Women in Death Of A Salesman Novel - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 5 Words: 1574 Downloads: 6 Date added: 2019/05/31 Category Literature Essay Level High school Tags: Death Of A Salesman Essay Did you like this example? For over forty years audiences and readers have been drawn into the lives of the Loman family and have often found in that family their own parents and themselves. Arthur Millers classic American play, Death of a Salesman, exposes the relationship between gender relationships and dysfunctional family behaviors. The play was well written with plenty of creative plot ideas; however, it completely degrades women. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "Women in Death Of A Salesman Novel" essay for you Create order Throughout Arthur Millers Death of a salesman, we see the women being objectified through their treatment at the hands of men. The author portrays this in Lindas constant emotional abuse to show that she is unimportant to Willy, Happy and his actions and statements are used to show that women are easily manipulated, Willy and Ben thinking of their father as an adventurous man while treating their mother as less significant to show mens superiority. All through the play we see the way that Willy, Biff, and Happy treat women, and during that time period it was normal for men to be treating women that way. In the nineteenth and early twentieth century women were looked down upon, they were restricted from doing anything that made them leave the house. Women were seen as the housekeepers, having to cook, clean, have and take care of children, whereas the men would be outside working, and living a life where they could do anything they pleased. Men did not see women as persons, but rather as creatures for their amusement. Females were treated as fragile and delicate beings and were not nearly as important as men and had no power or control. (Breanna Romans, 2016). Every single woman in the play was treated with unimportance because, as mentioned above, this was the way men in the 1940s viewed women. The time period that Arthur Miller wrote Death of a Salesman was an era where women were mistreated, and treated as objects. Linda is the female who is being objectified the most by her husband Willy. We see in the play, day after day, Willy constantly interrupted Linda, cut her off, ignored her, and treated her with disrespect. â€Å"Linda: Maybe things are beginning to†¦ Willy: (wildly enthused, to Linda) Stop interrupting! † (Act 1, page 46) The most objectifying action Willy displayed was his disloyalty towards Linda, and yet, she still cherished and respected him even during his lowest moments. â€Å"Linda: No, you can’t just come to see me, because I love him. He’s the dearest man in the world to me, and I won’t have anyone making him feel unwanted and low and blue.† (Act 1, page 55) In the 1940’s, women standing up for themselves to their husbands was unheard of. Linda took so much emotional abuse from her husband that it was no longer considered wrong, but normal. Willy never saw the intelligent side of Linda. Even though she was always so loving, he is always the one who takes control over their sons Biff and Happy, she has no control in shaping who they become, as he wants the boys’ future to be the way he had planned it to be. Willy treated his wife as the typical housewife that he would advertise. In addition to that, Happy Loman portrayed many aspects of the objectification of women through his actions and statements regarding women themselves. Happy doesnt care about morals when it comes to women. He only likes the idea of being with them. He lies to women to get their attention, most likely for the intention of sleeping with them. There were situations in the play that suggest this attitude as he would hit on women that already have partners. The play insists that Happy goes for girls just for their looks to build his self esteem. He says this by complimenting them, for example, when he states â€Å"Would you object to a compliment from a stranger? You ought to be on a magazine cover† (Act 2 Page 101). Happy tells women things they would like to hear. For example, it is stated when Happy says â€Å"Biff is quarterback with the New York Giants† (Act Two Page 102). This demonstrates that the play is showing how easily fooled women can be. From the way the play expressed the women, it was as though they were prostitutes. This also makes it seem like women are easily seduced and easy to be controlled by men. Just like with the 3 executives fiancà ©s, the play makes it seem like women are easily manipulated by men and drop their morals because they are blinded by their wants. The girls whom Happy associate with get drawn to the way Happy talks to them and his appearance. Happy takes advantage of their naive look on the world. He shows his sexual objectification of women when he states â€Å"Look at that mouth. Oh. God. And the binoculars.