Extensive quote bank for Death of a Salesman and Keats' poetry organised into the different aspects of tragedy e.g. the role of the tragic villain/antagonist and the presence of fate and inevitability... A great revision resource which helped to achieve an A* in my A-Level.
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Element of tragedy Death of a Salesman Keats
The settings for the tragedy both place and time Can be said to adhere to Aristotle’s unity of time La Belle Dame sans Merci
because the action takes place in the last 24 hours of Obeys Aristotle’s unity of time/action- reflected
Willy’s life. in the brevity of the poem; we get the sense
However, the play does not strictly conform to that the action takes place in a 24 hour or so
Aristotle’s unity of place for the play features multiple period.
different settings, although all of these are in Willy’s Linking to the above, the poem is about a
head/filtered through Willy’s conscious/subjective single, quick encounter, which is mirrored by
viewpoint (the mobile concurrency of past and the form.
present). Doesn’t obey Aristotle’s unity of setting as
Set in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Boston in the late there is the setting of the remote landscape
1940s- the world has recently emerged from WW2. (“the cold hill’s side”) and La Belle Dame’s
The country is set on rebuilding itself and everyone “elfin grot” that she takes the knight to and
realising the American Dream. seduces him before leaving him for dead.
Most of the action is dominated by Willy Loman’s Isabella
home and yard in Brooklyn, NYC, perhaps highlighting Isabella does not obey Aristotle’s unity of time
Willy’s longing to provide for his family and showing as there is a real sense of a passage of time
that no matter how misguided he is, everything he throughout the poem e.g. “A whole long month
does in some way revolves around his family. of May in this sad plight.”; it also contains the
Because of recent population growth (“There’s more theme of seasonality/changing seasons, which
people! That’s what’s ruining this country. Population can be likened to the perpetuating cycle of
is getting out of control!”), the Lomans’ house (“the tragedy and/or the move from order to
small, fragile-seeming home) is boxed in by apartment disorder as the season changes from Summer
buildings (“The way the boxed us in here. Bricks and to Winter as the tragedy of Isabella and
windows, windows and bricks.”). Throughout the play, Lorenzo’s love ensues.
the big encroaching buildings (“towering, angular Isabella also does not truly adhere to Aristotle’s
shapes behind it, surrounding it on all sides”) are unities of place and action as although “the
shown to choke the more natural beauty that once forest (quiet for the slaughter)” appears to be
surrounded the Lomans’ house. The looming buildings, the main setting, not all of action occurs here.
which have put a chasm between the characters and In many parts of the poem, the setting is quite
the natural world, contribute to their feelings of ambiguous…
confinement and desire to escape (“We don’t belong
in this nuthouse of a city!”).
The protagonists’ flaws- pride, blindness, greed, Pride can be seen as Willy’s tragic flaw/hamartia. La Belle Dame sans Merci
weakness etc… Willy’s false pride results from his need to bridge the In comparison to classical tragic heroes, such as
gap between reality and his expectations; it functions Oedipus’ Sophocles or Shakespeare’s Macbeth,
, as a means of self-deception and as a coping the knight’s tragic flaw/hamartia is not clear
mechanism. cut/easily identifiable.
Willy creates a façade in an attempt to deceive himself This could be attributed to the fact that in the
and those around him that he a successful salesman poem Keats’ characters are thinly
(“They don’t need me in New York. I’m the New sketched/hollow; they are more of a symbol,
England man. I’m vital in New England.”). perhaps- enigmatic, ambiguous.
Willy likes to make out that he is “well-liked” and However, some critics have claimed that the
“known” (“they know me up and down New England…I poem is about the destructive nature of love,
have friends. I can park my car in any street in New and, thus, the knight’s tragic flaw is falling in
England and the cops protect it like their own.”). love (“I met a lady in the meads,/Full beautiful-
The pathos is heightened by the fact that others a faery’s child.”)- this would link to the possible
around him can see through Willy’s façade. Willy’s impetus behind the poem- Keats’ confused
boss, Howard, tells him that “this is no time for false feelings for his fiancé, Fanny Brawne, to whom
pride, Willy” and Linda comments on how “a terrible he could not properly commit.
thing is happening to him”.
He’s too proud to accept a job from Charley, a man Isabella
whom he considers to be his inferior, yet accepts Isabella and Lorenzo’s tragic flaw can be seen
weekly loans to substitute his wage that he is unable as something along the lines of an all-
to repay (“I-I just can’t work for you, Charley…I can’t encompassing infatuation with one
work for you, that’s all, don’t ask me why.”). another/love-sickness. Relevant quotes:
Biff blames Willy’s pride for why he hasn’t succeeded - “They could not in the self-same mansion
in life/been able to hold down a job (“And I never got dwell/Without some stir of heart, some
anywhere because you blew me so full of hot air I malady.”
could never stand taking orders from anybody! That’s - “They could not, sure, beneath the same roof
whose fault it is!”). sleep/But to each other dream, and nightly
Biff, however, comes to reject Willy’s false pride weep.”
(“Pop! I’m a dime a dozen and so are you!”), but Willy - “And with sick longing all the nigh outwear/To
is too entrenched in his flawed values and heightened hear her morning-step upon the stair.”
sense of self to undergo the anagnorisis that Biff does - “A whole long month of May in this sad
(“I am not a dime a dozen! I am Willy Loman, and you plight/Made their cheeks paler by the break of
are Biff Loman.”). June.”
It is plausible to argue, however, that it is not Willy - “So sweet Isabel/By gradual decay from beauty
who is flawed; instead, it is the society. Willy is only a fell/Because Lorenzo came not.”
product of the society he lives in and a steadfast However, similar to Death of a Salesman, it can
believer in the prescribed values that society has sold also be argued that society is the one that is
to him- this is the reason that he feels as though he flawed. Had Isabella and Lorenzo been able to
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