development
• The play is divided into three main parts, Act I, Act II, and the Requiem. Each section takes place on a different day in present-day. Within Act I and Act II, the story is presented through the use of Willy's flashbacks. This use of flashback is fundamental to the structure and understanding of the play.
• The story starts at present-day and Willy then lapses in and out of the past. Each flashback is somehow related the present. Very often, the contents of the flashback offer essential background knowledge for understanding why the present-day problems in the Loman family are occurring. For example, when Willy is thinking about Biff and Biff's problems, Willy is transported to the summer of Biff's senior year. The events that took place in the past expose for the reader the situations that have led up to the present-day boiling point in the Loman household.
TRAGIC ELEMENT
• The enactment of his suffering, fall, and partial enlightenment, provokes a mixed response: that anger and delight, indignation and sympathy, pity and fear which Aristotle describes as "catharsis"
• tragic feeling is evoke when we are in the presence of a character who is ready to lay down hin life, if need be, to secure one thing-his sense of personal dignity
Is Willy a tragic hero?
Yes
• Miller argues that tragedy is not restricted to kings and queens and that the common man is capable of heroism and tragedy
• Miller's tragedy = The result of an individual's quest for personal dignity and occurs when an individual attempts to evaluate existence justly.
• tragic flaw = an unwillingness to submit passively to the established order and values
• in Willy's descent, there is a tragic paradox; for as he moves towards inevitable destruction, he acquires that knowledge, that sense of reconciliation, which allows him to conceive a redemptive plan for his house
• Loman, the contemporary her, embarks upon a most courageous Odyssey: the descent into the self, where he engages his most dangerous enemy, himself.
No:
• In the traditional sense, Willy is neither noble nor heroic
• does not measure up to the stature of a great and good man
• a small man, a mere failure who does not have the grace to warrant universal concern
• doesn't have just one tragic flaw - he has many (disloyal, headstrong, short tempered, proud, false, etc)
• common man is not of high stature
TIME
• views his life as a totality. conventions of time and place are not relevant for him.
• everything that brings joy for Willy is associated with the past
SETTING
• set in twentieth-century industrial society, complete with apartment blacks, financial difficulties and pressures to succeed.
• Willy's America - land of opportunity in which Biff can accomplish great things with ambition
• Real America although it still may be the land of opportunity, it seems to have acquired a new set of values
STYLE AND LANGUAGE
• "American drama" attempts to record the kinds of crisis that plagued their times
STAGING
• The Salesman image was from the beginning absorbed with the concept that nothing in life comes next, but that everything exists together and at the same time within us; that there is no past to be brought forward' in a human being but that he is his past at every moment and that the present is merely that which his past is capable of noticing and smelling and reacting to.
• Music: sets the mood opening stage direction "a melody is heard, played upon a flute. It is small and fine, telling of grass and trees and the horizon.' flute is an expressionist device, flute is an instrument associated with nostalgia can be heard playing when Willy begins to imagine a happier life in the past. At times of promise of better things to come in the future, the music is "gay and bright' creating a mood on the stage. A "raw, and sensuous music' during the "woman' scenes
• Light :Apartments are surrounded by "an angry glow of orange'...represents the anger of people who fall in the city, who are deprived of promise, who, like Biff, are angered by the way of life.
RELATIONSHIP WITH AUDIENCE
• Willy lives closer to our experience than many protagonists, he is struggling with the pressures of twentieth century life: of money, of the city, of the family, of the job, while his weaknesses are those which ordinary humans share. Loneliness, the inability to decide exactly what one wants, the breakdown of communications btw the two generations, are all part of our lives to some extent. Miller shows that man is isolated, and, even though he struggles, the may be faced with impossible odds.
RELATIONSHIPS
• relationship between Willy & Biff (father and son)
• Biff is the favourite son, and yet cannot live up to what Willy wants for him, nor can he really share Willy's ambitions for the future
• Gap of generations between father and son, a gap of ideals. Willy is unable to face the fact that Biff will never become a great man
• Willy's hopes are so closely associated with Biff that he seems unable to remember for long that Biff is a mature man, supposedly capable of making his own decisions.
GENERAL
• DS is a statement about the nature of human crises in the twentieth century which seems, increasingly, to be applicable to the entire fabric of civilised experience
• Sensitivity of it's myth: critical relationship of its central symbol-the salesman-to the interpretation of the whole of contemporary life. In this image, Miller brings into the theatre a figure, who is, in our age, a kind of hero- a ritual representative of an industrial society.
• It is its intimate association with our aspirations which give to the story of Loman an ambiguous, but highly affecting, substratum of religious, philosophical, political, and social meaning.
• The play grew from observations of ordinary life: a simple frame house filled with children who will grow and leave; a house that will one day be full of strangers.
• It is about the fabric of family life.