† (Act 2 Page 100). Even Biff has a tainted view on women from seeing his dad’s mistress and has no respect for them, with the exception of his mom. Another female who was objectified was Willy’s mother. The Loman family history can be pieced together through Willy’s flashback conversation with Ben(partly with his conversation with Charley) and his present conversation with Howard. Apparently, Father Loman was a travelling maker and seller of flutes who went off to seek adventure in Alaska and deserted Mother, leaving her with two boys to raise alone. Then Ben ran off when he was seventeen and Willy was not quite four years old. Thus Willy and Mother were left alone together. The desertion by his father left Willy feeling â€Å"kind of temporary† (Act1, page 51) about himself and provoked Ben to imitate and surpass what his father had done. Both sons mythologize the father: to Willy he was â€Å"an adventurous man† with â€Å"quite a little streak of self-reliance† (Act 2, page 81); to Ben he was â€Å"a very great and a very wild-hearted man† who with â€Å"one gadget† ( the flute) supposedly â€Å"made more in a week than a man like Willy could make in a lifetime† (Act 1, Page 49). Both trivialize the role of their mother. Ben calls her a â€Å"Fine specimen of a lady† and the â€Å"old girl† (Act 1 page 46) and assumes she would be living with lesser son Willy. But she is the woman who bore and raised Ben, whom he deserted and made no attempt to contact, not even knowing that she had â€Å"died a long time ago† (Act 1, Page 46). Willy’s only other stated information about Mother Loman is his memory of being â€Å"in Mamma’s lap listening to some kind of high music coming from a man with a big beard† (Act 1, page 48). The mother thus provided the position of comfort from which to attend to the father (Kay Stanton, 1989). Mother is never mentioned again which gives the impression that she is not of importance in Willy’s life. ‘The woman’ was Willy’s mistress and was mentioned a lot in the play, but the fact that she doesn’t even have a name is the most degrading thing the writer has done to her character. She only exists to satisfy Willy’s sexual desires and is treated as an object rather than a person. She was a tool to tend to Willy’s bruised ego and as a reward she was showered with gifts.(Prezi, 2015). She is easily tossed aside like an old toy when Biff comes to see his father. She is blindsided, and she is left humiliated when Willy denies her, sending her out of the room in her nightgown.† Willy(pushing her offstage): Get outa here! Go back, go back!† (Act 2, page 87) Even though she was treated better than Linda, she was still discarded when she was no longer of use to him. She was nothing more than his side lady and he had no intentions of making her anything more. She was used for her body and to fill the gaps in Willy’s life. The dialogue suggested that she did not know of Willy’s children, and of his marriage until Biff arrived at the hotel which proves that she was not a home wrecker and had good intentions with Willy. Willy’s character relates to the author Arthur Miller, he was married but at the same time was having affair with Marilyn Monroe which suggests that the author himself did not respect women either. In conclusion, Women in Death of a Salesman are used to excite and appease to men even if the men are abusive or disrespectful. We have seen this in the way Willy treats Linda and how he constantly cuts her off and emotionally abuse her, in addition to ‘the woman’ and how she was tossed away when she was no longer of use to Willy. Happy also shows very huge disrespect to women when his only intention with them is sexually, along with his brother Biff. Ben and Willy also trivialized their mother and didn’t even know that she passed away. Every single woman in this play was objectified one way or another by the hands of men, and every single man in the play has disrespected a woman with no exceptions. Till this day we still face this problem. Men today still continue to see women as objects of pleasure probably even more so than past times. Although we have advanced in the way people treat, and see women, they are still fighting for equal rights, and to stop being t reated as objects.

Comparing The Canadian And The United States Health Care...

