Expert answer:Paper on Tragedy and American Drama

Expert answer:Question 1) In two paragraphs (totaling about 400 words) discuss the ways in which Willy and Shelly are alike or not alike. Create clear topic ideas and support your ideas with cited quotes from the plays. Respond to two other students when you are done.
question two;
For your paper you are to answer BOTH of the following questions, using the two plays and sources that come from the course. You must cite all you answers using MLA formatting. Use OWL Purdue if you need help with MLA. Also, review the videos in the Plagiarism Module to get some insight into some of the skills and issues invovled in citing a paper using MLA. Submit both answers as one document. Label each prompt as One and Two. Write at least 750 – 1000 words for each paper. Create a Works Cited page at the end of each answer. Again, put both papers into one document that you will upload here.
Prompt One (answer both one and two)
In a 750 – 1000 word, well-paragraphed essay, discuss how Willy and Shelley are or are not examples of tragic heroes. Use quotes from both Miller and Aristotle when defining what a tragic hero is then use quotes from Miller and Mamet’s plays, when connecting those ideas to the two characters.
Prompt Two (again answer both one and two and include both answers in one document)
In a 750 – 1000 word, well paragraphed essay, discuss how Death of a Salesman represents a modernist critique of capitalism, while Glengarry Glenn Ross represents a postmodernists critique of capitalism.
Without exception, papers turned after the due date at 11:59, will lose 10 points off the final grade. Please don’t wait until the last minute to get your paper in.
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Record: 1
Title: Glengarry Glen Ross
Source: Masterplots, Fourth Edition; November 2010, p1-3
Article Author: Delaney, Bill
Document Type: Work Analysis
Biographical Information: Mamet, David
Full Name: David Alan Mamet
Gender: Male
National Identity: United States
Cultural Identity: Jewish
Language: English
Publication Information: Salem Press
Locale: Chicago; Illinois; United States; North America
Abstract: A brief synopsis and critical analysis of David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen
Ross.
Literary Genres/Subgenres: Drama; Social realism
Subject Terms: 1980’s
Betrayal
Chicago
Corruption
Ethics
Greed
Language or languages
Loyalty
Real estate
Selling
ISBN: 9781587655685
Accession Number: 103331MP417789820000108
Database: Literary Reference Center
Glengarry Glen Ross
David Mamet
Born: November 30, 1947; Chicago, Illinois
Quick Reference
First produced: 1983; first published, 1983
Type of work: Drama
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: 1982
Locale: Chicago
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Principal characters
Shelley Levene, a real estate salesman
John Williamson, an office manager
Dave Moss, a real estate salesman
George Aaronow, a real estate salesman
Richard Roma, a real estate salesman
James Lingk, a prospective buyer
Baylen, a police detective
The Story:
Shelley Levene, Dave Moss, George Aaronow, and Richard Roma are competing in yet another sales
promotion contest to sell plots of overpriced, vacant land in a subdivision in Florida. The ruthless bosses Mitch
and Murray have decreed that the winner will get a new Cadillac, the runner-up a set of steak knives, and the
other two will be fired. All four salesmen are unhappy with the leads (the names, addresses, and phone
numbers of supposedly interested prospects) the company is providing and are voicing their complaints to one
another as well as to the office manager, John Williamson, a company man who is only obeying orders. Levene
is desperate because he has no sales on the board and is having a streak of bad luck. He pleads with
Williamson for better leads but gets nowhere with the inflexible office manager, who regards Levene as an
over-the-hill loser on his way out.
In a confidential conversation at the Chinese restaurant, Moss suggests to Aaronow that they stage a fake
break-in at the office and steal the premium leads, which are considered valuable because they come from
good sources and have not yet been worked over. He claims he can sell them to a competitor named Graff and
that they can both go to work for him. Moss says Aaronow will receive twenty-five hundred dollars as his share
of Graff’s payment for the stolen leads. Aaronow is tempted but afraid of getting caught. In the same Chinese
restaurant, Roma, a younger, more successful salesman who seems destined to win the Cadillac, begins to
display his sales skills by nearly hypnotizing a gullible prospect named James Lingk with a line of double-talk
that insidiously introduces the subject of Glengarry Highlands, the wildly inappropriate name for the Florida
swampland the company is currently promoting.
