�Extended introduction to “Death of a Salesman ”par Matt .Introduction: the structure of the playIn Miller’s mind, Death of a Salesman was not an abstract concept but the concrete image of an enormous head that would be on stage, opening up the play, so that spectators would be able to see inside. It was a very ambitious idea and the original title was The Inside of his Head.

In Death of a Salesman, the spectator is plunged into the main character’s head. There is no linear onward progression – it is a play with interruption and the striking characteristic of Death of a Salesman is its uninterrupted dramatic tension. Tragic density can be found from the beginning to the end.

Miller: ‘it is not a mounting line of tense, nor a gradually come of intensifying suspense but a block, a single chord presented as such at the outset, within which all the strains and melodies would already been contained’.Hence, everything is in place at the beginning and the music takes a great deal of importance for it is used to set the mood. It is time now to make the difference between the different kinds of plots. The external plot represents the succession of events perceived by Willy Loman (present – objective reality). The internal plot deals with Willy’s stream of consciousness -his memories and obsessions (subjective reality). The music points to the fact we move to the character’s present to his past.

I. The external plotDeath of a Salesman is made up of two acts without any scenes. The requiem is a burial scene. The play is about the last 24 hours of Willy Loman’s life; it starts in ‘media res’, i.e. in the middle of an action that has already begun.

Act I starts on Monday night and at the end of it, all characters go to bed.

Act II is about Tuesday’s events at 10am. The action is no more limited to the Lomans’ house -the two sons go the restaurant… At 6pm, they go out with two girls. Later, they found Willy sowing seeds. There is an argument, a show down between Biff and Willy. Then, a car is heard roaring in the night. The curtain falls.

The requiem recounts the day of the funeral, which is not precisely set in time. Let us say out of time. It does not conclude convincingly the play. It is rather open.

The play also has a subheading, which is ‘Certain Private Conversations in Two Acts and a Requiem’. We can deduce a tension between the private sphere (son/father – husband/wife) and the requiem for it is public, attended by lots of people. Willy Loman is both a private character, nonetheless with a public dimension. Both public and private, he stands for the average American.

A. Act One: from fantasy to concrete decisionsAct I shows how the initial state of despair caused by Willy’s professional incompetence is replaced by decisions to change things: ‘everything will be allright’. Act I establishes :

Willy’s mental collapse [Exposition: p7-14]Biff and Happy’s incapacity to face up the real [Complication: p14-21]Linda’s last-ditch attempt to open her sons’ eyes [Crisis: p41-48] [Resolution: p48-54]1. Willy’s mental collapseMiller: ‘the ultimate matter with which the play will close is announced at the outset’. The play is set in motions when Willy comes back home late.

The first symptom we get is the fact Willy shifts between morbidity and optimism

-p8: ‘I am tired to the death‘ and later ‘God dammit‘, full of energy. Such abrupt changes a mind point to a character who is cracking up.Second symptom : Willy has a tendency to contradict himself -p11: ‘Biff is a lazy bum’ and later ‘such a hard worker’. We cannot expect coherence from Willy.Third symptom : Willy is in a state of mental hyperactivity. His mind is overacting and he cannot see things clearly. His mind has run out of control. He is confused and no longer able to make sense of reality. For instance, he takes the Studebaker for his old Chevvy. The allusion to the need of change glasses may be seen as Willy’s incapacity to bring reality into focus.2. Biff and Happy’s incapacity to cope with the realBiff has returned home after a long absence and the night before he has had a quarrel with Willy – ‘did he apology this morning’ (p11). It is proleptic of the end of Act II. There are close links between the events occurring in Act I and Act II. The argument probably occurred shortly after Biff got off the train: it is not represented on stage but only alluded to.

Biff and Happy are not able to face up the reality. They are constantly trying to divert their attention from real facts. The choice of the names indicates their reluctance to face reality.

Happy: a cliché like ‘happy-go-lucky’ (= avoid difficulty). Happy is only interested in leading a carefree life, earning just enough money, working in an office without any decisions to make. Happy represents the city man, the city dweller. He proves his powers as a womanizer and makes a point at seducing his bosses’ wives.

Biff: can be read in reverse (fib = lie). A fibber is a person who tells lies not to face the truth. He is a character who tends to deny reality because it is upsetting and disturbing.None of them is ready to deal with Willy’s problems. Biff has chosen to escape the family to live on a ranch. He is a drifter, he went to Nebraska, Dakotas, Arizona, Texas (p16). He represents two American stereotypes: the man on the move and the man living close to Nature (escaping modern world and cities). There is a refusal to assume responsibilities. The point of the play lies in Biff’s attitude for he is always repeating he is not responsible: ‘just don’t lay it all at my feet’ (p45). The other point is the terrible secret shared between Biff and Willy. Biff does not want to come back on it: ‘it’s between me and him. That’s all I have to say‘ (p45).Both shirk their responsibilities. Biff’s role is more important than Happy’s.

3. Linda’s last-ditch attempt to open her sons’ eyesThe crisis from p41 to p48 is momentarily solved p48-54. Linda tells her sons and the audience that a moment of crisis has been reached: ‘a terrible thing is happening to him‘ (p44).

The function of Linda is to establish Willy’s significance as a human being. Willy Loman could be a type (low man) but he is a human being with private emotions and personal feelings. Linda permits a shift of perspective. She contributes to create a realistic dimension: she constantly reminds Willy of practical details of everyday life (unpaid bills, repair jobs or equipment that need to be replaced). She is a warrant of objective reality.

In Death of a Salesman, a lot is seen through Willy’s consciousness. It is tempting to say that most of the play is a representation of Willy’s mind. Yet, Linda’s offers an exterior viewpoint; spectators are invited through Linda to see Willy from the outside.

Linda is a protagonist, an intermediary between the audience and the play. She soothes Willy, on whom she lavishes motherly care and raises the alarm by calling the boys’ attention on their father’s suicide attempts. She has a passive role but she can evaluate the situation and prompts her sons to act.

At the end of Act I, Linda has succeeded in transforming the mood of the play from fantasy and obsession to resolution and determination:

Willy will talk to HowardBiff is to pay a visit to Bill Oliver to get a new start in life.B. Act Two: projects dashed by realityAct II is action-packed. New places are introduced:

Howard Wagner’s officeCharley’s officeFrank’s Chop HouseThe theatrical technique is more sophisticated. A telephone conversation establishes another action and reports Biff’s visit to Bill Oliver. Miller created a higher sense of suspense by using a theatrical prop -the telephone- so that the audience can participate to the reported action. It creates a sense of action: Miller uses alternatively theatrically represented scenes (Linda on the phone) and reported episodes (Biff’s visit to Oliver). The telephone creates dramatic tension. New characters are introduced:

Jenny: Charley’s secretaryStanley: the waiterMiss Forsythe and Letta: two broads1. The staging of physical actionAct two shows the physical display of action. Emotions and feelings are translated into physical movements. This tone of action is set right from the beginning of Act II. Apathy is replaced by movement: ‘I’m gonna do it‘ says Willy (p57).

The point of Act II is to demonstrate that all this energy will prove to be wasted. It brings no tangible results. Willy only manages to get the axe: ‘I think you need a good long rest‘ says Howard (p65). Biff only manages to get into trouble, to get himself in a tight spot by stealing Oliver’s fountain pen. Linda herself cracks up.

2. Failures to communicateA stock of theatrical devices in the play is used in the play. First, there is exchanges at cross purposes when two characters are talking of two different things (not on the same wavelength). Then dramatic irony, when spectators understand more than the character (the audience knows that Biff was not received by Bill Oliver but Willy does not (p.85)).A two-level dialogue appears when Willy talks to Linda (present reality) and to Ben (imaginary): the communication is not immediate but hampered because reality and hallucination interfere with one another.

