International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature ISSN 2200-3592 (Print), ISSN 2200-3452 (Online) Vol. 2 No. 3; May 2013 Copyright © Australian International Academic Centre, Australia Death of a Salesman and The Glass Menagerie: A Phenomenological Reduction Bakhtiar Naghdipour Faculty of Education, The American University P.O. Box 5 Karmi Campus, Karaoglanoglu, Girne, Cyprus E-mail: bakhtiarnaghdipour@gau.edu.tr Received: 19-01-2013 Accepted: 25-03-2013 Published: 01-05-2013 doi:10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.2n.3p.147 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.2n.3p.147 Abstract Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller were two memory playwrights who searched the memory or the collective unconscious of their generation for the lost dreams of an unspoiled myth as well as the genuine ideals of love, humanity and dignity. These authors employed techniques and mechanisms such as poetic language and expressionistic stage directions to translate the inner workings of their characters into artistic projection. This paper employs the phenomenological principles of Geneva School of criticism with the aim of reducing the immediate consciousness of Williams and Miller, projected as stories of Tom and Willy, in search for the playwrights’ attitudes towards some basic concepts of life in the modern era. Keywords: Death of a Salesman, The Glass Menagerie, memory play, phenomenological reduction 1. Introduction Phenomenology “is a transcendental philosophy interested only in what is ‘left behind’ after the phenomenological reduction is performed, but it also considers the world to be already there before reduction begins” (Audi, 1999, p. 665). Edmund Husserl contended that objects could be regarded not as things in themselves but as posited or ‘intended’ by consciousness where we can grasp their essential features through the mental process of reflection (Selden, 1989). This differentiates phenomenology from phenomenolism whereby “we have access only to phenomena, not to the real things” (Hintikka, 1995, p. 78). Ingarden, who applied Husserl’s theory of phenomenology to literature, distinguishes between autonomous and heteronomous objects in order to define the domain of literature: While autonomous objects have immanent (i.e. indwelling, inherent) properties only, heteronomous ones are characterized by a combination of immanent properties and properties attributed to them by consciousness. Thus heteronomous objects do not have a full existence without the participation of consciousness, without the activation of a subject-object relationship. Since literature belongs to this category, it requires ‘concretization’ or ‘realization’ by a reader. (cited in Rimmon-Kenan, 2002, p. 119) In the late 1930s, reader-response theories and approaches to reading literature mushroomed with an emphasis on the readers and their active role in reading. However, literary texts contain gaps, unwritten words and sentences, and figurative elements that could make the interpretation of these texts challenging and difficult. “No tale”, says Wolfgang Iser, “can be told in its entirety” due to these gaps and omissions we as readers have to fill in when we are given the opportunity “to bring into play our own faculty for establishing connections” (cited in Selden, 1989, 128). The phrase “where am I” that resonates across the work of Georges Poulet is also a philosophical question which demonstrates the importance as well as difference of reader or ‘textual consciousness’ from the ‘biographical author’ (Selden, 1989, 104). Phenomenology also poses the historical question of subject and object by glorifying the subject or reader at the center of the great chain of being. It is a philosophy that, as Eagleton (1989) believes, has Restored the transcendental subject to its rightful throne. The subject was to be seen as the source and origin of all meanings: it was not really itself part of the world, since it brought that world to be in the first place. In this sense, phenomenology recovered and refurbished the old dream of classical bourgeois ideology. (58) The significance of phenomenological reduction is the amount of freedom it grants the reader to see a play as a phenomenon appeared to the main actor’s consciousness, which emerges to the outside world as a work of art. Although the works of Williams and Miller have some connection with their personal and family life, there is a universal living consciousness at the center of their works. The Glass Menagerie and Death of a Salesman could be viewed as mere phenomena carved on Tom’s and Willy’s minds – memories of the characters’ uneasy conscience trying to lay the past to rest and to clear out the scarlet of the guilt, as it had interfered with the normal flow of these characters’ lives. Bigsby (1997a) states that, “memory has become myth, a story to be endlessly repeated as a protection against present decline” (p. 38). He further maintains that “Tom Wingfield recalls the past for much the same reason that Willy Loman does in Death of a Salesman: guilt” (p. 37). While reflecting on the past, Tom and Willy re-live it by projecting their mental load on different characters. Both authors broadened the memory scene to allow their audience or readers access the life of their characters. Miller wanted