The next morning when Roma comes in to claim the Cadillac because he has made a big sale to Lingk, he
discovers that the office has been burglarized. There is broken glass all over the floor and a detective named
Baylen is questioning the salesmen one by one. Roma is outraged when he learns that some of the recently
executed sales contracts have been stolen, along with some office equipment and the premium leads. To add
to his problems, Lingk appears and announces that his wife has demanded that he back out of the land deal.
While Roma is trying to stall his balky client by telling him that it will take several days for the paperwork to
clear, Williamson blurts out that the contract and Lingk’s check have been sent in to the main office. The
frightened Lingk rushes off to get legal help to cancel the deal, while Roma turns on Williamson and curses him
roundly for butting into a situation he knows nothing about.
Levene, who is feeling euphoric and rejuvenated because he had made a big sale the night before, heaps his
own profane abuse on Williamson for killing Roma’s deal. Inadvertently, however, he reveals guilty knowledge
about the break-in. His incriminating statement is to call Williamson a liar. Levene is the only one (besides
Williamson himself) who knows that Williamson is lying about the contract and the check. Williamson thinks by
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lying that he is helping Roma. Lingk’s contract and check have not been sent in but rather are on Williamson’s
desk where Levene must have seen them when he was stealing the premium leads.
Levene confesses, pulling out the twenty-five hundred dollars in cash and offering to give all of it to Williamson
if he will only keep quiet. Williamson, however, reports Levene to the detective. It is evident that Levene will go
to prison along with Moss, on whom he informed, while the two remaining salesmen will continue to pray for
better leads and worry about their uncertain futures in their dog-eat-dog business.
Critical Evaluation:
Fortunately for the public, the salesmen depicted in David Mamet’s play are not typical for the real estate
business as a whole, although they use many of the sales techniques taught by big real-estate brokerage firms
at motivational seminars. Mamet’s salesmen are “hard sell” con artists selling land for far more than it is worth.
Typically they obtain prospects from coupons mailed in by people responding to glowing advertisements in
newspapers and magazines. The story’s leads are requesting a brochure but do not realize that the brochure
will be attached to the end of a high-pressure salesman’s arm. Prospects rarely see the land itself but are
shown maps and photographs designed to create the illusion that these subdivisions in far-off Florida, Arizona,
Hawaii, or some other sunny place will be turned into a vacation and retirement paradise with golf courses,
tennis courts, swimming pools, clubhouses, and other amenities. The buyers are buying a dream and an
illusion. Most make only a small down payment and continue to pay monthly installments for years, looking
forward to the day when they can leave the noisy, dangerous city and move to their patch of paradise. If any
actually visit their property, they are likely to be so disillusioned that they will stop making payments, forfeiting
everything they have invested, and the land will revert to the developers who will sell it to somebody else. The
victims are likely to find that their land is located in the middle of an alligator-infested swamp or on the side of a
smoking volcano or in the middle of a desert inhabited only by coyotes and rattlesnakes. They are likely to find
that streets and roads shown on the maps are nothing but tracks scraped out by bulldozers and that the
amenities depicted in the brochures are nothing but cardboard signs and scraps of faded cloth fluttering on
wooden stakes.
While Mamet was struggling to become a successful writer, he worked at a variety of part-time and temporary
jobs. In one he did clerical work for a company of “land sharks” such as those he depicts in Glengarry Glen
Ross. He liked and admired the salesmen, although he could see they were little better than crooks. What he
liked about them was their histrionics and poetry. They had to have vivid imaginations as well as a raw
eloquence in order to create the illusions that would make their prospects sign on the line. Salesmen make
good stage characters because they are articulate. Mamet’s reputation as a playwright is based on his ability to
reproduce the poetry of the American vernacular. He is a successor to writers such as Mark Twain, Sherwood
Anderson, Ernest Hemingway, and others who have reproduced the beauty in the cadences, humor, and
imagery of ordinary American speech.
Glengarry Glen Ross is an example of minimalism, a highly popular school of American literature since the
1960’s. The minimalist writer provides a minimum of information and forces the reader or audience member to
make guesses, inferences, and assumptions. This effective technique is challenging and involving. None of the
characters in Glengarry Glen Ross is described as to physical appearance. The name of their company is not
even mentioned. Their employers are not given last names. The audience must infer that there are other
salesmen who do not appear on stage, since it seems unlikely that Mitch and Murray would fire two salesmen if
they only had a total of four. Audience members who might be unfamiliar with real estate jargon get no
explanation of terms such as “leads,” “sits,” “shot,” and that most holy of holy words, “closing.”