In Act II, a scene is symbolic of the (in)capacity to communicate: the scene in which Willy visits Howard, who is more interested in his recording machine than in talking. The recording machine, which should help communication, creates an obstacle to communication, a barrier between Willy and Howard. It is emblematic of the difficulty to communicate.

3. Lies and delusionsIn Act II, lying is an important topic and even becomes a necessity. For instance, Biff cannot tell Willy what happened at Bill Oliver’s. He understands that telling the truth might be lethal and kill his father for Willy has just been sacked, p.84: "there’s a big blaze going all around. I’ve been fired today". This image is hyperbolic: it is a traumatic experience for Willy. Biff cannot add disaster after disaster. He avoids speaking the truth to protect his father, not letting the cat out of the bag.

Later on, Biff finally says: "so I’m washed up with Oliver". It is too much for Willy to hear: he is carried back into the past. When Biff says "I kept sending in my name", what Willy hears is "Biff flunked maths". This scene of the past is l

ess tragic than the present one. The past is a protective screen that allows Willy not to be confronted with the harshness of life.

4. The final showdownThe showdown has been prepared. When Willy called on Bernard, the latter made an allusion: after going to Boston, Biff has never been the same again. The audience understands that something important took place in Boston.Some of Miller’s moral principles are explained. Miller believed that writing a play is to make a moral statement. The message could be that sooner or later facts must be faced or there comes a moment when one must assume full responsibilities for the consequences of one’s deeds.

Biff is going to force his father to recognize a few things:

Willy is a coward: he intends to commit suicide with a rubber pipe. But Biff takes it off: "Allright phony! Then let’s lay it on the line." (p.103)Biff makes a painful revelation: "I stole a suit in Kansas City and I was in jail." (p.104). All his father’s ambitions are ruined.Willy is under the illusion he will make money and rise in society. What Biff pushes Willy to accept is that they are simple ordinary people: they are "a buck an hour". There is no need to build castles in the air and to lie to oneself.When Biff and Willy are about to fight, the dramatic tension turns into high emotional pitch because emotion prevails: Biff bursts into tears and holds on to Willy. It is an important stage in the play when Willy becomes aware that his son has never stopped loving him. Willy is reinforced in his determination to pass on a legacy: his life insurance.

C. The RequiemIs an important passage two. It is characterized by 2 ideas. First, it is subject to several interpretations because of equivocation. Lots of critics were disappointed by the requiem: it does not provide a final ending and leaves a lot of questions unanswered. Then, despite the tragedy, it seems that characters have not changed in any significant way.

Happy still repeats the same rubbish: "to come out number one man". He continues denying reality and even passes moral judgement "he had no right to do that". Happy is the same as ever.

Biff has not changed his projects (go back West and run a ranch). He seems to have learn no lesson and he is committed to searching through movement and space what he could find in relationships. Going West is a way of escaping reality and the changing world. He praises his father and his manual abilities: what he likes is not the fighting man but the figure of a settler who built his house.

Charley makes a lyrical speech, turning salesmanship into poetry. The survival of the salesman depends on his capacity to convince with his words. The potential buyer must dream. It is a positive image of Willy’s destiny.

Linda has the final word. Here again, ambiguity prevails. Linda truly loves Willy but her love has not permitted her to understand the man. Love is powerless: "I search and I search and I search , and I can’t understand it". She is too immersed into realism to see there was a spiritual dimension in Willy in climbing the social ladder. Not pure ambition but something highly respectable.

II. The internal plot (stream of consciousness)If the external plot of DS may be subdivided into chronologically organized sequences: Act one (Monday evening and night) ; Act two (Tuesday), and the requiem a few days after (Willy’s burial), the same is not true of the internal plot: Willy’s stream of consciousness. In �the inside of Willy’s head’, past and present are blurred. Memories constantly impinge on present situations and, conversely, the pres

ent is put at some distance by the flood of recollections.

The past/present dichotomy is replaced by a non-past; non-present, in which different temporal layers commingle and coalesce. This non-past/non-present is confined to Willy’s inner mind, to Willy’s subjective world.

A. “A mobile concurrency of past and present”(Miller: from his introduction to his Collected Plays, p. 26)Miller’s aim is DS is to erase any gap between a remembered past – that would be evoked through words (language) – and a present that would be performed on stage. In DS both past and present are given theatrical representation. There is no clear cut boundary between them. Thanks to the expressionistic technique of scrim and curtain, the characters may exist in both the present and the past. For example, Biff and Happy are seen as teen-agers and adults successively.

There are no flashbacks in DS. Better than the erroneous term ‘flashback’, the phrase double exposure would be more appropriate. In Willy’s mind, past and present exist on the same level, Willy perceives himself both in the present and in the past – which is made up of various strata. In a way, Willy is schizophrenic: overwork, worry and repressed guilt have caused his mental collapse. In this state of nervous breakdown, past and present are inextricably mingled, time is, as it were, exploded.

In DS Willy is both the self-remembering I, looking back upon himself, and the remembered I itself, that is to say, the salesman as he used to be. Similarly the same actors play their present and past selves, this is the case not only for Willy’s sons but also for Bernard, who has become a successful lawyer. The dramatic units, notably time, have been abolished in the most radical sense, indeed the function of memory entails a multiplicity of temporal levels, a series of different locations (Boston ; New York but also the Prairie through Willy’s father), and finally a loss of any fixed identity. In a sense, the exploded house, with its transparent walls, its scrims and curtains is an objective correlative (a concrete, practical, tangible image) for an exploding consciousness, in which spatial and temporal fragments get intertwined.

B. A survey of the episodes of the pastThe past is deeply subjective. It is not uniform. It takes many different shapes.

1. RecollectionsFirst there are scenes that are fully immersed within the past (the boys simonizing the Chevy ; the episode of the punching ball ; the cellar full of boys ; the contrast between Bernard the anemic and Biff an Adonis).Here is a survey of the main episodes that are plunged in the past (music; different lighting)

[21-29]: the united family and their neighbors[30-31] the same family scene is taken up and prolonged – Bernard is used as a choric voice �If he doesn’t buckle down he’ll flunk math’(31)[36-41] Ben’s first visit: some horseplay between Ben, Biff and Happy (38) �Never fight fair with a stranger, boy’(38)[66-70] Ben’s second visit. He’s got a proposition for Willy. Willy turns it down. This second visit happens to be on the day of Ebbets Field Tournament.[91-95] The climactic episode of the past: Biff finds out his father in a Boston hotel with his mistress: Miss Francis: a traumatic episode.All these episodes are framed within the past.

2. Double exposureThe action unfolds simultaneously in the past and in the present, through Willy’s split consciousness. The effect is achieved through a montage dialogue.

[34-36] The card game scene in stichomythic dialogue. It prepares the shift into the past. As soon as Charley leaves, we enter the past: �through the wall line of the kitchen’.Stichomythia: form of repartee in drama: the words of the locutor and those of his interlocutor echo each other. One character takes up the words of his opponent, thus creating antithesis or parallel syntactic constructions:

WILLY: Naa, he had seven sons; There’s just one opportunity 1 had with that man…

BEN: I must make a train, William. There are several properties I’m looking at in Alaska.

WILLY: Sure, sure! If I’d gone with him to Alaska that time, everything would’ve been totally different.

CHARLEY: Go on, you’d froze to death up there.

WILLY: What ‘re you talking about?

BEN: Opportunity is tremendous in Alaska…

WILLY: Sure, tremendous.(35)

[86-91] the restaurant scene, and simultaneously, allusions to the day when the Regents results were disclosed – Bernard’s choric voice may be heard and little by little echoes from the Boston hotel become more and more perceptible.[106-108] Willy is conversing with Ben and, at the same time, answering Linda’s repeated invitations to come to bed.

