THE DYNAMISM OF THE AMERICAN DREAM IN MILLER'S DEATH OF A SALESMAN AND HANSBERRY'S A RAISIN IN THE SUN

Abstract

New tendencies have been emerged in the American drama which dominants the first half of the twentieth century. Themes that were tackled in these new tendencies are focusing mainly on American incidents. Nevertheless, realism comes to be the main inclination in the 20th century. Many American playwrights were able to reach the profound level of the psychological realism by tackling the psyche of each individual character and shed light on their new living conditions to give a general notion about the American society at a given period of time. With the progress of time, new themes and topics were emerged to be the point of discussion in the American drama like sexuality, race, gender and death. In fact, a lot of American playwrights use the concept of the American Dream as a central theme in their plays like Susan Glaspell in Trifles (1916), Arthur Miller in Death of a Salesman (1949), Lorraine Hansberry in A Raisin in the Sun (1959) and Edward Albee in his plays The Sandbox (1959) as well as The American Dream (1960). Inconceivably, Miller and Hansberry succeeded in blending realistic characters with the social schema while the American dream hovers in the horizon of their stories.