Literary texts are often engaged with exploring the inner life, so can be a useful way of showing the way in which ideology works. Ideology consists of our routine responses to the world it is that view of ourselves and society that we take for granted as given. What is actually involved is a largely internal, unconscious process. But ideology functions in ways more complicated than those at which Lennon’s lyric hints. The ‘working-class hero’ of its title is told that if he is sufficiently ruthless, he too will be able to make it to the ‘top’ in the rat race.Īt first sight this song might seem to sum up the way in which ideology works: indoctrination by an external force which programmes the individual to behave according to certain patterns and expectations. If you want to be like the folks on the hill … There’s room at the top, they are telling you still,īut first you must learn to smile as you kill, John Lennon’s song ‘Working-Class Hero’ has a verse which runs as follows: Willy Loman sacrifices himself for exactly those beliefs and values which are the ‘common sense’ of our own competitive society. Laurence Coupe argues that the clue might be ‘ideology’. The hero of Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman is nobody special, yet we feel his life and tragic death to be deeply significant. The English Review, 5, 4 (April 1995), pp. Death of a Salesman: What’s Wrong with Willy Loman?
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