3. HallucinationsSpectators do not lose sight of the present context but are made to understand that suddenly Willy has lapsed into a mental vision and therefore cut himself off from his immediate environment.[64 bottom of the page] in Howard Wagner’s office, Willy stares at the empty seat and addresses Frank, who is of course absent, long dead and gone…[99] In his garden, as Willy discusses with Ben’s ghost, spectators realize that the ghost is very much a figment of Willy’s distorted mind. In fact it is Willy talking to himself.

4. Mnemonic �mise en abymeFrom mnemonic (memory), hence a memory within a memory.[29-31] The scene is set in the past, it stages Willy and Linda, when they were younger, from this first recollection emerges another recollection (a memory within a memory). In this second recollection the Woman (Miss Francis) appears, first her voice can be heard. Her laughter permits the shift from one level of the past to another. It seems that the mistress is laughing at the wife’s generous remark:LINDA: To me you are [slight pause] The handsomest. (First temporal level)

From the darkness is heard the laughter of a woman …(Second temporallevel).The stocking is the metonymic object which brings togetherthe two women in Willy’s life: Linda is darning her stockings while Miss Francisis offered brand new ones by Willy: �And thanks for the stockings. I love alot of stockings.’(30); So, this memory within a memory contributes to increaseWilly’s sense of guilt.

C. Subjective characterizationWilly spends most of his time on stage, in a continuous flow of words. He engages in conversations with characters who, like his sons or Charley, belong to his

real, immediate environment. But he also discusses with figures who surge up from the inner world of his consciousness: Miss Francis; his older Brother Ben or Frank Howard. In this sense D,S can be regarded as a �psychomachia’. Willy, like Everyman the mediaeval character, generates other personalities , which are mental creations, and represent fragmented aspects of himself. These imaginary presences are like mirrors or doubles illustrating facets of Willy’s splintered personality.Psychomachia: from psycho: mind and makhe (Greek): fight, so antagonistic forces that are fighting inside the protagonist’s mind.

1. The ideal types in the fantasy realmSince everything is supposed to be strained through Willy’s consciousness, the play’s structure also depends upon the characters’ proximity to him.

The most distant the characters are, the most idealized they are. Thus Willy’s father is the absolute’ ego ideal. He is referred to twice in the play: during Ben’s first visitation (38) and briefly when Willy calls on Howard Wagner (63). Willy’s father is a part-mythic, part allegorical figure that belongs to his very earliest, and vaguest childhood recollections: he is a fantasized image, a romanticized Father figure, or the paradigmatic embodiment of the heroic pioneer.

Ben represents an ideal figure that stands closer to reality. In Willy’s consciousness, Ben bridges the gap between the realm of fancy and the reality level. It is Ben’s qualities of toughness, unscrupulousness and implacability in the pursuit of gain, that Willy wishes for himself and wants his sons to emulate.

Dave Singleman represents success that is potentially within reach. Singleman offers the perfect illustration that being well-liked is the surest and shortest way towards success.

Now DS demonstrates that the high values incarnated by these various ideal figures do not find any close correspondences or parallels in Willy’s actual life. All the characters who surround Willy in the present, fail to live up to the status of those idealized types.

2. Real characters falling short of Willy’s ego idealsThe dramatic structure of DS may be ascribed to the tension between Willy’s fantasizing episodes, that are peopled by mythic figures, and his having to come to terms with real, unexceptional characters.

Biff most closely resembles his grandfather, through his preference for leading the life of a drifter (adventurer) out West. He has a touch of the artist and dreamer in his temperament. Yet he also breaks his father’s absolute ego ideal by turning out to be a loser, a failure : �and every time I come back here I know that all I’ve done is to waste my life‘(17)

Happy could correspond to Ben but only in a debased way. He shares his uncle’s unscrupulousness and amorality, but lacks his sense of purpose. So, again, he somehow belittles one of his father’s ideal types. Though his philandering (girl chasing) and nursing of injured pride, he also reminds his father of parts of himself, which he would much rather ignore.

Charley is Dave Singleman brought down to earth. Indeed he has none of the flamboyance and panache of the adventurous salesman. He is salesmanship domesticated. Charley is the perfect embodiment of the no-nonsense businessman. It is all the more humiliating for Willy to depend financially on Charley, as Charley’s example of success is in contradiction with Willy’s romanticized vision of capitalism.

ConclusionOne of the weaknesses of DS could come from the fact that the Requiem violates t

he subjective approach that Miller adopted in the first two acts. The Requiem is flagrantly outside Willy’s mind. This may be the reason why the consistency of vision that had been achieved through Willy’s consciousness is eventually lost. The irony of the play is that most of the action only goes on within the protagonist’s mind. It is ironical because what is needed is not imaginary action but real one: decisions that might change the course of things. By removing Willy from the play before the end, some of the tension that had been achieved through he �memory play’ is lost.

Arthur Miller wrote his play Death of a Salesman in 1949. The play received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Tony Award for Best Play, and the New York Drama Critic�s Circle Award for best play. Written in the early stages of Miller�s career, the play focuses on capitalism and its effects on the common man. This topic evokes Miller�s true feelings on capitalism and uncovers some inherent biases in Miller�s thinking. Miller grew up during the Great Depression. His father went out of business, and his early life was riddled with economic problems. His family lived in a small apartment building in Brooklyn. He also lived during the time period when economic giants, such as J.P. Morgan and Andrew Carnegie, were public icons of success. The urban culture that emerged in America besmirched the career of a craftsman and forced people to give up the pastoral life. This new culture placed a heavy emphasis on success and circulated the myth that anyone can achieve. However, the reality of capitalism challenges the myth, which Willy slowly finds out during the course of the play. Willy struggles to retain elements of the pastoral life while trying to succeed in urban America. Industrialization caused the devaluing of the common worker. Biff tries to explain to Willy that he is “a dime a dozen” (Miller 132). Willy is the “little man” in the capitalist system who searches for his purpose in life, eventually realizing that he has amounted to nothing. Forced to face reality in the closing scenes of the play, Willy stays steady in his false beliefs and dies believing that Biff, his son, will succeed where he has failed. In Death of a Salesman, the capitalistic success myth shapes Willy�s reality by influencing his choices and ultimately deciding his fate. Willy Loman is mesmerized by the American success myth. Arthur Miller presents the idea that any man can “strike it rich.” This success myth is embodied in many different characters who have all achieved monetary success through their own mechanisms. One such character, Willy�s mysterious older brother Ben, “has apparently taken unusual and not entirely approved means to realize the goal” of success (Wilson 86). Ben became rich from diamond mines in Africa, as he tells Willy and his sons, Biff and Happy, “Why, boys, when I was seventeen I walked into the jungle, and when I was twenty-one. I walked out. He laughs. And by God I was rich” (48). Ben left his family when he was very young, while Willy was still just a baby, to try to find his father, who had deserted the family. Willy, it seems, was left alone with only his mother. Ben grew up to be a hardened and immoral man, whose mantra is “never fight fair with a stranger, boy. You�ll never get out of the jungle that way” (49). He “represents the spirit of Social Darwinism or laissez-faire” (Gassner 239). Ben is very concrete about success, which he measures in terms of money and material things. When Willy tells Ben that he is building something with his firm in New York, Ben asks, “What are you building? Lay your hand on it. Where is it?” (86). Ben offers Willy a job in Alaska, but Willy decides to stay in New York, a choice that leaves Willy haunted by the image of Ben and what could have been. Unwittingly, Ben�s credo contributes to Willy�s rationalized decision to end his life. “The voice of Ben speaks out more and more clearly: ‘Twenty thousand – that is something one can feel with the hand, it is there…It does take a great kind of man to crack the jungle…One must go in to fetch a diamond out.� Ben�s words and example – grown to an obsession – directly lure Willy to his death” (Kennedy 38). Ben represents a road less taken, but one that can still lead to monetary success. Dave Singleman, Willy�s role model, represents a more mainstream example of succ