• About failure and disillusionment, a boy's belief in his father and a father's dream for his sons and himself are sadly crushed.
• Also celebrates humanity and the love between father and son.
• Moral ignorance is the most serious and most common indictment against humanity in our time
• Willy symbolizes the common man
• Biff's football game = a symbol of success for the future to Willy
• Ben represents all that Willy wishes the boys to be, yet his actions in the past are not firmly established. He is, for Willy, a symbol of all that is "good in the land of opportunity"
• The garden is symbolic of Willy needing to leave something behind for people to remember him by.
SOCIETY
• consumer society and pressures of advertising persuade people to acquire goods and to do so by paying for them by instalments
• money defines success: people are judged by the amount they acquire that is why Willy feels he has to succeed, and the only way to show his success is to acquire money and material goods.
• Willy's America: a land of opportunity in which people like Biff can accomplish great things
• Real America; although it still may be the land of opportunity, it seems to have acquired a new set of values
• countryside is different from modern consumer society: the structure of society there is much simpler and different - it is an image of an older America
• Willy feels that he has to be within society yet looks back to a golden age when life was simpler.
• Society in which the Lomans live is governed by people like Ben- people who care little for the opinions of others, and in such a society the Lomans, although they only occasionally realize it, are out of place.
• There are many forms of failure as well as success. Lomans are all an example of what life is like if you continually live in a dream world. Ben is the exception in the Loman family.
• However, Charlie and his son Bernard were able to achieve greatness and to make the system work for them. In the end, the decision to make it in this American system is, ironically, up to the individual.
ABSURDITY OF LIFE
• DS attempts to explore the implications of life for which men-not gods-are wholly responsible.
• Willy is disturbed by the element of rapid obsolescence which is an oppressive aspect of life
• the play in general is a study of the things which affect human destiny in the moral universe
DEATH
• Loman's suicide is obviously intended as a gesture of the hero's victory over circumstances
• it is an act of love, intended to redeem his house
• The exhausted, idealistic man who has visions of a great future for his sons does not in the end come to terms with reality, but retains his hopes. To Willy, death is the only answer.
EXTERNAL CONFLICTS
• Loss of job and money defines success; by losing his job, Willy has let everyone down, most of all himself.
INTERNAL CONFLICTS
• inconsistencies which Willy displays shows the conflict inside of him. e.g. Willy says that his car is "the greatest car ever built", but later contradicts himself
• He has always been a figure of several faces to the boys he must be the successful father, to Linda the provider, and to himself the great salesman.
• needs to believe in himself in order to survive
• cannot accept the supposed hurt to his pride that a job offered by Charley might inflict upon him
IMPORTANCE OF MINOR CHARACTERS
Biff
• lacks self assurance because of the uncertainty about his father's attitude towards him, and his doubts about his own life and future
• has not found his place in society, but realizes that he doesn’t fit into society.
• is a result of Willy's lies he is undisciplined and disillusioned
• sees the city as a concrete jungle, but reuses to conform to the city's demands
Linda
• tries to share in Willy's ideals, and suffers great torment as she observes Willy's decline knowing that she is unable to help
• Fails to understand what happens to Willy, and fails to fathom what has occurred between him and Biff, but still manages to retain a belief in the need to treat human beings properly
• loyal and supportive
• anger stems from her beliefs in the Loman family, and memories of happy times in the past
• she is a woman struggling to come to terms with the city, her husband, and her sons
• "Linda, as the eternal wife and mother, the fixed point of affection both given and received, the woman who suffers and endures, is in many ways, the earth mother who embodies the play's ultimate moral value, love. But in the beautiful, ironic complexity of her creation, she is also Willy's and their sons' destroyer. In her love Linda has accepted Willy's Greatness and his dream, but while in her admiration for Willy her love is powerful and moving, in her admiration for his dreams, it is lethal. She encourages Willy's dream, yet she will not let him leave her for the New Continent, the only realm where the dream can be fulfilled. She want to reconcile father and son, but she attempts this in the context of Willy's false values. She cannot allow her sons to achieve that selfhood that involves denial of these values"
Happy
• similar to Willy - lost because he has never allowed himself to turn his face toward defeat
• regular guy has a job, hopes for promotion, committed to conform
• needs to pretend to more than he really is (like father like son)
• likes women
• never acquires Biff's ultimate self-knowledge and realization of the truth
• remains the Loman that he always was, incapable of interpreting the message of Willy's failure
Ben
• Willy's foil
• ruthless business man, rich adventurous, not confined by any psychological restraints
• acts as a mentor for Willy, Willy want Ben's story of success to happen to him
• is an example of the very small population who are successful without much work the dream of everyone is to have that happen to themselves
Charley
• Willy cannot understand Charley's success, his own formula seems to have broken down, and yet he can never admit this.
