Remember that you are being tested on your knowledge and understanding of the whole text from which you are expected to make relevant and judicious selections of detail to frame your answer.
Either
Question 1
How does the following passage from the end of 1.5 develop and comment on the centrality of work to the characters’ lives and personalities in the play?
- One is reminded of Charley’s eulogy of Willy Loman in Arthur Miller’s ‘Death of a Salesman’.
- ‘……… for a salesman there is no rock bottom to the life. He don’t put a bolt on a nut, he don’t tell you the law or give you medicine. He’s a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine’.
- What Tracey describes here is a working life with a ‘rock bottom’.
- Initially the repeated symbol is that of hands, as in skilled manual work. Tracey’s grandfather was creative: he turned natural raw materials into items that were both functional and beautiful. She reveres and venerates his craftsmanship. His work was on public display leading his gaining respect and authority from his peers. Within an extraordinary skilful and self -disciplined context he was able to customise his work so as to show his feelings about it and his loved ones.
- To an extent, Olstead’s has provided something of this…
