The relation of Atheism to 'The Death of a Salesman'

Hello Class...

This lesson we started of by discussing the homework from the previous lesson, which was comment on our views about the Atheism tapes on Esmeralda's blog post.We split into groups of three and thought of one argument that we found can relate to the play.
Here is what we came up with:
'Losing faith'- people can easily change despite strong beliefs.
Adversity can shake faith.
Religion can help in some situations.
Without moral authority life could be seen as pointless.

We then talked about Arthur Miller's view that having belief in God is a 'talent', this relates to 'The Death of a Salesman' in the sense that Arthur Miller had lost faith in God just like Willy Loman had lost faith in the American Dream.

Mr Chatterley then presented the class with the word introspect, the following definition was provided by dictionary.com :
1. verb (used without object)- to practice introspection; consider one's own internal state or feelings.
2. verb (used with object)- to look into or examine (one's own mind, feelings, etc.).

We were then asked the question: "Why is religion not overly mentioned in 'Death of a Salesman'?". Below is a selection of the answers given.
Roman:Religion was not important.
Tamsin: Religion was irrelevant, Miller would be contradicting himself.
Aisha: Miller wanted to be different from other playwrights.
Saways: Atheism was common in the recession, faith was lost in the moral authority, just the way Willy lost faith in Capitalism and the American Dream.
Chris C: Miller being let down by religion is similar to Willy being let down by Capitalism, as he lost everything he had been working for at once.
Daniel: Holy books were only written so that events would be remembered, Willy wants to be remembered by everyone.

Something interesting that we came across was the fact that the man who inspired Willy Loman to become a salesman was called Dave Singleman, this is no coincidence because as Mr Chatterley pointed out that Arthur Miller was a man who thought through every detail of his work. The name suggests that this truly successful salesman lead a lonely existence, which implies that in order for Willy to reach his dream he would have to not be a part of a family as the two things clash.

We then looked at the word 'Meme' which means :
an idea or element of social behaviour passed on through generations in a culture, esp by imitation . (Definition once again courtesy of dictionary.com)The word links into the theory of capitalism because it is a self-reproducing belief.

Another idea that we were faced with was 'to die for your beliefs', we had to think about whether Willy was a martyr or not.

Then as a class we read pages 73-91 of the play.

During pauses in between reading we answered questions about what certain behaviour implies about the characters, in particular:
The boys lying to impress girls.
The way Willy talks about Oliver (the man Biff was supposed to have a meeting with)
Willy's unusual exit.

The last thing we discussed was the use of mobile concurrency during the restaurant scene, where Willy's argument with Biff triggered his flashback of Biff flunking maths during his senior year of high school.

Now for the homework, there is a choice of two activities with the title"These boys are useless..."

1. Write a mini-essay on the topic.
2. Imagine you overhear the Loman's neighbours talking about the boys like this and write a script about what they would say.

The homework is due in next lesson (Friday October 15th)

Lastly, for anyone who has not seen the Atheism tapes here is a link to them : http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6439076214112083310#

Comments will be highly appreciated.
Much love, Aleksandra