• helps break down Willy's belief that to be well liked is the most important quality in a salesman
Bernard
• Biff's foil
Woman
• at first makes Willy feel wanted, has made him feel as though he were the salesman that he imagines himself as being
• Willy's longing to be seen as a successful man and to be placed in a position where he can reach all the to buyers is obviously connected to the woman, while it also reveals the superficiality of Willy's family life
• his concern for Linda is genuine but his need for success overcomes his feelings of loyalty
• Howard represents the professional business man-consideration for the firm must come first. He has no sentiment which probably accounts for his success.
PROTAGONIST
Willy Loman(the common man)
• Miller attempted to personify certain values which civilized men in the twentieth century share.
• Symbolizes the cruel paradox of human existence
• Seen as ritual head of his family
• Seeks to discover a design in the paradoxical movement of life; to impose upon it a sense of meaning greater than that conferred upon it by reality.
• His life's experiences seem to intermingle and disturb the logical flow of reality
• Views his life as a totality. conventions of time and place are not relevant for him.
• Has high ideals-perhaps unattainable ones
• Wants to be loved by all; wants to succeed by terms that do not suit his nature; wants to leave his mark upon the world.
• Feels he has to succeed, and the only way to show his success is to acquire money and material goods. He does not want to face the fact that he is not earning enough.
• When he finally evaluates his performance, he realizes that he has fallen far short of his goals at that point, suicide becomes an at of valour for him
PLOT STRUCTURE
• Follows an aesthetic, rather than a logical mode of development
• Represents the protagonist's attempt to reconstitute the progression of his experience
• "stream-of-consciousness"
• Miller does not divide his vision of reality into discrete unit. He conceives Will's mind as a place out of time, as a state in which all boundaries have been erased, in which all things are coexistent.
• Aesthetic progression: a reconstruction of the movement of consciousness.
• Return to the past in Willy's mind happens because: the family is all important to him, he is becoming deranged, and it portrays his frame of mind to the audience, shows the extent of Willy's disillusionment, flashbacks reveal the truth, adds to understanding of characters and relationship development
• The play is divided into three main parts, Act I, Act II, and the Requiem. Each section takes place on a different day in present-day. Within Act I and Act II, the story is presented through the use of Willy's flashbacks. This use of flashback is fundamental to the structure and understanding of the play.
• The story starts at present-day and Willy then lapses in and out of the past. Each flashback is somehow related the present. Very often, the contents of the flashback offer essential background knowledge for understanding why the present-day problems in the Loman family are occurring. For example, when Willy is thinking about Biff and Biff's problems, Willy is transported to the summer of Biff's senior year. The events that took place in the past expose for the reader the situations that have led up to the present-day boiling point in the Loman household.
TRAGIC ELEMENT
• The enactment of his suffering, fall, and partial enlightenment, provokes a mixed response: that anger and delight, indignation and sympathy, pity and fear which Aristotle describes as "catharsis"
• tragic feeling is evoke when we are in the presence of a character who is ready to lay down hin life, if need be, to secure one thing-his sense of personal dignity
Is Willy a tragic hero?
Yes
• Miller argues that tragedy is not restricted to kings and queens and that the common man is capable of heroism and tragedy
• Miller's tragedy = The result of an individual's quest for personal dignity and occurs when an individual attempts to evaluate existence justly.
• tragic flaw = an unwillingness to submit passively to the established order and values
• in Willy's descent, there is a tragic paradox; for as he moves towards inevitable destruction, he acquires that knowledge, that sense of reconciliation, which allows him to conceive a redemptive plan for his house
• Loman, the contemporary her, embarks upon a most courageous Odyssey: the descent into the self, where he engages his most dangerous enemy, himself.
No:
• In the traditional sense, Willy is neither noble nor heroic
• does not measure up to the stature of a great and good man
• a small man, a mere failure who does not have the grace to warrant universal concern
• doesn't have just one tragic flaw - he has many (disloyal, headstrong, short tempered, proud, false, etc)
• common man is not of high stature
TIME
• views his life as a totality. conventions of time and place are not relevant for him.
• everything that brings joy for Willy is associated with the past
SETTING
• set in twentieth-century industrial society, complete with apartment blacks, financial difficulties and pressures to succeed.
• Willy's America - land of opportunity in which Biff can accomplish great things with ambition
• Real America although it still may be the land of opportunity, it seems to have acquired a new set of values
STYLE AND LANGUAGE
• "American drama" attempts to record the kinds of crisis that plagued their times
STAGING
• The Salesman image was from the beginning absorbed with the concept that nothing in life comes next, but that everything exists together and at the same time within us; that there is no past to be brought forward' in a human being but that he is his past at every moment and that the present is merely that which his past is capable of noticing and smelling and reacting to.
