1.Arthur Miller is widely regarded as one of the greatest American playwrights, whose works include oft-performed classics Death of a Salesman and The Crucible. Miller’s plays are performed not only on Broadway, but also on the stages all over the world. Arthur Miller was born on October 17, 1915 in New York City, the son of a coat-manufacturer and a public school teacher. In 1928, his father’s business failed and the family struggled to survive. The Great Depression taught the young Miller a lesson about the insecurity of modern existence. After graduation from high school, he worked in an auto-parts warehouse in order to save money for his studies at the University of Michigan. At the University, he won a lot of prize for the plays he wrote.
2. Great Depression: In 1929, the Wall Street crash suddenly ended the good “Twenties” and started the Great Depression. Factories and banks were closed. Workers laid off. A terrible drought attacking the Great Plains in 1933 made things worse. Land and crops were ruined. The livestock, machinery and homes were destroyed. Thousands of farmers left for cities or the West to look for work, but in vain. Capital was further concentrated in the hands of a few monopolizing tycoons. Contradictions in the free capitalist system were intensified.
3. Stream of Consciousness is a narrative mode or method that attempts to depict the multitudinous thoughts and feelings which pass through the mind.
4. Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play performed in a theatre, or on radio or television. Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has been contrasted with the epic and the lyrical modes ever since Aristotle's Poetics (c. 335 BC) — the earliest work of dramatic theory.
5. The American Dream is a national ethos of the United States, the set of ideals (democracy, rights, liberty, opportunity and equality) in which freedom includes the opportunity for prosperity and success, as well as an upward social mobility for the family and children, achieved through hard work in a society with few barriers. In the definition of the American Dream by James Truslow Adams in 1931, "life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement" regardless of social class or circumstances of birth.
(1) F (2) T (3) F (4) T (5) F
1.Willy Loman
2.Stream of Consciousness
3.democracy, rights, liberty, opportunity and equality
4. All My Sons / The Crucible
5.American playwright