Introduction to Death of a Salesman and the 1940’s

Arthur Miller "The American Dream is the largely unacknowledged screen in front of which all American writing plays itself out," Arthur Miller has said. "Whoever is writing in the United States is using the American Dream as an ironical pole of his story. People elsewhere tend to accept, to a far greater degree anyway, that the conditions of life are hostile to man's pretensions."

Miller Bio. born in 1915 in New York City. father owned a manufacturing company, and his mother was a teacher his father lost his business in the Depression and the family was forced to move to a smaller home in Brooklyn. not a scholar; more interested in sports after graduating high school, Miller worked jobs ranging from radio singer to truck driver to clerk in an automobile-parts warehouse. Miller began writing plays as a student at the University of Michigan, joining the Federal Theater Project in New York City after he received his degree. His 1949 Death of a Salesman won the Pulitzer Prize. such a poor writer during high school that his teachers couldn’t remember who he was when he became famous

What’s so Special about the 1940’s? FACTS about this decade: USA unemployment rate – 18.26%; Canadian unemployment – 20% Average income - $1368.00 Yearly income (Canada 1949) - $2, 836 Minimum Wage $1.37/ hour Minimum Wage (USA) - $0.43/ hour 55% of U.S. homes have indoor plumbing Philco Refrigerator was $239.00 Life expectancy 68.2 female, 60.8 male Supreme Court decides blacks do have a right to vote World War II changed the order of world power; the  United States and the USSR become super powers Cold War begins.   Although the war had ostensibly engendered an unprecedented sense of American confidence, prosperity, and security, the United States became increasingly embroiled in a tense cold war with the Soviet Union. The propagation of myths of a peaceful, homogenous, and nauseatingly gleeful American golden age was tempered by constant anxiety about Communism, bitter racial conflict, and largely ignored economic and social stratification. Many Americans could not subscribe to the degree of social conformity and the ideological and cultural orthodoxy that a prosperous, booming, conservative suburban middle-class championed. - a new generation of artists and writers influenced by existentialist philosophy and the hypocritical postwar condition took up arms in a battle for self-realization and expression of personal meaning - such discontented individuals railed against capitalist success as the basis of social approval, disturbed that so many American families centered their lives around material possessions (cars, appliances, and especially the just- introduced television) The notions of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung regarding the role of the human subconscious in defining and accepting human existence, coupled with the existentialist concern with the individual’s responsibility for understanding one’s existence on one’s own terms, captivated the imaginations of postwar artists and writers.

Other 1940’s Contributions Frozen Dinners Tupperware Jeep Microwave oven Slinky Kidney dialysis machine Penicillin used Diners became popular