ess. Dave was an “old salesman who, at eighty-four, could, through the strength of his personality, sit in a hotel room and command buyers” (Weales 170). Dave Singleman was a gregarious and impressive man who left a mark on Willy. As Willy deliriously tells Howard, “he�d drummed merchandise in thirty-one states. And old Dave, he�d go up to his room… and pick up his phone and call the buyers…at the age of eighty-four, he made his living. And when I saw that, I realized that selling was the greatest career a man could want” (81). The name Dave Singleman symbolizes that he was Miller�s anomalous example; he was the single man capable of succeeding as a salesman. Thus, his singularity is a foreshadowing of Willy�s failures.Willy is driven to succeed, not only by the people he has met but also by the increasing preeminence of the corporate ethos in society. “Our culture has consistently exhorted the individual to strive for transcendent success… the strident nineteenth-century pronouncements of an Andrew Carnegie… or a Russell H. Conwell,” make us believe “the idea… that in this country of ours every man has the opportunity to make more of himself�” (Wilson 83). Willy grew up with this success incentive imbued in him. His goals and dreams were determined by society as a precursor to his existence; therefore, Willy represents everyman within the capitalistic system. His goals and mechanisms for achievement have, however, been distorted by the messages he has heard throughout his life which ultimately lead to his disillusionment. Willy is seduced by the success myth, but he is often unsure about how to succeed. His confusion reflects the cultural changes that take place during his lifetime. “Willy Loman was born as the American frontier era drew to a close. Growing up in a transitional period, he found no suitable identity. His civilization made the choice between Wall Street and Walden Pond both necessary and costly, and the man who chose Walden Pond was often paid with his self-esteem. That civilization also made the career of a good craftsman somehow shameful” (Bates 68-69). Willy chooses to make his living on Wall Street rather than on the pastoral lifestyle. However, the audience is often left wondering whether or not he made the right choice. “Biff suggests ‘there�s more of [Willy] in that front stoop than in all the sales he ever made.� And Charley seems to agree: ‘He was a happy man with a batch of cement.� The play is filled with references to Willy�s pride in working with his hands, his desire for a garden” (Weales 176). These references suggest that Willy may have been happier as a farmer, but instead, was instead corrupted by capitalism in America; he was led to believe that success can only be valued in money and not in happiness or personal dignity. And in his corruption, Willy has sold his soul to be a salesman. Willy chooses to follow the path of Dave Singleman, a monetarily successful and beloved salesman. He does not predominantly envy the money that Singleman has amassed, but he is more interested in the sentimental success of the “master salesman” (Wilson 82). Dave Singleman is able to “effortlessly…move his goods and earn a comfortable living” (Wilson 82). He is “remembered and loved and helped by so many different people” and that is what Willy strives for (Wilson 82). Willy yearns for love and admiration by his peers, which is why he places such an emphasis on being well liked. This is also one of the reasons contributing to Willy�s failure in the capitalist world. He is more concerned with being “well liked” than with monetary success. “Willy has heard the truth from the capitalists, but he has chosen to believe in the Dave Singleman myth” (Murphy 7). He is mesmerized by Singleman�s cultural success, and so he chooses not to follow Ben, who offers a more guaranteed monetary gain. “I thought I�d go out with my older brother and try to locate him, and maybe settle in the North with the old man. And I was almost decided to go, when I met a salesman in the Parker House. His name was Dave Singleman” (81). Willy chooses Singleman over Ben, metaphorically choosing companionship over money. The reality in a capitalistic world is that not everyone can succeed, especially someone like Willy whose values and ideas about selling are all wrong for his time period. Willy demonstrates a man who strives to be at the top but never makes it. Within any capitalistic economic system, there are bound to be successes and failures, making it therefore, “inevitable…that some salesmen should fall by the wayside. Willy was just such a failure” (Fuller 241). His society encourages everyone to succeed and eventually, “American emphasis on success…outruns the availabilit

y of means for achieving success” (Wilson 83). Based on the inherent rules of capitalism, it is impossible for everyone to succeed. Even if someone works hard and does what he perceives is right, he may still fail. Willy tries to “do what is expected of him [but after] having played by the rules as he conceives them and having held a bright image of achievement in mind, he is unfairly deprived of his just reward” (Wilson 84). However, for every failure there is a success. Ben and Charley represent the successful members of Willy�s generation. Ben and Charley succeed while Willy fails because both buy into the ideals of capitalism while Willy strives to be “well liked.” “Charley and Ben, are hard-nosed capitalists, who have never allowed themselves to succumb to the sentimentality of the Dave Singleman myth as Willy has” (Murphy 7). Charley tells Willy that “the only thing you got in this world is what you can sell,” but Willy still hopes for more; he truly believes that companionship is a part of selling even when he is empirically proven wrong (Murphy 7). Willy, drunk in the myth of monetary success, struggles to succeed but finds himself failing. He tells his family that he is well liked all over New England and that he is a great salesman. “They know me, boys, they know me up and down New England…I have friends. I can park my car in any street in New England, and the cops protect it like their own” (31). Willy brags about his success as a salesman, but when he does so, he discusses his friendships rather than how much money he made. However, “The play shows quite clearly that from the beginning of his career Willy has lied about the size of his sales, the warmth of his reception, the number of his friends” (Weales 171). Willy�s failure is fairly typical of his time period. “Men like Willy Loman, sixty-three years old in 1948, were being displaced by the younger generation everywhere” (Murphy 5). Willy was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Willy, born during a transitional period in American business, is misguided by the values and strategies he has learned and, therefore, falls victim to remaining stagnant during progressing times. When Willy first started as a salesman, personality “was considered the salesman�s greatest asset” (Murphy 3). And, the job was primarily based on making “friends with the buyers and merchants, so they would buy what he was selling. The product itself was not all that important” (Murphy 3). The job of a salesman later changed but, “Willy�s generation remembered the time when there was ‘respect, and comradeship, and gratitude.� In business” (Murphy 3). Willy was raised believing that personality was the “be all and end all” trait for a salesman, as he tells his boys, “Be liked and you will never want” (33). During Willy�s lifetime, the job of a salesman changed. “During the forties and fifties, the professional salesman became increasingly driven by things like market studies and demographics… Students were taught in business courses that the salesman�s job was to learn everything he could about his product, and about the market” (Murphy 6). In Willy�s own words, “Today it�s all cut and dried.” (Murphy 6) Howard, Willy�s young boss, is the embodiment of these changes, as; “Howard Wagner…is pragmatic and impersonal in his treatment of the aging salesman” (Murphy 5). For example, when Willy asks Howard for a job in New York, Howard refuses to find him one and then fires him. Howard explains his mentality to Willy claiming that, “It�s a business, kid, and everybody�s gotta pull his own weight” (Murphy 5). Willy�s inability to adapt to the changing society in America is exemplified when his outdated values contradict Howard�s. “Willy�s plea for loyalty and human treatment…is irrelevant to Howard�s way of thinking” (Murphy 6). Willy frantically screams at Howard, “I put thirty-four years into this firm, Howard, and now I can�t pay my insurance! You can�t eat the orange and throw the peel away–a man is not a piece of fruit!” (82). But Willy�s pleas fall on deaf ears, Howard can understand Willy�s way of thinking no better than Willy can understand Howard�s. To add to the schism between the two, Howard lives lavishly while Willy can not even afford the cost of living. Howard was raised by capitalism; he believes in competition and survival of the fittest. Willy, on the other hand, becomes a victim of capitalism; he tries to make friends while others are trying to cut his throat.Willy is unable to cope with change and is blind to the fact that his way of doing business doesn�t work anymore. “Willy is a dinosaur” (Murphy 7). He fails to adap

