What is your reaction to what seems to be a trend here - that many playwrights, writing homework help

please, upload all responses in different files,

1 .ASSIGNMENT: Please respond to the question below. See Course Calendar for due date. AND — please ask a question of or comment to two other learners regarding their responses (and please respond to those questions asked of you as you would do in a face-to-face classroom discussion).

1) What is your reaction to what seems to be a trend here — that many playwrights find their inspiration in the work of another writer? Sophocles used a well known myth as the basis of his Oedipus story. Shakespeare’s Hamlet seems to borrow from an earlier play called Ur Hamlet. And now we see Mr. Steele’s view about the relationship of Arthur Miller’s Death Of A Salesman to the earlier Welty short story Death Of A Traveling Salesman. Does this make the playwright seem more like a plagiarist? Or do you have another view? Explain please.

2. Assignment:

Select one of my five questions below to respond to in the response box at the bottom of this page.

In one flashback of happier times, we learn about Willy building his front stoop and sending Biff and Happy off to a nearby construction site to steal sand for the stoop. At Willy’s funeral, Biff talks about Willy and the stoop. Question–What does the front stoop to the house represent or symbolize?

When Willy meets with his boss Howard to try to negotiate a different territory, Howard is distracted by a tape recorder. He plays for Willy some things that he has used the recorder for such as his child and wife. Question–What do you think the tape recorder comes to represent or mean in this scene?

When Willy talks with Bernard in Charley’s office, Willy asks Bernard what went wrong with Biff. Bernard explains that Biff was different after he returned from visiting Willy on the road to get help from Willy when his high school math teacher was about to fail him. Bernard tells Willy that when Biff returned he burned his University of Virginia sneakers in the furnace. Question–What do Biff’s sneakers (and his burning of them) represent or symbolize?

Biff goes to visit his former boss Oliver to ask for a loan. However, instead of asking him for a loan, Biff relates to Happy that he stole Oliver’s fountain pen. Question–What does the fountain pen represent or symbolize?

In what has to be one of the most painful scenes in the play, Willy is abandoned at the restaurant by his sons. Willy has just lost his job. He’s had another confrontation with Biff. And he is consumed by guilt and confusion as a flashback of the “incident” with the other woman overwhelms him. Biff and Happy leave Willy babbling into a toilet on the floor of a washroom. As waiters help him from the restaurant, Willy asks them where he can buy some seeds. Later, we see Willy planting the seeds in his yard under the moonlight. Question–What do the seeds represent or symbolize?

3. Please respond to one or several questions. See Course Calendar for due dates. AND — please ask a question of or comment to two other learners regarding their responses (and please respond to those questions asked of you as you would do in a face-to-face classroom discussion).

1) Hmmm……So, what views do we have here about what the salesman symbolizes in regard to American culture?
2) What does Reardon mean that the salesman (at least on the cover of Spears’ book) sizes up the viewer to determine what persona to adopt?
3) What does it mean to say that the traveling salesman lives a middleman existence?
4) Why does the poet cummings reference the salesman as an IT (and an IT that stinks, at that)?

4. Topic 5: What can you learn from this interview with Miller about his thoughts about Willy Loman and about various productions of Death Of A Salesman? (If your last name begins with the letters U through Z, here is your assignment)

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/teachers/featured_…