English 1 Assignment
Pygmalion vs Death of a salesman
Compare the ways in which Pygmalion and Death of a Salesman take up serious social issues.
Shaw’s plays have a social purpose like Ibsen’s, but in Shaw’s plays it is the ideas that really matter and not the characters. In Pygmalion it is the idea of someone from the lower class getting an education and climbing the social ladder that is the theme. In Ibsen’s A Doll’s House it is Nora and what she does which carries the weight of the play.
Death of salesman is said to be about the American dream. Both plays are about issues that are still relevant today, and this is what I have chosen to write about.
“Pygmalion” and “Death of a Salesman” are set in two different centuries and social settings. “Pygmalion” is about Eliza Doolittle, a flower girl from London’s east end, who speaks cockney, and Professor Higgins, who studies language and want to teach Eliza how to speak correct, as a study. It is also about social climbing, a flower girl is able to pass herself off as a duchess, due to education.
The wealthy upper classes in England owned most of the land and made such a good living of their inherited money that they did not have to work. These people are satirised in the embassy scene, where they are shown as stupid and easily fooled. Shaw shows us how heritage and wealth are no guarantee for people being clever.
The play reflects a debate that was going on in the beginning of the 19th century. Basic education had been available for everyone since 1870 and this gave people an opportunity to climb the social ladder. The belief from the Victorian age was that a person is born into a class and will always belong there. Nobody can move from one class to another. New thinkers believed that a person is not defined by the position into which he is born. Social change can be achieved through education. This is what Shaw shows us through the characters of Eliza and her father.
“Death of a Salesman” is about Willy Loman, a salesman for over thirty years. He is tired of his job and not a very successful salesman anyway. He has financial troubles and he is worried about the future of his sons. He especially worries about Biff, who is his favourite and has not settled down to a regular occupation at the age of thirty-four. He dreams of a great future for Biff.
Willy cannot earn enough money to run his home in the way he would like – he cannot give the boys anything. He wishes he had been adventurous like his brother Ben, who went to Africa and made a fortune. In Willy`s mind he is a model for Happy and Biff to copy.
To Willy money defines success; people are judged by the amount they acquire, and the amount of success is linked with the amount of money they have. Willy feels he has to succeed, and the only way is to make a lot of money and be able to acquire material goods. He does not want to face the fact that he is not earning enough.
In Pygmalion your social class is measured in the way you speak and dress.
Freddy is poor, but speaks and dresses like a gentleman and therefore is treated like one. Eliza is taught how to speak and dress correctly and through her marriage to Freddy she ends up in the middle class. This is an example of how education can bring you higher up on the social ladder. Where you can afford to live and how you speak and dress are the things that determine which social class you belong to, and still are to some extent today.
At the time when the play was first performed, England was a very different country from the one it is today. There was a big gap between the rich and the poor and this gap was very difficult to bridge.
Shaw believed that educating the population would bring about a better and fairer society. And the way of the new thinkers is what he presents to us, and the play’s four main themes are what make it still relevant today:
v The role of women in society
v The importance of class background
v Education as a key to progress
v Different kind of language
Even today in some societies the way you dress and speak tells which step of the social ladder you are on.
Willy Loman in “Death of a Salesman” is a victim of the pressure of the consumer society, where pressures of advertising persuade people to buy goods, and to do so by paying for them by instalments.
Willy seems to be a typical case as he feels these financial pressures, and also feels obliged to keep up the pretence of a successful salesman. We know from talks with Linda, his wife that Willy is continually in financial difficulties. He borrows money from Charley to pay his life insurance, pretending to Linda that he has earned his keeps from work. When Howard Wagner shows Willy his new tape recorder, he has to keep up the pretence of being able to buy one. Willy has declined, but cannot face up to this in public. He presents a façade because the sorts of things he wants are those which a successful businessman is supposed to possess. Again the pressure is to be “successful” and success can be measured in material goods, at least in the society that Miller presents to us.
During the time the play was written the middle classes had suffered a decline. The real value of their money had diminished and they were struggling to make enough money to maintain their former way of life. Willy seems to be a typical case as he too feels these financial pressures. He feels obliged to keep up the pretence of being a successful salesman and be able to keep the same existence.
Riches and success are inseparable for Willy, and this is also what is said to be the American dream. America, the land of opportunity, in which if you work hard you can be rich and successful. The only chances you have to reach the top of the social ladder are to work your way up. Willy wanted this for his sons, and would have been able to give it to them if he just could have been successful as a salesman. He is from the middle class, but would like to be rich and successful and belong to the upper class, as when he says to Wagner he has to get a tape recorder even though he knows he can’t afford it.
Being rich and acquire lot of material goods is still today a way of measuring success.
Both plays are about social issues that reflect the time in which they are written. They are both about class background. Eliza is brought up from the working class to the middle class by Professor Higgins, and Willy Loman wants to be rich and successful. Willy wanted his boys to go to school and get an education to become richer and more successful than he did. Professor Higgins shows how it is possible to climb the social ladder if you are given the possibility to get an education.
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