Levene refers to his daughter with emotion, and the audience, without any information, must assume that this
girl or woman is sick or handicapped and totally dependent upon her father. Mamet’s salesmen are all such
liars it is conceivable that Levene invented a sick daughter for the purpose of eliciting sympathy. No information
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is given about the salesmen’s personal lives; they may not have any lives outside their work. They seem to
spend most of their free time in a Chinese restaurant. With all the information that is not given, it is amazing
what a multidimensional world the audience can visualize from guesses, inferences, and assumptions based
on rapid-fire dialogue full of slang, insults, and outrageous profanity.
The play is well plotted. After both Roma and Levene, in a rhapsody of profanity, vent their rage at the system
on the stooge Williamson, there is a surprise ending worthy of Guy de Maupassant or O. Henry. Led to believe
that Aaronow committed the burglary, the audience suddenly realizes that Moss must have given up on the
weak-willed Aaronow and persuaded Levene to become his accomplice.
Glengarry Glen Ross, like Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman (1949), is an indictment of laissez-faire
capitalism. Both plays demonstrate how capitalism promotes greed, competition, and envy, causing people to
wear themselves out, wasting their lives in pursuit of an illusion. The contest in Glengarry Glen Ross resembles
the dance marathon in Horace McCoy’s bitter novel of the Great Depression era, They Shoot Horses, Don’t
They? (1935), which describes dance marathons in which there are no winners but in which exhausted dancers
who fall behind are eliminated. Mamet has been quoted as saying that capitalism is “obviously an idea whose
time has come and gone.” He has also pointed out that Glengarry Glen Ross “is about a society based on
business . . . a society with only one bottom line: How much money you make.” Arthur Miller believed that
socialism would solve most social problems. Mamet, like many modern writers, does not believe there are easy
solutions. Like many other modern writers, he has seen in the histories of the Soviet Union and the People’s
Republic of China that socialism only transfers power from one group of imperfect human beings to another.
Mamet seems content, like many other minimalists, to dramatize the human condition without trying to explain
how that condition might be improved. Writers are not obligated to provide solutions to the problems they
illuminate.
Mamet has at least one thing in common with some of the world’s greatest writers: He likes people in spite of
their faults and perhaps even because of their faults. He appreciates his boastful, unscrupulous, nervy,
frightened salesmen as colorful specimens of humanity. He makes his audience identify with these characters
and suffer along with them, pitying them for their empty lives and forgiving them for their faults. By sharing their
feelings, the audience experiences a sense of unity with the characters on the stage.
Essay by: “Critical Evaluation” by Bill Delaney
Further Reading
Bigsby, C. W. E. David Mamet. New York: Methuen, 1985. A study of Mamet’s life and work, with one chapter
devoted to a detailed discussion of Glengarry Glen Ross. Presents an interesting portrait of Mamet that is
based partly on personal interviews.
_______, ed. The Cambridge Companion to David Mamet. New York: Cambridge, 2004. Collection of newly
commissioned essays about Mamet and his work, including a brief biography, overviews of his work for the
stage and screen in the 1970’s, 1980’s, and 1990’s, and an analysis of Glengarry Glen Ross by Benedict
Nightingale.
Carroll, Dennis. David Mamet. New York: Macmillan, 1987. An in-depth study of Mamet’s plays, grouping them
thematically, with chapters on business, sex, learning, and communion. The chapter on “Business” compares
Glengarry Glen Ross with another popular Mamet play, American Buffalo (1975).
Dean, Anne. David Mamet: Language as Dramatic Action. London: Associated University Presses, 1990.
Focuses on Mamet’s poetic use of the American vernacular. Contains many quotes from five of Mamet’s plays
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and devotes a chapter to Glengarry Glen Ross.
Jones, Nesta, and Steven Dykes, comps. File on Mamet. London: Methuen, 1991. This small book is packed
with useful information about Mamet, including excerpts from reviews of various performances of Glengarry
Glen Ross. Contains a detailed chronology and a bibliography.
Kane, Leslie, ed. David Mamet’s “Glengarry Glen Ross”: Text and Performance. New York: Garland, 1996.
Collection of essays interpreting the play and film of Glengarry Glen Ross, including discussions of the male
characters, the “position of the female,” the value of money, “pernicious nostalgia,” and the vision of a promised
land in the play.