• Music: sets the mood opening stage direction "a melody is heard, played upon a flute. It is small and fine, telling of grass and trees and the horizon.' flute is an expressionist device, flute is an instrument associated with nostalgia can be heard playing when Willy begins to imagine a happier life in the past. At times of promise of better things to come in the future, the music is "gay and bright' creating a mood on the stage. A "raw, and sensuous music' during the "woman' scenes
• Light :Apartments are surrounded by "an angry glow of orange'...represents the anger of people who fall in the city, who are deprived of promise, who, like Biff, are angered by the way of life.
RELATIONSHIP WITH AUDIENCE
• Willy lives closer to our experience than many protagonists, he is struggling with the pressures of twentieth century life: of money, of the city, of the family, of the job, while his weaknesses are those which ordinary humans share. Loneliness, the inability to decide exactly what one wants, the breakdown of communications btw the two generations, are all part of our lives to some extent. Miller shows that man is isolated, and, even though he struggles, the may be faced with impossible odds.
RELATIONSHIPS
• relationship between Willy & Biff (father and son)
• Biff is the favourite son, and yet cannot live up to what Willy wants for him, nor can he really share Willy's ambitions for the future
• Gap of generations between father and son, a gap of ideals. Willy is unable to face the fact that Biff will never become a great man
• Willy's hopes are so closely associated with Biff that he seems unable to remember for long that Biff is a mature man, supposedly capable of making his own decisions.
GENERAL
• DS is a statement about the nature of human crises in the twentieth century which seems, increasingly, to be applicable to the entire fabric of civilised experience
• Sensitivity of it's myth: critical relationship of its central symbol-the salesman-to the interpretation of the whole of contemporary life. In this image, Miller brings into the theatre a figure, who is, in our age, a kind of hero- a ritual representative of an industrial society.
• It is its intimate association with our aspirations which give to the story of Loman an ambiguous, but highly affecting, substratum of religious, philosophical, political, and social meaning.
• The play grew from observations of ordinary life: a simple frame house filled with children who will grow and leave; a house that will one day be full of strangers.
• It is about the fabric of family life.
• About failure and disillusionment, a boy's belief in his father and a father's dream for his sons and himself are sadly crushed.
• Also celebrates humanity and the love between father and son.
• Moral ignorance is the most serious and most common indictment against humanity in our time
Death of a Salesman Characters
Ben:
1. Ben is to Willy’s mind the epitome of all he desires.
2. Willy calls him ‘success incarnate’ (p.32).
3. Ben went to Africa at 17 and emerged rich at 21.
4. Willy sees Ben as proof that: ‘The greatest things can happen!’ (p.37).
5. To the audience Ben represents all that Willy is not.
6. He is self-assured, rich, adventurous and succinct.
7. Willy sees his big mistake in life as not going with Ben to Alaska.
8. Willy’s line: ‘I don’t want you to think…’ (p.39) indicates that Willy sees himself in competition with Ben.
9. Ben does not give an answer to Willy’s question about the secret of success.
10. Ben’s one moral lesson is a dubious one i.e when he trips up Biff. His message is that you will ‘never get out of the jungle’ by fighting fair with a stranger (p.38).
11. The reference to the jungle recalls to the mind the phrase ‘the law of the jungle’ – suggesting the need to be ruthless in a ruthless world. However this ‘jungle’ also promises diamonds. Ben is an example of how to succeed in a capitalist society – by being competitive (note that this is what Biff ultimately rejects). Ben remarks on p.39 that the stock exchange is also full of fearless characters.
12. Ben appears after Willy has been rejected by Howard and he again uses fighting metaphors to explain how to succeed (p.66).
13. His speech on p.66 echoes Biff and Happy’s dreams of a farm in the country and sees wealth as a reward for adventure.
14. Ben questions Willy’s search for reputation and to be ‘well-liked’ as these are not commodities that can be cashed in (p.25)
15. Ben fulfils his role as a tempter in the scene where Willy explains that he wants to commit suicide in order to help Biff. He calls it a ‘cowardly thing’ (p.100) but he does agree that twenty thousand dollars is a tempting argument and in keeping with his businesslike approach to life he cannot deny that the idea has its attractions.
16. Ultimately Ben’s view is that the suicide is ‘A perfect proposition all around’ (p.107).
Bernard:
1. Bernard is cautious, studious, altruistic and law-abiding (a contrast to Biff).
2. Bernard partially fulfils the role of Biff’s father by reminding him to study and to not drive without a licence.
3. He is described as ‘anaemic’ and is not as sporty or strong as either of the Loman brothers.
4. Bernard accepts the realities of school life but Willy rejects him as being ‘not well liked’ and tells his boys how Bernard will not succeed in the business world (p.25).
