Review- Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller

Goodreads Summary: 

'For a salesman, there is no rock bottom to life. He don't put a bolt to a nut, he don't tell you the law or give you medicine. He's a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine.'

Willy Loman has been a salesman for 34 years. At 60, he is cast aside, his usefulness exhausted. With no future to dream about he must face the crushing disappointments of his past. He takes one final brave action, but is he heroic at last or a self-deluding fool?

This edition contains notes and activities to enhance your understanding and enjoyment of the play.

REVIEW:

I wasn't even aware of a play named Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller until my professor recommended it to me after we had a discussion on tragedies when doing Aristotle's Poetics. At that time, while I did agree that tragedy can strike anyone, I believed that a tragedy has an effect on a larger audience when it strikes someone of higher status in society. My reason was that catharsis has a greater chance of occurring when one person's tragedy doesn't just affect that one person, but an entire section of the population entirely. I now get when I was asked to read Death of a Salesman. The play did it's job in proving to me that when tragedy strikes common people like you and me, it has an even bigger impact because it makes everything so believable and real. 

Death of a Salesman was the first play or work even of Arthur Miller that I read. And it was meticulous. I absolutely loved the way it was executed. The language was simple and the plot, extremely easy to follow and understand. While I thought I wouldn't be able to fathom the basis of the play since I find it every difficult to understand plays in general, Death of a Salesman was, like I said, really easy and simple. It was simply outstanding and I can now understand why it has been touted as one of the greatest plays of its time. I admit that the characters were slightly confusing and at times, it got difficult to keep track of them all. The ending seemed a little off and vague to me, but I got what happened and that is what matters, I suppose. Keeping that aside though, whatever took place was necessary to take place and it made the play very realistic. 

WILLY (moving to the right): Funny, y'know? After all the highways, and the trains, and the appointments, and the years, you end up worth more dead than alive. 

How much more real can it get, huh? This time around, I also took notice of many, many aspects that I would have let pass without a second glance otherwise. That's simply because my brain has been trained to observe in a critical way now. The dynamics of the play made me question society in general and king or commoner, we are all subject to tragedy in whatever form it decides to come to us, economic, political, social, whatever. There was comedy in it but I didn't really feel like laughing. It was a family drama so to say. But I looked at it more as tragedy and the play gave me what it was supposed to. I can't seem to appreciate it as much as others have in the past and I am slightly at a loss for words, but I still loved Death of a Salesman and I am glad I read it. 

RATING:

Review- The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

Goodreads Summary:

Set in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Havana, Hemingway's magnificent fable is the story of an old man, a young boy and a giant fish. In a perfectly crafted story, which won for Hemingway the Nobel Prize for Literature, is a unique and timeless vision of the beauty and grief of man's challenge to the elements in which he lives.

REVIEW:

Ernest Hemingway is such a famous name in English literature and that in itself was enough for me to decide to read at least one of the author's works. I am glad to be taking my goal to read some literary classics seriously. When I picked The Old Man and the Sea to introduce myself to Hemingway, I was ready for a deep, thought-provoking and philosophical read that would make me contemplate because that is what literature does. I wouldn't say that the book didn't induce any of it at all, I would just say that it wasn't up to a very great extent. 

I read the 2013 revised edition of The Old Man and the Sea and for an author whose works have been so highly appreciated and who has been an inspiration for plenty of writers, I wasn't impressed at all with the writing. It was very simple and easy to understand. It's not like I'm not okay with that. Simplicity in writing actually makes a book easy to read. However- and this might have just been an edition or reprint mistake- there were too many editorial errors and typos which frustrated me to no end.

The Old Man and the Sea can be interpreted in various ways. For me, it was a story about the struggle for life and it was about hope. Santiago, the old fisherman, is well aware of his poor state after not having caught a single fish for a very long time, and at the same time, he knows that he has to go out there to earn his daily bread. He sleeps on a pillow made up of his trousers and a stack of newspapers. When the young boy, Manolin, offers him food and drinks, it looks like Santiago feels ashamed to accept it and he makes up stuff about how he has food stored. However well Santiago tries to hide his weakness, it's right out there for the reader to see. 

The end of the book is where it gets a little philosophical as Santiago manages to catch the biggest fish in the sea which is destroyed by a shark that ultimately makes Santiago hate the damn shark. The feelings and thoughts that Santiago develops towards this fish of his portray his character and the soft comparison between the two tells a lot. Santiago has a battle with himself as he finds himself talking loudly when alone at sea and that shows how lonely a man he is which makes his work, his life. That's all he does and he proves himself by going from being a fisherman who couldn't catch a single fish for eighty four days to someone who succeeds at what he knows so well. 

Ideally, I would have liked to think more before writing my review and I will think over the book, but at the same time, I don't really want to think about it because it could get very, very profound. The ending was unclear and I have a theory about it but it might actually complicate matters more for me. The Old Man and the Sea wasn't as epic as I expected it to be and there were many points in it that put me off. I would have really liked the book had I read it when I was younger (like most people have) but I wouldn't have got it back then. It's not like I've got it now, but I could at least perceive it in a few ways. 

RATING: