'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.