5. Bernard represents what Biff might have become without Willy’s influence.
6. The adult Bernard has matured into a very successful lawyer with influential friends.
7. Bernard had a very close relationship with biff. He is upset that Biff did not retake his maths exam to qualify for university. Bernard has a prolonged fist fight with Biff after Biff burns his sneakers because he can see that this action is symbolic of Biff wasting his talent (p.74).
8. Bernard is philosophical about success and advises Willy that sometimes giving up may be the best option (p.75).
9. Bernard and Biff’s relationship parallels Charley and Willy’s – Bernard helps Biff academically as Charley helps Willy financially.
10. It is Bernard who tells Mrs Loman that Biff has failed maths, he seems to represent Willy’s nemesis, and by this time we realise that he is living evidence that Willy’s advice to Biff was wrong.
Biff and Happy:
Miller states that he is sorry that ‘Biff is not a weightier counterbalance to Willy’s disaster in the audience’s mind’.
1. Biff should offer the basis for optimism to balance Willy’s despair
2. Happy is more like his father than Biff
3. Happy is competitive and inspired by the American dream. He wants to ‘win it’ for Willy after his father’s death
4. Biff believes his father never really ‘knew who he was’; Biff will reject competitiveness.
5. Biff changes from ‘a lost boy’ to a man of insight and responsibility.
6. Happy oozes confidence and refuses to give in
7. Biff has little confidence, Willy belittles his farm work.
8. Biff doesn’t know ‘what I’m supposed to want’; he tried at school but failed.
9. Biff is a ‘boy’, engaged in hobbies rather than a career.
10. Happy has a good job and plenty of sexual power.
11. Biff has lost sexual confidence; Happy has gained it.
12. All the males need to grow up.
13. Happy knows that Biff despises his choice of career.
14. Happy uses his sexuality to seduce the wives of senior colleagues.
15. Happy is sexually competitive, he won’t take bribes but he will seduce other men’s wives – ‘it gets like bowling’. (confused morality).
16. Happy wants to create a Loman Brothers enterprise in farming.
17. Happy prefers a physical challenge to the psychological one involved in office politics.
18. Both boys have absorbed their father’s ideas: boxing, competition, capitalism.
19. Biff boxes to please his father
20. Biff is a thief; he becomes a petty criminal; Willy condones this.
21. Biff is defensive of his mother; he accuses Willy of never having ‘an ounce of respect’ for Linda; Charley, unlike his father, would never ‘spew out vomit from his mind’.
22. Biff has known about Willy’s affair since he was 17; he regards his father as a fake.
23. For Happy, success means an apartment and lots of women (shallow?)
24. Happy uses Biff (‘one of the greatest football players in the country’) to try and seduce the woman in the restaurant.
25. Biff sees through the American dream, ‘We’ve been talking in a dream for fifteen years’; Happy doesn’t: he’ll still continue to construct myths and illusions.
26. Biff has discovered ‘bad faith: we live to the expectations of others and not our own (existentialism).
27. Biff tries hard not to expose/destroy his father’s illusions, but in the end he has to be cruel to be kind.
28. Biff realises that competitiveness and status are illusions and, ultimately, are worthless.
29. Biff tells Willy that there will be no sympathy for him if he commits suicide.
30. It is the realisation that Biff and Happy are a ‘dime a dozen’ that shatters Willy’s illusions.
31. Willy, now, has nothing to live for as he realises that Biff is not a ‘leader of men’.
32. The illusions and false consciousness that have been established in Biff’s thinking are not easily eradicated: he knows that they are wrong but he isn’t sure how to extricate himself from them. He does, however, offer us a kind of hope.
Linda:
1. Linda is a staunch defender of everything that Willy stands for.
2. However, she is also acutely aware of his nature (p.43).
3. According to the stage directions she is usually cheerful and has developed an ‘iron repression’ of her objections to Willy’s behaviour (p.8)
4. She is ready to excuse anything he does.
5. The opening stage directions suggest that she needs Willy to create the ideals that she can believe in (p.8).
6. Linda mediates between Biff and Willy.
7. Through this mediation she often discovers the reasons for Willy’s cruelties (which affirm his concern for his son) (p.11).
8. She tries to calm Willy through kindness but this is thrown back in her face – however, she accepts the rejection mildly.
9. The difficulty for an actress playing Linda is to portray her as more than a weak victim of Willy’s foolishness and her sons’ immaturity. Is she a character in her own right?
10. It is Willy’s ‘massive dreams’ that makes him both attractive and bearable to Linda.
11. Willy refers to her as: ‘my foundation and my support’ (p.13).
12. Like Biff, she is aware that Willy has impossible dreams, but she can’t allow herself to accept their impossibility.
13. When Willy expresses self-doubt she recognises the need to bolster his self-confidence (p.29).
14. An actress playing Linda needs to distinguish between a blind acceptance of Willy (and all his faults) and a gentle indulgence of them.
