I chose Death of a Salesman because it is such a well-known play and I felt I ought to know more about it. I read the play and also watched the film version in which Dustin Hoffman played the central character, Willy Loman. I found the play and the film extremely moving, so I was interested to know how audiences had reacted to it when it first opened in 1949. Because of my reaction I was also interested in the tragic elements of the play. I thought the presentation of the female characters in the play was slightly weak – they are very subservient to the male ones – and I was interested in how critics had evaluated the female characters, especially Linda, Willy’s wife. Finally, it seemed to me a very American play, concerned with American themes and issues, so I was interested to find out to what extent my opinion was shared by others.
Death of a Salesman is set in a couple of days of present time, but uses flashbacks (which are presented as Willy’s memories) to tell the audience about the past of the Loman family – especially the youth of Willy’s two sons and the optimism that was felt about their future, in the past. More of the truth is revealed as the play goes on. Willy, now in the present, is getting old and is sacked in Act Two; through flashback we learn he was never especially successful, despite what he claimed. He is getting forgetful and the flashbacks show us his mind in disarray as he looks back at the past to discover what went wrong in his life. As a youngster Biff had won a football scholarship to the University of Virginia, but failed Math at High School. One mystery of the past is why Biff did not simply go to summer school to pass his Math. Instead of the bright and glittering future that the family, especially Willy, imagined for Biff, he is now thirty-four and works for a dollar an hour on ranches only occasionally coming home to see his parents. Furthermore, there is an element of aggressive tension about Biff’s relationship with his father which remains unexplained until nearly the end of the play.
Through flashback it is revealed that Willy had affairs while he was on the road being a salesman. Biff discovers this, and his image, his myth of his father, is so badly damaged that he does not go to summer school and has drifted ever since from one dead end job to another. Willy, through the flashback to the scene in a Boston hotel room where he is discovered with another woman by the teenaged Biff, seems wracked with grief so much that he commits suicide at the end of the play in an attempt to expiate his sins.
The fact that I cried at the end of the film version has strong precedents. According to Griffen (35) “Arthur Miller could hardly have anticipated the effect Death of a Salesman would have upon its opening-night audience in 1949. Men and woman wept openly...and this phenomenon has been repeated all over the country and all over the world.” I was pleased to see that audiences around the world have shared my emotional response to the play. Griffen (35) also quotes Miller on why the audiences for Death of a Salesman cry: ‘“They were weeping,” Miller said in an interview with Harry Rafsky on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation network in 1979, “because the central matrix of the play is ... what most people are up against in their lives.”’ Miller does not really expand on what he means here, but I take him to mean that we cry at the sight of a man losing his mind as he grows older, losing his once intimate relationship with his son, and coming to a realization that he has achieved very little in his life. For many people this must be close to a universal experience: it is not confined to salesmen form the New York area.
Because of my emotional reaction to the play, I was surprised to discover that some critics do not consider the play a tragedy because Willy is not a noble enough hero. As Varma (90) puts it, “Critics have described Death of a Salesman as a social drama of our time and criticised it because they felt it fell short of the concept of classical tragedy.” This perception is partly to do with status: Classical and Shakespearean tragedy traditionally dealt with the fate of royalty or socially important people. However, the rise of democracy in the twentieth century and the use by Ibsen and Chekhov of ordinary people as tragic heroes, should not, in my opinion, stop us seeing Willy as a tragic hero. Miller himself (quoted in Varma, 90) has said that Willy has a certain nobility because he believes very strongly in certain ideals:
The trouble with Willy Loman is that he has tremendously powerful ideals.... If Willy Loman, for instance, had not had a very profound sense that his life as lived had left him hollow, he would have died contentedly polishing his car on some Sunday afternoon at a ripe old age.
In my opinion, this makes a crucial point: Willy commits suicide because he is painfully aware that he has fallen short of the ideals he has set himself and this self-awareness makes him a tragic hero. If he had no self-awareness, no sense of guilt at his past actions, no feeling of failure and responsibility for the way Biff has turned out, he would not take his own life at the end of the play.
When I finished the play I did feel vaguely unsatisfied with Miller’s presentation of the female characters because they were such stereotypes: whores (like the woman in Boston Willy gives stockings to or the two working girls that Biff and Happy pick up towards the end of the play) or long-suffering patient mothers like Linda. I discovered that recent feminist critics had agreed with me, but that some critics still defended Miller over his presentation of woman. For example, Abbotson argues that Linda is very grounded in the everyday reality of running the household and knowing when the bills are due and she goes on to comment (144) that
Yet, despite Linda’s clear sight, she allows her family’s dreams to flourish; she even encourages them. It is only when they are dreaming of a brighter future that the family can operate together, and for Linda, the truth is a small price to pay for the happiness of her family.
I think Abbotson’s view here is correct, but that Linda might have been more assertive. It is all very well saying “she allows her family’s dreams to flourish,” but she never faces up to the reality of Willy’s self-delusion and his propensity to lie and deceive. As Biff says towards the end of the play, “We never told the truth for ten minutes in this house.” (Miller, 104) Arguably, Linda does not do enough to stop the self-deception that Willy encourages in himself and in his sons. Abbotson (44) goes on to write, “Although Willy often derides and shouts at her, a tendency that leads Biff to try to defend her, Linda is no doormat and has chosen the life she leads. “ However, I disagree with this critic: at the end of the play Linda has not chosen to left widowed by Willy’s suicide, just as she did not choose to have Willy commit adultery.
Finally, when I finished reading the play, I felt that it was very American – not just in the sense that the characters are American and that it is set in America. It seemed to me to have very American concerns and this idea is one I have found echoed in critics. There seems to be a general consensus that the play deals with profoundly American ideas. Shiach (31) expresses it thus: “In this play, Miller seems to be handling ideas connected with the American Dream.... However, in a society that seems only to value people for what they can deliver in terms of profit, Willy’s dreams are shown to be self-deluding.” Because Willy has no economic value to the company any more, he is fired by Howard. Shiach (31) comments, on Miller’s seeming criticism of the American Dream, “Many American writers of this era were concerned at the increasing emphasis on materialism and consumerism at the expense of developing a just and more equal society.” I think the key phrase in this quotation is “of this era” – the post-war period was much polarized in terms of political beliefs, although these were about to be challenged by the Cold War and McCarthyism, so much so that Miller came under suspicion for anti=capitalist, socialist beliefs.
I found this research very useful. It helped me see the play in its historical context of over sixty years ago; it has given me the confidence to disagree with some critics (I think Linda is a doormat); and it has helped me put my emotional response to the play in the intellectual context of what a tragedy might be.
Works Cited
Abbotson, Susan C. W. A Critical Companion to Arthur Miller. 2007. New York: Infobase Publishing. Print.
Griffen, Alice. Understanding Arthur Miller. 1996. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press. Print.
Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman. 1949. London: Penguin. Print.
Shiach, Don. American Drama 1900 – 1990. 2000. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Print.
Varma, Urmila. ‘Modernity as a Theme and Technique in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman.’ 89 – 95. Ram, Atma. Perspectives on Arthur Miller. 1988. Delhi: Abhinav Publications. Print.
