In his works

ü presents emotional conflicts and keeps social criticism. His characters are often victims of their social or family background;

ü are confronted with the consequences of their actions.

Favorite themes:

ü to show that many people reach American Dream through making moral compromises that end up in destroying their lives;

ü individual responsibility and guilt on which success is often based;

ü to depict how families are destroyed by false values.

Main works:

“Death of a Sales man”

“All my Sons”

“After the Fall”

“A Viewfrom the Bridge”

The story

Willy Loman, a sixty-year-old New York travelling salesman, is showing signs of mental stress. His two sons, Happy, who has a good job and still lives in New-York, and Biff, who has led a feckless wandering existence for years, are worried about him.

Through a series of flashbacks we learn that Biff's lack of success is due to his unhappy relationship with his father. He had been a bright student and a gifted athlete, but when he found out that his father had a mistress, he gave up his studies, lost interest in a business career and left New-York. Willy, who believed that Biff had the talent to achieve the success that had eluded him, was bitterly disappointed.

The play returns to the present with Biff asking a friend of the family, Bill Oliver, to lend him some money to set up a business. While Bill is momentarily outside the office, Biff realises that he is there only to please his father. He inexplicably takes an expensive pen from Bill's desk and leaves.

That evening he tells Willy for the first time what he really thinks of him and what his life was like on the road. Willy drives off in his car and commits suicide.

Tennessee Williams

(Thomas Lanier Williams)

(1911-1983)