15. Linda has a clear view of things within the play – but she doesn’t seem to grasp their full implications.
16. She alone is aware of their financial situation.
17. She tries to stop Biff from stealing, but is ignored (p.39)
18. When it comes to crucial decisions she has an iron will – when she realises that the boys are not getting on with Willy she is quick to offer an ultimatum (p.43)
19. Linda’s love sustains the family unit.
20. She is determined that whatever he has done, Willy must not be allowed to fall into his grave ‘like an old dog’ (p.44).
21. When Biff reminds her that there are many people worse off than Willy she shows a both an uncompromising attitude and a recognition of what Willy’s life on the road must really be like.
22. Linda is aware that Willy intends to kill himself and has already tried.
23. She realises that Willy’s life is in Biff’s hands, as only he can restore Willy’s self respect.
24. However, Linda is vulnerable to the actions of those around her – it seems that she does not have the means to change her life independently.
25. Linda does deny the dreams that Willy has of going to Alaska. (p.67)
26. She does not subscribe to all aspects of the American Dream.
27. However, that is not to say that she does not possess strength (compare her reaction to her sons on p.10 to the way she turns on them on p.98).
28. She is powerful in her final defence of Willy (p.98).
29. Her emotions break when Willy is pathetically sowing seeds in the yard at night – then sadness overcomes her and she pleads: ‘Will you please leave him alone?’ (p.99).
30. Linda could be played as a downtrodden drudge, mending her stockings because she no longer has any self-respect, but this would ignore the sharper and more powerful sides of her character. She chooses to be passive when it seems appropriate and she is able to act decisively when it matters. She is arguably the strongest of all the characters.
Willy:
Willy: has ‘massive dreams’ but indulges in ‘little cruelties’:
1. He dreams of running the New York business, but wants his own business so that he can spend more time with his family.
2. He lives in a world of his own; doesn’t realise that his wife is trying to please him.
3. He berates Biff for working on a farm.
4. He lectures Biff on not getting too involved with women – which, of course, Willy does!
5. He delights that Biff deceives and exploits women.
6. He seems to encourage Biff to steal the football, then condemns him for it.
7. He has a tendency to reinterpret to fulfil his own dreams.
8. He believes his own hype; thinks his wealthy when the evidence is that he isn’t.
9. he appears self-confident but isn’t.
10. He is constantly reassured by Linda that his sons ‘idolise’ him, but this isn’t true.
11. he is a proud man, not one to accept charity – but he does accept money from Charley.
12. He needs to be a salesman so that he can earn ‘big’ money (to match his big dreams).
13. He belittles Happy’s secure and reasonably well-paid job; he asks Ben (his dead brother) about his father who, it turns out, made and sold flutes. His father was both successful and happy.
14. He projects his own behaviour and anxiety onto Biff.
15. He can’t understand that appearance and image are not enough for success.
16. It is difficult to be sure whether Willy refuses to face reality or is unable to do so.
17. He projects responsibility for action onto others.
18. He blames others for his failure to achieve his dreams.
19. He believes that Biff will only love him if he is successful: Biff loves him anyway!
20. Willy does, however, attack consumer society and the dross it is responsible for.
21. He believes he is going to be successful in his meeting with Howard but becomes very defensive when it is clear that he is not going to get his way.
22. He appeals to the values of a bygone era (‘respect, and comradeship and gratitude). These values are clearly absent in the America that Miller’s play describes.
23. Even his appeal to Howard’s dead father, Frank, fails to have the desired effect
24. Despite his ‘wrong dreams’ Willy does try his best for his family.
1. Ben is to Willy’s mind the epitome of all he desires.
2. Willy calls him ‘success incarnate’ (p.32).
3. Ben went to Africa at 17 and emerged rich at 21.
4. Willy sees Ben as proof that: ‘The greatest things can happen!’ (p.37).
5. To the audience Ben represents all that Willy is not.
6. He is self-assured, rich, adventurous and succinct.
7. Willy sees his big mistake in life as not going with Ben to Alaska.
8. Willy’s line: ‘I don’t want you to think…’ (p.39) indicates that Willy sees himself in competition with Ben.
9. Ben does not give an answer to Willy’s question about the secret of success.
10. Ben’s one moral lesson is a dubious one i.e when he trips up Biff. His message is that you will ‘never get out of the jungle’ by fighting fair with a stranger (p.38).
11. The reference to the jungle recalls to the mind the phrase ‘the law of the jungle’ – suggesting the need to be ruthless in a ruthless world. However this ‘jungle’ also promises diamonds. Ben is an example of how to succeed in a capitalist society – by being competitive (note that this is what Biff ultimately rejects). Ben remarks on p.39 that the stock exchange is also full of fearless characters.
12. Ben appears after Willy has been rejected by Howard and he again uses fighting metaphors to explain how to succeed (p.66).