The purpose of this paper is to compare the Canadian and the United States health care system. the first part of the paper will focus on describing each country health care system. The second part will focus on analyzing, evaluating and comparing these two countries system efficiency and benefits. The last part, is an overview of the recent policies changes and its effect (positive and negative) on each country citizens and proposed future reforms for better coverage in these countries. Canada health system Canada provides a national universal care that covers everyone in the country. Medicare founding are received through public spending. It’s a single payer system single payer system. Many feels that it is inaccurate to characterize the†¦show more content†¦Since 1971 the health care system has deviated from each other. While Canada has had publicly funded national health insurance, the United States has relied largely on private financing and delivery (Goran Ridic). The current health Care act (Canada health act) was introduced in 1984 and it covers almost all the cost of citizens medical cost. In the course of this period, spending in the United States has grown much more rapidly despite large groups that either not covered or minimally insured. Canada health care system is relatively low compare the United States. So why are do they have better coverage (lower infant mortality rates or higher life expectancy)? Under the Act, each provincial health plan is administered at the provincial level and provides comprehensive first dollar coverage of all medically necessary services. With minor exceptions, health coverage is available to most if not all residents with no out of pocket charges. Most physicians are paid on a fee for services and enjoy a great deal of practice autonomy. Private health insurance for covered services are illegal. 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Political Transitions During Women s Status - 2648 Words

Political Transitions in Myanmar and Changes in Burmese Women’s Status Since its independence in 1948 until 2008, Myanmar was an island unto itself. Although being the largest mainland country in Southeast Asia, it is also one of the least known countries in the region. Decades of military dictatorship and a policy of isolationism made Myanmar one of the least developed countries in the world with a population of 60 million people. Various international agencies, such as the World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), classify Myanmar as a â€Å"low-income country under stress† and â€Å"least developed country (LDC)† –this indicates that the country not only suffers from extreme poverty, but it also exhibits the lowest†¦show more content†¦Although the Burmese government and various NGOs have made concerted efforts to promote women’s rights since 2008, there is still much room for improvement in the rural and remote border areas. In this paper, I will examine how the role and status of Burmese wo men have changed through Myanmar’s multiple political transitions, ranging from colonialism, through military junta, to democracy. Special attention will be paid to examining gender inequality in education and political participation. In addition, I argue that tensions between the various racial and ethnic groups in Myanmar serve as deterrents to the efforts made to improve women’s status. Contrary to the common perception that women in Southeast Asia traditionally enjoyed a high status in society, many scholars generally agree that such assumptions about the purported status of women are oversimplified by â€Å"postcolonial scholars in order to perpetuate the discourse of gender equality.† (Ikeya 2006:51). According to Chie Ikeya, the â€Å"traditional† high status of women in Myanmar has been used since its independence from Great Britain to assert and implicit the message of gender equality (2006:53). This explains why not only gender inequality persists in Southeast Asia, but why the very discourse of gender equality also does not get enough attention in this region. Ikeya argues that the â€Å"traditional† high status of women in Southeast Asia

Kairos free essay sample

In fact, Kairos is an opportunity for men to have agency in a world usually dictated by fate. In this way, Kairos restores freedom to human lives that would otherwise be predetermined. Finally, it is interesting to notice that there does not exist a modern English translation for Kairos, which seems to suggest that it is a concept that does not have a place in modern society and thus in our modern understanding of time. Chronos and Kairos oppose each other in many ways.. Whereas Chronos refers to sequential time, measurable and regular, Kairos denotes qualitative time, or a favorable moment. Moreover, unlike Chronos, Kairos is unpredictable and can only be ‘revealed’ thanks to the correct interpretation of external signs, hence the impression that it is situated outside of Chronos. The â€Å"opportune moments† Kairos provides are neither measurable nor predictable, and cannot be located on a clock or on any similar device. Thus, to a certain extent, Kairos seems to be a â€Å"timeless† time. The Hippocratic Corpus, a group of texts said to be written by Hippocrates, exemplifies the importance of Kairos to the ancient Greeks in everyday life. The author writes that the success of the medicine a doctor administers to a patient depends greatly on the time or moment that the medicine is given. While the success of the remedy used is also dependent on different characteristics of the patient’s body, it is the moment that the remedy is used that is the most important. Indeed, Kairos cannot be placed in a larger temporal framework because it does not relate to the notions of past and future. For this reason, Kairos can only exist in the present. This is why a physician does not try to redict how a disease will evolve, but instead attempts to predict in which Kairos, or â€Å"critical phase† he is in at the moment of his medical examination. For example, in the case of â€Å"an overpowering heaviness of the head†, â€Å"water, or at most [†¦] a pale-yellow wine† should be administered. While this quote may seem to describe the way doctors apply medicine today, it is in fact a description of a ver y different system. Rather than