{"id":98,"date":"2008-10-15T22:16:21","date_gmt":"2008-10-16T02:16:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/script_analysis\/2008\/10\/15\/caitlyn-duer-dialogue-preliminary-ideas\/"},"modified":"2008-10-18T14:12:13","modified_gmt":"2008-10-18T18:12:13","slug":"caitlyn-duer-dialogue-preliminary-ideas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/script_analysis\/2008\/10\/15\/caitlyn-duer-dialogue-preliminary-ideas\/","title":{"rendered":"Caitlyn Duer – Dialogue (Preliminary Ideas)"},"content":{"rendered":"

The speech of the characters of Death of a Salesman<\/em> belies their posts in life, concerning both class and family station.\u00a0 Ben has very precise language, filling in the gaps in Willy’s memories with perfect recall in clipped sentences.\u00a0 He also has language more associated with the upper class (such as an advanced vocabulary of multi-syllabic words) and addresses Willy formally as “William”.<\/p>\n

While Willy strives\u00a0 toward the ideal that Ben represents, his language betrays his true nature as a common man.\u00a0 He uses words like “goddammit”, “y’know”, “goin'”, and “don’t” instead of “doesn’t”.\u00a0 Willy also skips around from idea to idea, as when he argues with Howard:<\/p>\n

“I’m talking about your father!\u00a0 There were promises made across this desk!\u00a0 You mustn’t tell me you’ve got people to see – I put thirty-six years into this firm, Howard, and now I can’t pay my insurance!\u00a0 You can’t eat the orange and throw the peel away – a man is not a piece of fruit!\u00a0 Now pay attention.\u00a0 Your father – in 1928 I had a big year.\u00a0 I averaged a hundred and seventy dollars a week in commissions”.<\/p>\n

In one paragraph, Willy skips from the problems of his reality to his idealistic philosophy of life to a tangential story from the past.\u00a0 He repeats this pattern countless times throughout the play.\u00a0 It belies the disparity between Willy’s facade of success and his reality of failure, as he is constantly jumping around in his speech to keep the facade and reality in balance.\u00a0 The pattern also contrasts heavily with the direct dialogue of Ben, who as an honestly successful man has nothing to prove or hide.<\/p>\n

The language of the rest of the Lomans denotes their family roles.\u00a0 Linda constantly punctuates her speech with terms of endearment (“dear” and “darling”) and is often using imperative sentences to give instructions to the other family members..\u00a0 This denotes her position in the family as a caregiver, manager, and peacemaker, traditional roles for a woman and mother.\u00a0 Biff and Happy also fall into their traditional roles as wholesome young boys with their use of words like “gee whiz”, “pal”, and “scout”.\u00a0 These examples are a continuation of Willy’s balancing falsehood and reality.\u00a0 By using language common to their roles in life, the other Lomans attempt to project a facade of American familial perfection while hiding the truth of their failure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The speech of the characters of Death of a Salesman belies their posts in life, concerning both class and family station.\u00a0 Ben has very precise language, filling in the gaps in Willy’s memories with perfect recall in clipped sentences.\u00a0 He also has language more associated with the upper class (such as an advanced vocabulary of … Continue reading Caitlyn Duer – Dialogue (Preliminary Ideas)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":490,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[777],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-98","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hodge-2-dialogue-research"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/script_analysis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/script_analysis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/script_analysis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/script_analysis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/490"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/script_analysis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/script_analysis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/script_analysis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/script_analysis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/script_analysis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}