Mamet, David. Writing in Restaurants. New York: Viking Penguin, 1986. A collection of thirty essays in which
Mamet expresses his thoughts about a number of subjects, including the theater and film making in Hollywood.
Nadel, Ira Bruce. David Mamet: A Life in the Theatre. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Comprehensive
biography of Mamet. Discusses Mamet’s ideas about writing and the genesis of many of his plays.
Price, Steven. The Plays, Screenplays, and Films of David Mamet. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. A
collection of criticism of Mamet’s work, including a chapter featuring the key criticism of Glengarry Glen Ross.
Copyright of this work is the property of Salem Press and its content may not be copied without the copyright
holder’s express written permission except for the print or download capabilities of the retrieval software used
for access. This content is intended solely for the use of the individual user.
Source: Masterplots, Fourth Edition
Accession Number: 103331MP417789820000108
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Tragic hero as defined by Aristotle
A tragic hero is a literary character who makes a judgment error that inevitably leads to his/her
own destruction. In reading Antigone, Medea and Hamlet, look at the role of justice and/or
revenge and its influence on each character’s choices when analyzing any “judgment error.”
Characteristics
Aristotle once said that “A man doesn’t become a hero until he can see the root of his own downfall.”
An Aristotelian tragic hero must possess specific characteristics, five of which are below[2]:
1) Flaw or error of judgment (hamartia) Note the role of justice and/or revenge in the judgments.
2) A reversal of fortune (peripeteia) brought about because of the hero’s error in judgment.
3) The discovery or recognition that the reversal was brought about by the hero’s own
actions (anagnorisis)
4) Excessive Pride (hubris)
5) The character’s fate must be greater than deserved.
Initially, the tragic hero should be neither better or worse morally than normal people, in order to allow
the audience to identify with them. This also introduces pity, which is crucial in tragedy, as if the hero
was perfect we would be outraged with their fate or not care especially because of their ideological
superiority. If the hero was imperfect or evil, then the audience would feel that he had gotten what he
deserved. It is important to strike a balance in the hero’s character.
Eventually the Aristotelian tragic hero dies a tragic death, having fallen from great heights and having
made an irreversible mistake. The hero must courageously accept their death with honour.
Other common traits
Some other common traits characteristic of a tragic hero:
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Hero must suffer more than he deserves.
Hero must be doomed from the start, but bears no responsibility for possessing his flaw.
Hero must be noble in nature, but imperfect so that the audience can see themselves in him.
Hero must have discovered his fate by his own actions, not by things happening to him.
Hero must understand his doom, as well as the fact that his fate was discovered by his own
actions.
Hero’s story should arouse fear and empathy.
Hero must be physically or spiritually wounded by his experiences, often resulting in his death.
The hero must be intelligent so he may learn from his mistakes.
The hero must have a weakness, usually it is pride
He has to be faced with a very serious decision that he has to make
Arthur Miller’s Death ofa Salesman:
History of Criticism
Amy Sickels
Opening Night
One of America’s most popular plays, Arthur Miller’s Death ofa
Salesman has probably generated more debate than any other modem
drama in America. The scholarship on Arthur Miller is extensive, spanning more than ñfty years, and, out of all of Miller’s plays. Death ofa
Salesman is by far the most discussed. Countless academic articles and
books have been written about the play, and it is one of the most likely
American plays to appear on high school and college reading lists.
Death ofa Salesman was not Miller’s first play, but it was the one that
began to attract the attention of theatre critics, and though he wrote
many others, this would be the play that ultimately determined Miller’s
long-lasting fame and reputation. Selling 11 million copies. Death ofa
Salesman is considered by many to be the quintessential American
drama.
When Arthur Miller wrote Death of a Salesman, which he did in
about six weeks in 1948, he was responding to the new postwar American affluence. Despite the country’s newly acquired wealth. Miller felt
that the Depression (a major impetus for his work) was still looming
and that Americans were living under the constant fear that at any time,
everything would disappear. Death ofa Salesman revolves around the
last twenty-four hours in the life of Willy Loman, a sixty-three-yearold traveling salesman whose ideas of success conflict with the reality
that he is living. Much of the play takes place inside of his mind, as he
remembers significant events from his past. Deciding that he is worth
more dead than alive, Willy commits suicide, hoping that the insurance
money will support his family and give his son Biff a new start and a
chance to succeed. While address …
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