Subjectivity of Willy Loman:A Psychoanalytic Reading on Death of a Salesman

• Main Author: 李紫喬
• Other Authors: 儲湘君
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/23619846928507604902

碩士 === 國立彰化師範大學 === 英語學系 === 98 === This thesis aims to interpret Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman drawing on Freudian and Lacanian theories of subjectivity. I intend to analyze how Willy Loman acts under the “gaze of the Other,” how he is influenced by his own “desire,” how the repeated fantasy appears in his life in the society of American Dream, how and why he becomes delusional and dies. I propose that he cannot construct his subjectivity because of “the gaze”. There are five chapters in my thesis. Chapter One, introduction, explains my motivation as well as gives a brief introduction to the background of the American Realism in the 20th century. The critical reviews about Death of a Salesman will be presented. Chapter Two illuminates Freudian and Lacanian theories on subjectivity. The concepts of “lack,” “desire,” “gaze,” “the Other” and “the-Name-of-the-Father” are elaborated in this chapter. Chapter Three explores the lack and desire of Willy Loman. He has lack, trying to pursue the objet a to fill in his lack. Besides, the relationship between the Other and Willy Loman is not well-mediated, which becomes the main obstacle to the construction of his subjectivity. In the fourth chapter, Willy’s oppressed fantasy and foreclosure of the symbolic father are analyzed. Willy suffers from fantasy. He cannot distinguish reality from illusion—a substitute for the objet a—a failure that results in his suicide in the car crash, while Willy depends on his fantasy that the insurance money helps him fulfill his lack to sustain the life of his family. In the conclusion, Chapter Five, I argue that Arthur Miller regards the American Dream as the illusion by the depiction of the characters. For Miller, the American dream is the concept of illusion. The play extols Miller’s success in depicting the suffering of modern men and women as well as gaining enlightenment through confession and forgiveness as demonstrated in the play. Willy is destroyed because the symbolic father cannot be challenged either through suicide or through fantasy. This thesis probes into the psychic structure of the characters in Death of a Salesman and provides a psychoanalytic perspective to explore the issues of fantasy and subjectivity.