Both Steinbeck and Miller have mastered description of setting and location. In a novel or a play, having the skill to be able to set a scene is fundamental, it allows the author to illustrate a certain image or location through words. They intricately describe contemporary America, following the Wall Street Crash.

Both authors have their own ways of conveying an image, Miller uses stage directions to illustrate important settings whilst Steinbeck implements evocative vocabulary to carefully describe each significant location to the reader. Miller’s first description portrays Brooklyn, the setting of the Loman household with a gentle flute melody playing in the background, ‘it is small and fine, telling of grass and trees and the horizon’. The house is described as being ‘small and fragile-seeming’ with ‘towering angular shapes behind it, surrounding it on all sides’. This detailed description conveys to the reader that there is a sense of claustrophobia and inferiority, suggesting that this house is out of place in the daunting city. The opening location of Steinbeck’s ‘Of Mice and Men’ serves as a foil to ‘Death of a Salesman’, as it outlines the beauty of the Salinas River in rural California. There are however some links between the two introductions; the Salinas River is described as ‘twinkling over the yellow sands in the moonlight’, which directly opposes the description of Brooklyn ‘an angry glow of orange’ in scene one of ‘Death of a Salesman’. Rural California seems to be a very still and peaceful place where wildlife such as rabbits, raccoons and deer are able to thrive amongst ‘sycamores with mottled, white, recumbent limbs and branches that arch over the pool’. Steinbeck then describes the Gabilan Mountains surrounding the valley, ‘strong and rocky’ which relate directly back to the ominous skyscrapers looming over the Loman household. Whereas Of