t and dies because of it. Willy goes through life believing, (and dies believing), that personality will win the day. Unfortunately, “in the contemporary United States occupational conduct is more clearly governed by ‘universalism� (not who you are, but what you can do) and ‘functional specificity� (not the valuing of the total man, but of his specific skills and contributions to some enterprise)” (Wilson 85). Willy knows nothing about his product. In fact, Miller makes it a point to never even mention what Willy sells. This lack of knowledge by the audience reinforces that Willy does not know how to sell. Willy is “an American naïf bemused by the worship of uncreative success and hollow assumptions that ‘personality� is the summum bonum” (Gassner 233). In reality, personality had become one of the least important elements of a business transaction. When Willy stops succeeding, he blames his likeableness as the cause. Willy complains to Linda saying things such as, “You know, the trouble is, Linda, people don�t seem to take to me,” and, “I�m fat. I�m very-foolish to look at” (36, 37). Willy fails by placing too much emphasis on his character. It is ironic then that he blames his character as the source of his failure, and in doing so, he further augments his problem leading to even greater failure. Willy�s values, the ones he has passed down to his children, have become so warped by the success myth that he refuses to accept his and his son�s failures. When met with business failure, Willy becomes increasingly neurotic to the point of insanity. He can not face the future and so he lives in the past, often daydreaming and hallucinating about things that once were. Willy�s, “hallucinations constitute the return of the repressed” proving that his mind is very unstable due to repressed thoughts of the past and of success (Wilson 79). Willy�s memories coupled with his current failures lead to his insanity. As the audience, “we witness a human being coming apart before our eyes. In Willy�s own words, ‘the woods are burning!�” (Wilson 80). Willy constantly fantasizes about Ben, who has been dead for years and Biff when he was child. He looks back to what he considers to be the “good old days” in an effort to forget the present. Willy is fed up with modern civilization. He loathes his apartment building often complaining that, “they should�ve had a law against apartment houses” (17). Willy is “diminished and constrained by [his] environment,” because of this we are “constantly aware of the influence of this civilization upon the tormented occupants of the [Loman] house” (Bates 61). Willy would have been happier as a farmer; throughout the book there are references to the pastoral life that he could have chosen. However, Willy chose New York and with it came the frustrating and claustrophobic atmosphere of the city. Urban culture shapes Willy�s values and forces him to hyperbolize the meaning of his life. The epitome of this attitude is exemplified in Willy�s final speech when he frantically screams, “I am not a dime a dozen! I am Willy Loman, and you are Biff Loman!” (132). Willy fails to realize that the names are meaningless, that no one will remember him when he dies. He has failed to make his mark on civilization, and he has failed at capitalism. Willy Loman is nothing but a sad story: a poor, delusional, little man who struggled as hard as he could but never prevailed. Willy Loman is a hero of modern tragedy. Willy�s life never satisfied him. He was constantly chasing after a dream that he couldn�t reach, and in the end, he kills himself. Throughout his life, Willy performs labor that is “not personal to himself,” and he therefore “does not fulfill himself in work, but actually denies himself” (Bates 65). Willy hates his job and furthermore, the “products of Willy�s labor are never concrete and observable” so he doesn�t even have a physical connection to the ends of his labor (Bates 65). Biff, on the other hand, recognizes his love for the pastoral life and chooses it over Willy�s unfulfilling dreams. Willy can not cope with the fact that Biff does not want his dreams and his lifestyle; Biff�s withdrawal from urban society contributes to Willy�s death. “Willy never ceases to believe that Biff is magnificent,” and it is “imaging ‘that magnificence with twenty thousand dollars in his pocket� that Willy goes to his death” (Murphy 7). So who did kill the salesman? Some interpretations claim that it was Ben and the image of what could have been that drove Willy insane. Other interpretations cite Biff as the one at fault for never amounting to anything. Still others claim that Willy fell victim to the past; he never adapted to the changing times and so he became obsolete. Miller may be “trying

to undermine democracy” (Kennedy 34). He, “has stacked the cards against Willy and used his single tragedy to point an unjustifiable finger at Salesmanship itself. If Willy died…Arthur Miller killed him” (Kennedy 34).Willy has passed down his values and failures to his sons who are crippled by them. Happy becomes moderately successful, but he is lost and is anything but happy. Happy conforms to the goals and mechanisms for achievement in urban society. He works hard and “gets…what he thinks he wants, but his life is somehow flavorless, without bite or savor” (Wilson 87). Happy�s success is an empty one. He is without a wife or children to support, and his own family vaguely notices his achievements. Unlike Willy, Happy “represents no such dramatic struggle” (Kennedy 37). At best he is, “a marked-down version of his father, with not even a grand dream to cover his grossness” (Kennedy 37). Happy struggles, but he is like a misguided soldier because he does not know what he is fighting for. He is lost and remains lost throughout the play. It seems that Happy is “destined to remain a sexual predator and a frustrated failure in business” (Bates 67). He expresses his misdirection at Willy�s funeral, saying, “He had a good dream… He fought it out here, and this is where I�m gonna win it for him” (139). Happy doesn�t realize the fruitlessness of false dreams; he follows down the same path that betrayed his father. The truth stares him in the face, and yet still he persists with misguided dreams of hollow success. Biff withdraws from the capitalist society altogether and chooses the pastoral life instead. Unlike Happy, he is able to see past the façade of happiness worn by businessmen. He is, “less strongly bound by the success dream than Happy…and he is clearly less at home in the city” (Bates 64). Biff believes that working in an urban business center is, “a measly manner of existence endured for the sake of a two-week vacation” (Bates 64). And so, Biff follows a pattern of retreat; he withdraws from urban society and goes back to the pastoral life. All of the Lomans love the outdoors, but Biff is the only one who admits that he would be happy as a farmer or a craftsman, “having experienced a meaningful pastoral life, Biff is eventually able to break the bondage created by his father�s dreams” (Bates 64). Biff has an epiphany as he, “runs from Bill Oliver�s office,” and he realizes, “�all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am.� Hence Biff embraces one part of his heritage and rejects another; choosing the pastoral life, he denies those social forces which lure American men into the marathon pursuit of wealth. He becomes a more conscious and a more human man” (Bates 64). Biff is enlightened; he is the only Loman who is not lost at the end of the book. His ability to admit the truth separates him from the other members of his family and provides a clear contrast between himself and Willy. Biff tells Willy in their final fight of the play, “I am not a leader of men, Willy, and neither are you” (132). This seemingly simple yet incredibly profound statement shows Biff�s departure from his father. It shows that he is not willing to lie anymore and wants to finally face the truth. Biff begs Willy to give up his unsatisfied dreams, and in one of the most dramatic lines in the entire play, Biff roars, “Will you let me go, for Christ�s sake? Will you take that phony dream and burn it before something happens?” (133). Biff�s salvation comes from his abandonment of the capitalistic world and his rejection of his father�s dreams. Willy�s reality is based around the capitalist success myth, which he fails to reach, and in doing so motivates his own suicide. Willy Loman, educated in the American success myth, has been taught by both the people he has met and his society itself. He wants to succeed monetarily, but Willy possesses an even stronger urge to be loved. However, he fails to realize that he can�t look for companionship in a cutthroat economic system such as the one that existed in twentieth century America. Since Willy�s values and strategies on selling are wrong and ineffective, he does not succeed. However, Willy�s failure miraculously has the ability to touch everyone in the audience. Willy represents the “little man” is business. He embodies every father who toils endlessly and can barely afford to pay his insurance. Willy, “gave all his life to a business only to be thrown on the scrap-heap” (Gassner 233). And, the Lomans represent every family, who beguiled by the success myth, put all their faith into their work, only to fail. Since Willy represents everyman, he engages the audience�s “interest and sympathy” (Gassner 233). We

can imagine what it must be like for Willy to struggle his entire life only to fail. However, in addition to evoking the tragic mood in an audience, Death of a Salesman also makes an interesting point about capitalism. Arthur Miller�s message is an ambivalent one. On one hand, he teaches us that education is an important factor in success by using the character of Bernard. He also uses Charley, Ben, and Dave Singleman to show that success is a possibility in the capitalist world. However, the play focuses primarily on Willy and his failure. Willy�s death, in addition to the title Death of a Salesman, casts an ominous outlook on salesmanship. Miller also appears to suggest in his play that the past was a better time. He makes references to Willy�s father, who is always accompanied by a flute. Miller makes the point, in Biff�s enlightenment, that the pastoral life is the way to salvation. Miller seems disappointed with urban civilization and capitalism, and, when Miller�s past is examined, we find it riddled with economic problems. His father owned a clothes/coat manufacturing business that failed during the Wall Street Crash of 1929. Miller�s family was very poor and lived in a small apartment in Brooklyn, which might explain Miller�s contempt for apartment buildings as infused through the voice of Willy Loman, who when describing his apartment claims, “They boxed us in here” (17). Despite Miller�s personal bias in creating the play, he still conveys a timeless but dismal message that life is hard. When Willy dies, not even his faithful wife, Linda, can cry. And despite Linda�s constant pleas, “attention” is not paid

