Dream and Delusion in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman and Eugene O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape

Arthur Miller and Eugene O’Neill are two of the most influential American playwrights of the 20th century. Arthur Miller was born on the 17th 0f October in 1915 in Harlem, New York, United States and died in United States in 2005. Death of a Salesman is one of the Miller’s most famous plays, which was written in 1948 and produced in 1949. The play premiered on Broadway in 1949 and ran for 742 performances. It has been revived on Broadway four times and won three Tony Awards for Best Revival. Miller won a Pulitzer Prize for the work, which he described as ‘the tragedy of a man who gave his life, or sold it’ in pursuit of the American Dream. On the other hand, The Hairy Ape, drama in eight scenes by Eugene O’Neill, produced in 1922 and published the following year. It is considered one of the prime achievements of Expressionism on stage. The Hairy Ape was a Broadway success in 1922. The play explores themes of class conflict, alienation, dehumanization and disillusionment.

• Supervision