Author(s)

Guizhi Zhang ¹, Dongjie Tian ¹

Affiliation(s)

¹ School of Foreign Language, Henan University of Technology, No. 11, Lianhua, Zhengzhou, China

Corresponding Author

Guizhi Zhang

ABSTRACT

Death of a Salesman is the culmination of Miller's playwriting. Many scholars and critics have studied this play from many perspectives, such as the American Dream, tragedy theory, and the ecological view of nature. However, few have studied this play from the perspective of trauma theory. Therefore, this thesis adopts a textual analysis approach to study Willy's trauma symptoms, trauma causes and failure in trauma recovery based on trauma theory. From the content of the storyline, this study analyzes the causes of Willy's trauma from society, family and individuals, and explores the reasons for Willy's ultimate failure to recover from trauma through a careful reading and analysis. It has been found that Willy's trauma symptoms are complex and diverse. The most representative ones are flashback and avoidance. The series of psychological traumas suffered by Willy reveal the tragic lives of ordinary people in American society who have been traumatized against the backdrop of the illusory American Dream. They drown in trauma and eventually have to end their lives by committing suicide. This thesis provides a new perspective on the study of Death of a Salesman, which helps to raise readers’ awareness of trauma, and warns people to deal with trauma positively instead of indulging in it.

KEYWORDS

Trauma theory, trauma symptoms, trauma causes, trauma recovery

CITE THIS PAPER

Guizhi Zhang, Dongjie Tian, An Analysis of Willy's Trauma in Death of a Salesman Based on Trauma Theory. Lecture Notes on Language and Literature (2023) Vol. 6: 11-24. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.23977/langl.2023.060903.

REFERENCES

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