Death of A Salesman; How Willy Loman Sold Himself Short

Willy Loman, the central character in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, is a man whose fall from the top of the capitalistic totem pole results in a resounding crash, both literally and metaphorically. As a man immersed in the memories of the past and controlled by his fears of the future, Willy Loman views himself as a victim of bad luck, bearing little blame for his interminable pitfalls. However, in my assessment, it was not an ill-fated destiny that drove Willy to devastate his own life as well as the lives of those he loved; it was his distorted set of values.

If Willy Loman had valued acceptance over popularity, individuality over conformity and devotion over materialism, he would have considered himself rich in his later years, feeling grateful to have a wife and two sons that loved him; and that would have been enough. Yet because he was unable to appreciate the important things in life, he ultimately opted for death instead, subsequently stealing the opportunity for true happiness away from those who had managed to find their own versions of peace prior to his selfish act.

What is truly ironic here is that the act of suicide is Willy’s warped way of showing Biff that he loves him, yet he never once comprehends the notion that his acceptance and understanding would have benefited his son a thousand times more than any insurance policy ever could. Even if the Loman family had succeeded in acquiring the insurance money, it would not have eased their grief. Thus Willy’s distorted perceptions of reality and what truly mattered to his family blinded him to the things that could have made him and those he loved exceedingly happy. Spouting off rhetoric such as “Riding on a smile and a shoeshine,” and “. . . personality always wins the day.” (p. 65) did little to convince Willy or those around him that happiness is that easily obtained. After all, he had not managed to obtain it and neither had his sons. Yet if Willy had loved his sons unconditionally instead of doling out his love in accordance with his their successes, he might not have felt like such a failure himself, because if nothing else, he would have been a success as a father.

Willy Loman could honestly take no pride in the values he had instilled in his t

wo sons. Case in point: As he preaches that likeability, above all, is the ultimate goal of mankind, he neglects to qualify his statements by adding that one should be liked for being himself, not by adapting like a chameleon to whatever the surrounding circumstances dictate. The following passage superbly demonstrates Willy’s twisted perceptions of what it means to succeed in life.

"WILLY: That�s just what I mean, Bernard can get the best marks in school, y�understand, but when he gets out in the business world, y�understand, you are going to be five times ahead of him. That�s why I thank Almighty God you�re both built like Adonises. Because the men who makes an appearance in the business world, the man who creates personal interest, is the man who gets ahead. Be liked and you will never want. You take me for instance, I never have to wait in line to see a buyer. �Willy Loman is here!� That�s all they have to know, and I go right through" (p. 33).

Perhaps Willy’s philosophy that charm, popularity and physical appeal are the catalysts that fling open the doors of opportunity is rooted in his feelings of inadequacy over his own deficiencies in these arenas. After all, Willy has built his entire life around the tenet that “The only thing you got in this world is what you can sell.” (p. 97), and his failure to sustain his beliefs has weighed unbearably heavy on his sense of personal failure. If Willy had been true to himself instead of fretting constantly over the image he and his family were portraying to society, he might have realized that true success is measured in the ability to contribute positively to one’s environment and pass on admirable traits to future generations. Success is not, as Willy perceives, measured by the number of acquaintances an individual has acquired or the balance of his bankbook. Had he realized this before committing suicide, Willy Loman may have been able to not only salvage, but also reconstruct his family and his life to a point where they would all have been able to truly appreciate life and the non-superficial pleasures it has to offer.

When Willy complains early on in the play, “The street is lined with cars. There’s not a breath of fresh air…The grass don’t grow . . . you can’t raise a carrot in the back yard.” (p. 17), he is basically demonstrating how barren and unfruitful he feels his own life has become. Yet what he fails to realize is that there is beauty all around us if we just now where to look and how to view it. Had Willy been able to grasp what his son Biff was trying to tell him about the true nature of happiness; if he had believed his son that his actions were not perpetrated out of spite, but out of the longing for a sense of self that Willy had never given him, perhaps Willy Loman would not have sold himself or his family short. Perhaps instead, he would had the strength of character to commendably walk away from the biggest sales gimmick of all time; The American Dream.

THEME Reality versus illusionDeath of A Salesman has several themes that run throughout the play. The most obvious theme is the idea of reality versus illusion. Though Linda, Biff and Happy are all unable to separate reality from illusion to some degree, Willy is the main character who suffers from this ailment. For years, Willy has believed that both he and his boys (particularly Biff) will one day be great successes. Though he’s a disrespected salesman, he calls himself the “New England man.” Though Biff has done nothing with his life by the age of thirty-four, Willy tells others and tries to make himself believe that his son is doing big things” out west. Willy’s brother, Ben, continually appears in the troubled man’s mind, offering hints on how to make it in the world of business. Willy feels that he must live up to the standard that Ben has set, but this is found to be impossible by the end of the play. Only Biff ever realizes who he is (“a dime a dozen”) and what his potential really

is. He is the only member of the family to finally escape from the poisonous grasp of illusion. American DreamOne of Miller’s secondary themes is the idea of the American Dream. Throughout his play, Miller seems to criticize this ideal as little more than a capitalist’s paradigm. Though Willy spends all of his adult life working for a sales company, this company releases the salesman when he proves to be unprofitable. Willy confronts Howard, his boss (and Miller indicates free market society), when he charges, “You can’t eat the orange and throw the peel away—a man is not a piece of fruit.” Here, Willy feels that Howard has gone back on his father’s word by forgetting him in his golden years, throwing away the peel after eating the orange, so to speak. Thus, Willy is unable to cope with the changing times and the unfeeling business machine that is New York. Personality wins the dayThe idea that “personality wins the day” is one such flaw in Willy’s logic. Indeed, substance, not personality or being well liked, is what wins the day. Charley and Bernard, who have success but not personality, prove to Willy that his notion is incorrect. But unfortunately, Willy never understands this, and so goes to his grave never truly realizing where he went wrong. BetrayalWilly’s primary obsession throughout the play is what he considers to be Biff’s betrayal of his ambitions for him. Willy believes that he has every right to expect Biff to fulfill the promise inherent in him. When Biff walks out on Willy’s ambitions for him, Willy takes this rejection as a personal affront (he associates it with “insult” and “spite”). Willy, after all, is a salesman, and Biff’s ego-crushing rebuff ultimately reflects Willy’s inability to sell him on the American Dream—the product in which Willy himself believes most faithfully. Willy assumes that Biff’s betrayal stems from Biff’s discovery of Willy’s affair with The Woman—a betrayal of Linda’s love. Whereas Willy feels that Biff has betrayed him, Biff feels that Willy, a “phony little fake,” has betrayed him with his unending stream of ego-stroking lies. SettingThe story starts in a little house in an American city. The house is covered by large houses, “sky scrapers”. The house is small and not very good looking house. In the yard you have no tries or plants. Characterization Willy LomanWilly Loman is the main character, and he is a salesman. He has some serious problems in his life. Willy has big problems dividing imagination and reality. He is married with a woman called Linda, and they have 2 sons, Biff and Happy. Willy is not a successful salesman, nor a successful father. Trough his entire life he thinks his son Biff, will become a big salesman. But Biff is now almost 35 years old, and hasn’t accomplished anything yet. If you take a quick look at Willy’s last name, Loman, you can also see that it’s almost like Willy “Low Man”. That’s a fact in his life that he never wants to realise. Willy Loman is a proud man, but not a very wealthy man. Willy’s failure to recognize the anguished love offered to him by his family is crucial to the climax of his torturous day, and the play presents thus incapacity as the real tragedy. Despite this failure, Willy makes the most extreme sacrifice in this attempt to leave an inheritance that will allow Biff to fulfil the American Dream. Biff LomanThat’s Willy Loman first born child. All his life he is been told by his father that he is going to be big and wealthy. His father always talks about how big he is and so on. Therefore Biff also starts to believe it. But after years of failur