13. His speech on p.66 echoes Biff and Happy’s dreams of a farm in the country and sees wealth as a reward for adventure.
14. Ben questions Willy’s search for reputation and to be ‘well-liked’ as these are not commodities that can be cashed in (p.25)
15. Ben fulfils his role as a tempter in the scene where Willy explains that he wants to commit suicide in order to help Biff. He calls it a ‘cowardly thing’ (p.100) but he does agree that twenty thousand dollars is a tempting argument and in keeping with his businesslike approach to life he cannot deny that the idea has its attractions.
16. Ultimately Ben’s view is that the suicide is ‘A perfect proposition all around’ (p.107).
Bernard:
1. Bernard is cautious, studious, altruistic and law-abiding (a contrast to Biff).
2. Bernard partially fulfils the role of Biff’s father by reminding him to study and to not drive without a licence.
3. He is described as ‘anaemic’ and is not as sporty or strong as either of the Loman brothers.
4. Bernard accepts the realities of school life but Willy rejects him as being ‘not well liked’ and tells his boys how Bernard will not succeed in the business world (p.25).
5. Bernard represents what Biff might have become without Willy’s influence.
6. The adult Bernard has matured into a very successful lawyer with influential friends.
7. Bernard had a very close relationship with biff. He is upset that Biff did not retake his maths exam to qualify for university. Bernard has a prolonged fist fight with Biff after Biff burns his sneakers because he can see that this action is symbolic of Biff wasting his talent (p.74).
8. Bernard is philosophical about success and advises Willy that sometimes giving up may be the best option (p.75).
9. Bernard and Biff’s relationship parallels Charley and Willy’s – Bernard helps Biff academically as Charley helps Willy financially.
10. It is Bernard who tells Mrs Loman that Biff has failed maths, he seems to represent Willy’s nemesis, and by this time we realise that he is living evidence that Willy’s advice to Biff was wrong.
Biff and Happy:
Miller states that he is sorry that ‘Biff is not a weightier counterbalance to Willy’s disaster in the audience’s mind’.
1. Biff should offer the basis for optimism to balance Willy’s despair
2. Happy is more like his father than Biff
3. Happy is competitive and inspired by the American dream. He wants to ‘win it’ for Willy after his father’s death
4. Biff believes his father never really ‘knew who he was’; Biff will reject competitiveness.
5. Biff changes from ‘a lost boy’ to a man of insight and responsibility.
6. Happy oozes confidence and refuses to give in
7. Biff has little confidence, Willy belittles his farm work.
8. Biff doesn’t know ‘what I’m supposed to want’; he tried at school but failed.
9. Biff is a ‘boy’, engaged in hobbies rather than a career.
10. Happy has a good job and plenty of sexual power.
11. Biff has lost sexual confidence; Happy has gained it.
12. All the males need to grow up.
13. Happy knows that Biff despises his choice of career.
14. Happy uses his sexuality to seduce the wives of senior colleagues.
15. Happy is sexually competitive, he won’t take bribes but he will seduce other men’s wives – ‘it gets like bowling’. (confused morality).
16. Happy wants to create a Loman Brothers enterprise in farming.
17. Happy prefers a physical challenge to the psychological one involved in office politics.
18. Both boys have absorbed their father’s ideas: boxing, competition, capitalism.
19. Biff boxes to please his father
20. Biff is a thief; he becomes a petty criminal; Willy condones this.
21. Biff is defensive of his mother; he accuses Willy of never having ‘an ounce of respect’ for Linda; Charley, unlike his father, would never ‘spew out vomit from his mind’.
22. Biff has known about Willy’s affair since he was 17; he regards his father as a fake.
23. For Happy, success means an apartment and lots of women (shallow?)
24. Happy uses Biff (‘one of the greatest football players in the country’) to try and seduce the woman in the restaurant.
25. Biff sees through the American dream, ‘We’ve been talking in a dream for fifteen years’; Happy doesn’t: he’ll still continue to construct myths and illusions.
26. Biff has discovered ‘bad faith: we live to the expectations of others and not our own (existentialism).
27. Biff tries hard not to expose/destroy his father’s illusions, but in the end he has to be cruel to be kind.
28. Biff realises that competitiveness and status are illusions and, ultimately, are worthless.
29. Biff tells Willy that there will be no sympathy for him if he commits suicide.
30. It is the realisation that Biff and Happy are a ‘dime a dozen’ that shatters Willy’s illusions.
31. Willy, now, has nothing to live for as he realises that Biff is not a ‘leader of men’.
32. The illusions and false consciousness that have been established in Biff’s thinking are not easily eradicated: he knows that they are wrong but he isn’t sure how to extricate himself from them. He does, however, offer us a kind of hope.
