O sonho americano e a reificação em A morte de um caixeiro-viajante, de Arthur Miller.

Abstract

This academic work undertakes an analysis of the play Death of a Salesman, released in 1949, by the American playwright Arthur Miller (1915-2005). The play portrays the damage of the utopian discourse of the American dream lived by Willy and his family, who are, throughout all plot, hosts of the shackles of a capitalist society that imposes on them the need for social ascension through the accumulation of richness. The objective of this work is to analyze the socioeconomic and cultural dramas present in the play, in particular the process of reification and the êthos of the American dream, through marxist literary criticism. To achieve this general objective, we list the following specific objectives: describe the concept of reification; discuss consumerism, desire and the construction of the êthos of the american drean. For this, we will use contributions of the philosophers Marx (2010; 2013) and Marx and Engels (1979; 1998), and also the Marxist theorists Eagleton (1997; 2011), Lukács (2003) and other authors who follow the same investigative line, such as Chomsky, in the documentary Requiem for the american dream, released in 2016, and Carvalho (2015). The results achieved in this research indicate that the concept of the American dream cannot be experienced for all and that capitalist logic is problematic for most of society, especially for the lower and middle classes, as Arthur Miller's play exposes. In addition, we were also able to observe and analyze, in the play, the reification process, to the extent that the relationship developed between the protagonist, Willy, and his boss, Haword, it is based on results and profits, which alienates Willy and reduces him to a condition similar to that of objects as commodities.