e Biff on day realize that he is nothing. Biff Loman tries to tell his father that he is nothing, and that he also has to stop to believe it. Unlike Willy and Happy, Biff wants to tell the truth, not the “wanted truth”. While his father and brother are unable to accept the miserable reality of their respective lives, Biff acknowledges his failure and eventually manages to confront it. Consequently, Willy sees Biff as an underachiever, while Biff sees himself as trapped in Willy’s grandiose fantasies. Biff determines to break trough the lies surrounding the Loman family in order to come to realistic terms with his own life. Happy LomanHappy is very much alike with his father. Instead of telling the truth, happy will tell you what you want to hear. In therefore make you and him self happy, instead of telling the truth and be sad for a moment or two. That’s maybe why the author chosen to call him for Happy. Happy has trough his life lived in the shadows of his brother, but doesn’t seems to have any problems with it. He is a shallow man, and likes shallow women. He is also ha Loman failure, and is not married and lives home with his parents at the age of 28. He does share Wills capacity for self-delusion, trumpeting himself as the assistant buyer at his store, when, in reality, his is only an assistant to the assistant buyer. CharleyCharley is Willy’s neighbour and only friend. He offers Willy a job when the old salesman is fired, but Willy can’t bring himself to work for Charley, since this would be admitting failure. Throughout the play, Charley tries to give Willy constructive criticism, hoping to get him on the right track. Thus, Charley symbolizes the reality that Willy never acknowledges. BenBen is Willy’s rich, older brother who left him at an early age to make his fortune in Alaska and Africa (the wild frontiers). Many critics believe that Ben is nothing more than a figment of Willy’s imagination, yet to Willy, Ben is very real. Ben is the driving force behind Willy’s idea of success. Willy feels that, like his older brother who has struck it rich with diamond mines in Africa, he must establish himself as a rich and powerful businessman in New England. So in many ways, Ben is the symbol of the standard of success that proves too hard for Willy and his sons to match. STRUCTURE The story starts at present-day and Willy then lapses in and out of the past. Each flashback is somehow related the present. Very often, the contents of the flashback offer essential background knowledge for understanding why the present-day problems in the Loman family are occurring. For example, when Willy is thinking about Biff and Biff�s problems, Willy is transported to the summer of Biff�s senior year. The events that took place in the past expose for the reader the situations that have led up to the present-day boiling point in the Loman household. Motifs Mythic FiguresWilly’s tendency to mythologize people contributes to his deluded understanding of the world. He speaks of Dave Singleman as a legend and imagines that his death must have been beautifully noble. Willy compares Biff and Happy to the mythic Greek figures Adonis and Hercules because he believes that his sons are pinnacles of “personal attractiveness” and power through “well liked”-ness; to him, they seem the very incarnation of the American Dream.

The American West, Alaska, and the African JungleThese regions represent the potential of instinct to Biff and Willy. Willy’s father found success in Alaska and his brother, Ben, became rich in Africa; these exotic locales, especially when compared to Willy’s banal Brooklyn neighborhood, crystallize how Willy’s obsession with the commercial world of the city has trapped him in an unpleasant reality. Whereas Alaska and the African jungle symbolize Willy’s failure, the American West, on the other hand, symbolizes Biff’s potential. Biff realizes that he has been content only when working on farms, out in the open. His westward escape from both Willy’s delusions and the commercial world of the eastern United States suggests a nineteenth-century pioneer mentality—Biff, unlike Willy, recognizes the importance of the individual. Symbols MOTIVES The woods/jungle and diamondsUncle Ben is the character who deals with the motif of the jungle (sometimes referred to by Willy as �the woods�) and diamonds. These motifs are symbols. The jungle is symbolic of life, and diamonds of success. As Willy�s life is crashing down around him, he says, "The woods are burning! I can�t drive a car!" At the end of the play (and many other places as well) Uncle Ben refers to the jungle: "You must go into the jungle and fetch a diamond out." The gardenThe idea of planting a garden is a major motif in the play. Willy is always discussing the idea of planting a garden, in Act I on page 17 he says, "The grass don�t grow anymore, you can�t raise a carrot in the backyard." At the end of the play, one of his last acts in life is his futile attempt at planting seeds in the backyard of his fenced-in house. The garden is symbolic of Willy needing to leave something behind for people to remember him by. Something that people will think about and remember him as a great man. Willy never achieved success in life, and he also never planted his garden. (He does in the end of the play, but it is assumed that will not grow.) DiamondsTo Willy, diamonds represent tangible wealth and, hence, both validation of one’s labor (and life) and the ability to pass material goods on to one’s offspring, two things that Willy desperately craves. Correlatively, diamonds, the discovery of which made Ben a fortune, symbolize Willy’s failure as a salesman. Despite Willy’s belief in the American Dream, a belief unwavering to the extent that he passed up the opportunity to go with Ben to Alaska, the Dream’s promise of financial security has eluded Willy. At the end of the play, Ben encourages Willy to enter the “jungle” finally and retrieve this elusive diamond—that is, to kill himself for insurance money in order to make his life meaningful.

Liz Jewett

Perhaps it’s due to the impending Christmas season, but it’s hard not to draw parallels between Arthur Miller’s "Death of a Salesman," now playing at the Firehouse Theatre Project, and that other 1940s American classic, "It’s a Wonderful Life." So much of both stories hinge on the fragility of the American dream, and what happens to the soul of a man when he believes he has failed to live up to such a myth.

The stories diverge of course. There are no guardian angels in Miller’s Pulitzer Prize -winning play, no last minute salvation. There’s only a rumpled old man with

two suitcases; average, unsuccessful, and utterly betrayed by the world and his role in it.

Rusty Wilson’s take on this goliath of a play is bleak, respectful and utterly riveting. There is no room or need for frills or stylized touches, and Wilson doesn’t waste time on either. Instead with clarity and subtlety, he takes the audience through the last few days of the life of Willy Loman, a traveling salesman tortured by the failure of his present to live up to everything he expected in the past. There’s nothing new or revelatory in this production, but with material like Miller’s story, why on earth would there need to be?

Most of what the audience sees of the Loman family takes place in their small Brooklyn home, and Phil Hayes’ multi-level set evokes just the right amount of nostalgic post-war Americana mixed with decay and claustrophobia. Andrew Bonniwell’s lighting nicely transitions from the harsher realities of Willy’s modern life to the literally and figuratively brighter nostalgia of his family’s younger days.

Holly Sullivan’s costumes are period appropriate but never feel stiff or forced. There’s a moment where Willy Loman sits at his kitchen table eating a cheese sandwich in a rumpled suit and house slippers, and it’s entirely believable he’s worn that suit and those slippers every day for decades.