Linda:
1. Linda is a staunch defender of everything that Willy stands for.
2. However, she is also acutely aware of his nature (p.43).
3. According to the stage directions she is usually cheerful and has developed an ‘iron repression’ of her objections to Willy’s behaviour (p.8)
4. She is ready to excuse anything he does.
5. The opening stage directions suggest that she needs Willy to create the ideals that she can believe in (p.8).
6. Linda mediates between Biff and Willy.
7. Through this mediation she often discovers the reasons for Willy’s cruelties (which affirm his concern for his son) (p.11).
8. She tries to calm Willy through kindness but this is thrown back in her face – however, she accepts the rejection mildly.
9. The difficulty for an actress playing Linda is to portray her as more than a weak victim of Willy’s foolishness and her sons’ immaturity. Is she a character in her own right?
10. It is Willy’s ‘massive dreams’ that makes him both attractive and bearable to Linda.
11. Willy refers to her as: ‘my foundation and my support’ (p.13).
12. Like Biff, she is aware that Willy has impossible dreams, but she can’t allow herself to accept their impossibility.
13. When Willy expresses self-doubt she recognises the need to bolster his self-confidence (p.29).
14. An actress playing Linda needs to distinguish between a blind acceptance of Willy (and all his faults) and a gentle indulgence of them.
15. Linda has a clear view of things within the play – but she doesn’t seem to grasp their full implications.
16. She alone is aware of their financial situation.
17. She tries to stop Biff from stealing, but is ignored (p.39)
18. When it comes to crucial decisions she has an iron will – when she realises that the boys are not getting on with Willy she is quick to offer an ultimatum (p.43)
19. Linda’s love sustains the family unit.
20. She is determined that whatever he has done, Willy must not be allowed to fall into his grave ‘like an old dog’ (p.44).
21. When Biff reminds her that there are many people worse off than Willy she shows a both an uncompromising attitude and a recognition of what Willy’s life on the road must really be like.
22. Linda is aware that Willy intends to kill himself and has already tried.
23. She realises that Willy’s life is in Biff’s hands, as only he can restore Willy’s self respect.
24. However, Linda is vulnerable to the actions of those around her – it seems that she does not have the means to change her life independently.
25. Linda does deny the dreams that Willy has of going to Alaska. (p.67)
26. She does not subscribe to all aspects of the American Dream.
27. However, that is not to say that she does not possess strength (compare her reaction to her sons on p.10 to the way she turns on them on p.98).
28. She is powerful in her final defence of Willy (p.98).
29. Her emotions break when Willy is pathetically sowing seeds in the yard at night – then sadness overcomes her and she pleads: ‘Will you please leave him alone?’ (p.99).
30. Linda could be played as a downtrodden drudge, mending her stockings because she no longer has any self-respect, but this would ignore the sharper and more powerful sides of her character. She chooses to be passive when it seems appropriate and she is able to act decisively when it matters. She is arguably the strongest of all the characters.
Willy:
Willy: has ‘massive dreams’ but indulges in ‘little cruelties’:
1. He dreams of running the New York business, but wants his own business so that he can spend more time with his family.
2. He lives in a world of his own; doesn’t realise that his wife is trying to please him.
3. He berates Biff for working on a farm.
4. He lectures Biff on not getting too involved with women – which, of course, Willy does!
5. He delights that Biff deceives and exploits women.
6. He seems to encourage Biff to steal the football, then condemns him for it.
7. He has a tendency to reinterpret to fulfil his own dreams.
8. He believes his own hype; thinks his wealthy when the evidence is that he isn’t.
9. he appears self-confident but isn’t.
10. He is constantly reassured by Linda that his sons ‘idolise’ him, but this isn’t true.
11. he is a proud man, not one to accept charity – but he does accept money from Charley.
12. He needs to be a salesman so that he can earn ‘big’ money (to match his big dreams).
13. He belittles Happy’s secure and reasonably well-paid job; he asks Ben (his dead brother) about his father who, it turns out, made and sold flutes. His father was both successful and happy.
14. He projects his own behaviour and anxiety onto Biff.
15. He can’t understand that appearance and image are not enough for success.
16. It is difficult to be sure whether Willy refuses to face reality or is unable to do so.
17. He projects responsibility for action onto others.
18. He blames others for his failure to achieve his dreams.
19. He believes that Biff will only love him if he is successful: Biff loves him anyway!
20. Willy does, however, attack consumer society and the dross it is responsible for.
21. He believes he is going to be successful in his meeting with Howard but becomes very defensive when it is clear that he is not going to get his way.
22. He appeals to the values of a bygone era (‘respect, and comradeship and gratitude). These values are clearly absent in the America that Miller’s play describes.
23. Even his appeal to Howard’s dead father, Frank, fails to have the desired effect
24. Despite his ‘wrong dreams’ Willy does try his best for his family.
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