Contemporary Literature: A Marxist Reading of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman and All My Sons

Abstract

Arthur Miller is an American writer whose works are known as social works. In his plays he pictures the social problem of 20th century. All My Sons and Death of a Salesman are two of his well-known plays. Since his works are mostly social plays, they can be studied from the Marxist approach that basically deals with social issues. Marxian methodology and perspective focuses on some factors such as the importance of our being social commodities over our being individualities. It also highlights the points that the economic forces make everything in our life, including our identity. Based on the above mentioned methodology, the present paper studies the aforementioned plays by Arthur Miller. The study brings to the light the facts about and beyond the life of Willy Loman and his family and also Joe Keller and his family, the protagonists of the two plays. The conclusions of the study show that both characters and the families are somewhat the victims of the social pressures and the victims of the capitalist society that honored the economically powerful people and repressed other group so-called working class. That is why they do whatever to be accepted in the society they live in.