Joseph Hirsch "The New Masses", following the July 1946 lynching of two black men and their wives in Monroe, Georgia. "The Burden" (1947) depicts a hollow-eyed American GI installing white cross gravemarkers in a military cemetery, while in the background a second GI unloads yet another jeep-full. Hirsch's poster for the original 1949 Broadway production of Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman" depicts a beaten-down Willy Loman trudging onward with his heavy suitcases. Hirsch was of German-Jewish heritage, but occasionally explored Christian themes. In "The Crucifixion" (1945), we see a close-up of the cross from behind, and the thick timbers block any
Willy Loman to charge again." Philip Seymour Hoffman's performance came at a time when the Occupy Wall Street ongoings echoed the play while its actors could not afford the $120 ticket price. The March version of Loman presented him as a bit more of a lunatic than other versions. Miller noted that although he wrote the play in 1947 and 1948, the play grew out of his life experiences, that included his father losing everything in the 1929 stock market crash. Miller claims that the role was actually modeled on one of his uncles. Dustin Hoffman says that the play was the