'Death of a Salesman' by Arthur Miller

I hadn't read this play since my own high school days. I remembered it as being good but depressing, and my memory was accurate.

Why this play? I have launched this year into a literary exploration of the American Dream with my Year 13 class. We will be reading The Great Gatsby, and I have been toying with other texts which we might explore. As I googled my way around the theme, I kept coming up against Death of a Salesman on reading lists, time and time again. I was dubious, but we have a number of dog-eared copies in the resource room, so I decided to re-read it and see.

Miller's play is a good example of the adage that 'there is a reason why the Classics become Classic'. It won a Pulitzer Prize in 1949, and a Tony Award. It has been adapted into two feature films and a number of TV movies. It is old, but it is still very good.

In fact, like Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four---written around the same time---seventy years later, the underlying themes and questions of this drama are still as relevant as ever: the tension between the 'American Dream' and the reality; the societal pressure to live up to some norm or expectation, regardless of one's aptitude or personality; the realities of the way that families can replicate destructive patterns of thought and behaviour from one generation to another.

My question after re-reading it is no longer whether it is worthy of study, but around the sensitivities and appropriateness of teaching a text which deals with suicide. I will need to discuss this with the class and see what they think.

'If I Die in a Combat Zone: Box Me Up and Ship Me Home' by Tim O'Brien

This is an autobiography, or memoir, of Tim O'Brien's tour of duty in the Vietnam War. If you want to
understand what the Vietnam War was like for an American soldier then this is a great memoir to read. He is college educated, thoughtful and reflective, but tells it like it is. 

I was re-reading this book to decide whether I want to teach it this year with my Year 12 class. I still haven't decided. One of the things I noticed particularly this time around was the way the author switches from first to second person narrative. He uses second person (you) when he is talking about the worst parts of the fighting. I came to the conclusion that it could be more a way of distancing himself from the memories than a way of involving the reader, but it is a bit disconcerting switching pronouns from chapter to chapter.

What I like about this memoir is that he is completely honest about his feelings. He is drafted and doesn't want to go. He believes that the war is not a just war; that the US involvement is wrong. But he also feels his duty as a citizen. He considers dodging the draft, and later considers deserting before he is sent to Vietnam, but he can't bring himself to do either. The memoir starts in Vietnam for the first few chapters and then flashes back to him getting drafted, and after that tells the story in chronological order. For this reason, I think it is a more useful book to teach than his Pulitzer-nominated collection of short stories (The Things They Carried). Students tend to find that collection disjointed and don't get an overall picture. But the short stories are better crafted writing than the autobiography. Meh. Can't decide!