seeking a connection between the symptom and the medicine, ancient doctors felt there was a connection between the symptom and the moment of Kairos it exists in. Different symptoms indicated different moments of Kairos which then dictated how the patient ought to be treated. Furthermore, these moments of interpretation are deeply anchored in the present, as it is the only â€Å"time† (as opposed to past and future) in which action can be taken. This is to say that Kairos is the moment in which a man can escape his fate, which otherwise rules his life. Fate is always associated with Chronos time, which can be predicted and unavoidably evolves from past to future according to a predetermined development. In contrast, Kairos time allows for spontaneous action based on temporal opportunities. Since in Chronos time, the present is already determined by the past, there is never a true moment of freedom. Sophocles’ play Oedipus at Colonus presents an illustration of this predestination: â€Å"Thy tale of cruel suffering For which no cure was found, The fate that held thee bound. † Here the Chorus addresses Oedipus, clearly expressing the idea that his life, just as that of anybody else, is constrained by fate, which he cannot escape. Chronos is the father of all the Olympian Gods, represented as a wise old man, and known as â€Å"Father Time. † In contrast to this image of Chronos, Kairos is represented dancing, holding the scales of fate in his left hand; with his right hand, he is tipping the scale in one direction or the other. This clearly shows his ability to liberate moments from fate and his detachment from Chronos. Because of this, the moment of the action is often emphasized more than the action itself. This is evident in the Hippocratic Medical Corpus: â€Å"This is the time for administrating gruel that must be most carefully observed† – â€Å"Consider this time of great importance in all diseases† From this quote, it is clear that the most important factor in the administration of medicine is not the disease the patient has, but the moment the remedy will be given. This moment must occur at the right time, during the right phase of the illness, in order for the remedy to be successful. The same can be said about Pindar’s Pythian 4, an ode to the victor of the Pythian games. In Pythian 4, Pindar spends more time describing the process that led the heroes to go on an expedition in search for the golden fleece at the moment they did than he does describing their exploits, which are only summarized. This example is particularly interesting in that through those feats, Jason, the hero of the myth, and his companions will achieve kleos, and will thus transcend Chronos time. However, it is the fact that the expedition left at the right moment that seems important to Pindar, or at least more important than the exploits. In an example such as this one, Kairos does seem to be treated as the agent of the action, or at any rate, as responsible for its success. This gives Kairos an extremely important role, in rehabilitating man’s freedom. Indeed, without the existence of Kairos, human beings would be trapped in their fate without any power over their destiny. Kairos is an opportunity and a â€Å"critical moment†, but it is also the â€Å"due measure† that allow humans to influence on the course of their own existences. However, Kairos only allows men to take action; it does not take action for them. This is evident in the medical corpus: â€Å"[Physicians] generally make the change from fasting to gruel exactly at those times at which often it is profitable to exchange gruel for what is virtually fasting. † One can imagine that relying on such a method could have led to serious mistakes. The nature of Kairos is such that these mistake could easily have disastrous consequences, for which the physician, and not Kairos, would be responsible. Indeed, Kairos alone is not sufficient for a patient to heal, or for an action to be carried out with success. In order for an action to succeed the individual must act in the right moment but must also act correctly. In the medical corpus example, giving gruel could probably have been beneficial, but was not because it was given to the patient at the wrong phase of time. This also is why the medical corpus says medications listed can only be efficient in â€Å"the proper time of their use†. In this way, Kairos is a necessary condition, but is in no way sufficient on its own. The positive outcome of an action therefore does not only depend on Kairos, but on the correct interpretation of Kairos. Thus, a good physician is not one who knows all the different names of every disease, a good physician is one who above all else can read a patient’s body in order to recognize the phase of time the disease is in, and thus determine what should be done. This is why, according to a passage of the Hippocratic Corpus, every physician should learn â€Å"the changes of the seasons and the risings and settings of the phenomena† in order to â€Å"learn the times beforehand†, which will allow him to â€Å"succeed best in securing health, and will achieve the greatest triumphs in the practice of his art† Our modern concept of time leaves no place for Kairos. The word cannot be translated into modern English, and even the concept requires a fair amount of explanation, since it falls so outside of the realm of our understanding of both time and fate. The closest word to Kairos in the English language would most likely be the word, â€Å"opportunity† While â€Å"opportunity† conveys the way moments in Kairos function with humans agency, it does not fully convey the temporal dimension of Kairos. In modern day society, opportunities are not necessarily always dependent on small windows of time and are often not spontaneous. In this sense, it appears that we can only talk of an opportunity, but not of the moment in which that opportunity takes place. This is to say that the same way Kairos seems detached from Chronos, our opportunity is detached from time altogether. However, even today, moments of Kairos, though not intentionally, are often taken into consideration when a decision is being made about an action. For example, politicians often â€Å"read the signs† of the political environment or social atmosphere before making a speech on a particular topic.