This is a tightly focused play, and Wilson has cast a tight and focused cast. As Willy’s neighbor and only friend, Stanley, Andrew C. Boothby exudes quiet, humble decency. As Stanley’s son, Bernard, Dean Knight transitions nicely from flashback scenes of geeky hero-worship to present-day restraint and superiority. Lauren Leinhass-Cook is memorable in a small but pivotal role that reveals the crack in the foundation of the Loman household.

As Willy’s devoted and long-suffering wife, Linda, Jacqueline Jones is initially all sweet 1940s housewife smiles. However, Jones adeptly reveals the ocean of fury and despair inside a woman content to live a small life forced to watch her husband unravel when he can’t do the same.

As Willy’s youngest son, Hap, Matt Block gives a restrained, modulated performance that fits perfectly with his character’s practiced denial when it comes to the breaks in his family and the failure of his father’s belief system.

As Willy’s oldest son and former golden boy, Biff, Adrian Rieder wonderfully connects the dots of love, rage, and betrayal that link father and son and all the ruined expectations between them. He seamlessly embodies the boyish, idealized football star of his father’s memories and the hardened adult who both hates and still desperately loves his father. It’s the blurry ground between those two extremes that Rieder makes so honest and compelling.

In American theater you can’t get more iconic than Willy Loman. Some actors might play it safe with this kind of task. To his credit, Joe Inscoe doesn’t. He gives a furiously big and bold performance that runs the risk of being over-the-top. What saves the performance isn’t how he handles one of Miller’s famous monologues. It has nothing to do with those gorgeously sad words, although they are gorgeous and to Inscoe’s credit, spoken with all the skill of a veteran stage actor.

No, what makes Inscoe’s portrayal of Loman so devastating and affecting, what gives the show its beating heart, are the few, brief, silent moments where the exhausted man finds just a second of peace, whether it’s a shaking hand that reaches out to touch his grown son’s head or a cautious, guarded smile at the prospect of a better day tomorrow. In these moments Inscoe isn’t just good. He’s shattering.

"Death of a Salesman" is the kind of play that could easily come off as a dusty and dutiful recitation. Most audience members walk in expecting respectful, inte

llectual tragedy. What surprised me most about Firehouse’s production is that by the end of the play, those tenuous moments of hope took Willy Loman from archetype to human, and made his self-imposed fate as heartbreaking as if learning it for the first time.

NOTE TO THE TEACHER

The questions, exercises, and assignments on these pages are designed to guide students� reading of the literary work and to provide suggestions for exploring the implications of the story through discussions, research, and writing. Most of the items can be handled individually, but small group and whole class discussions will enhance comprehension. The Response Journal should provide students with a means, first, for recording their ideas, feelings, and concerns, and then for reflecting these thoughts in their writing assignments and class discussions. These sheets may be duplicated, but teachers should select and modify items according to the needs and abilities of their students.

INTRODUCTIONAmerica has long been known as a land of opportunity. Out of that thinking comes the "American Dream," the idea that anyone can ultimately achieve success, even if he or she began with nothing. In Arthur Miller�s Death of a Salesman, we follow Willy Loman as he reviews a life of desperate pursuit of a dream of success. In this classic drama, the playwright suggests to his audience both what is truthful and what is illusory in the American Dream and, hence, in the lives of millions of Americans. Unusual in its presentation of a common man as a tragic figure, the play received the Pulitzer Prize as well as the New York Drama Critics� Circle Award when it was produced and published in 1949. About the writing of the play, Miller says, "I wished to create a form which, in itself as a form, would literally be the process of Willy Loman�s way of mind." To accomplish this, Miller uses the sense of time on stage in an unconventional way to illustrate that, for Willy Loman, ". . . the voice of the past is no longer distant but quite as loud as the voice of the present." Although he denies any direct intent to make a political statement about the capitalist way of life in the United States, Miller brings the American Dream onto the stage for evaluation.

PREPARING TO READHow is the American Dream characteristic of American ideals and philosophy? What are the differences between the materialistic and the idealistic values associated with the American Dream?What was happening economically and socially in the United States in 1949? Was it fairly easy or difficult to get a job? What was America�s standing in the world?What is your definition of salesman? How is a salesman different from someone in another occupation? What attitudes do you think a salesman should have to be successful? What attitudes would hinder him?What effect do the expectations of parents have on the behavior of their children? In what ways might parental expectations be beneficial? In what ways might they be detrimental?As you read through the play, stop occasionally to record your thoughts, reactions, and concerns in a Response Journal. Your journal may be a notebook or individual sheets which you clip together and keep in a folder. Include statements about the characters – what you learn about them, how they affect you – and about the key issues and events in the play. Also, jot down questions you have about events and statements in the play that you do not understand. Your Response Journal wi

ll come in handy when you discuss the play in class, write a paper, or explore a related topic that interests you.

UNDERSTANDING THE STORYAct One

Why is Willy home? Why is Linda alarmed that he�s home?Why is Willy annoyed at Biff? How does he describe Biff? What does this tell us about Willy?How has the neighborhood changed? Why does it matter to the story that his surroundings are no longer the way they used to be?How does Linda treat Willy? How do the boys feel about him? Is Biff trying to spite Willy? Why does Biff come home in the spring?Why won�t Happy go out West with Biff, and why won�t Biff stay? Why doesn�t either son get married and settle down?How does Willy act toward the boys when they are young? How do they act toward him? How does Willy feel about Charley and Bernard?What does Willy�s reaction to Biff�s theft of the football tell us about Willy? He says the boys look like Adonises. What other clues show that Willy believes in appearances?Willy praises and then curses the Chevrolet; he tells Linda that he�s very well liked, and then says that people don�t seem to take to him. What do these inconsistencies tell us about Willy?"Five hundred gross in Providence" becomes "roughly two hundred gross on the whole trip." How does Linda take Willy�s stories? What does this reveal about her? Why does Willy make a fuss about Linda�s mending stockings? How is this important to the play?Why does Charley visit? How does he feel about Willy? How and why do they insult each other?Who is Ben? Why does Ben appear? What does Willy think about the future? About the past? What does Ben teach Biff? Why does Willy feel "kind of temporary" about himself and want Ben to stay?What does Linda think is the trouble with Willy�s life? Why is she angry at her sons? Why does she put the rubber hose back after she had taken it? What does this tell about her?Why is Willy interested when Biff mentions Bill Oliver? Why do they argue? How does Happy try to capture attention?Act Two

Why is Willy�s mood upbeat at the start of Act Two? What does he expect to happen?Why does Willy tell Howard about Dave Singleman? Describe the dramatic effect when Howard listens to the voices of his family while Willy tries to talk business. Why does Howard tell Willy to drop off his samples and forbid him to go to Boston? Why is this such a blow to Willy?What is Willy�s philosophy? How does Biff as a football hero embody his father�s dreams? Why does Charley say Willy hasn�t grown up?What is Willy�s impression of Bernard when he sees him in his father�s office? Why does Willy exaggerate Biff�s importance? Why does Bernard ask what happened after the game at Ebbets Field?Why won�t Willy work for Charley? Why is Willy able to ask Charley for money? How is Charley�s view of what a salesman needs different from Willy�s view?In the restaurant, how does Happy reflect Willy�s values? Why does Miller have the girls come in?How does Biff�s realization that his life is a lie underline the theme of the play? Why does Biff take Bill Oliver�s fountain pen? Why can�t he tell his father what happened with Bill Oliver? Why do Biff and Happy leave Willy at the restaurant?Why did Biff go to Boston? What does he discover when he sees the Woman? Why is

it that Biff never went to summer school? Why can�t he believe in his father?Why does Linda tell the boys, "Get out of here, both of you, and don�t come back!"?Why does Willy keep planting seeds when they�ve never grown before? Why does Willy think Biff will be impressed with his funeral? Why does Ben say that Biff will call Willy a fool?Why doesn�t Willy want to see Linda? Why does he think Biff is spiting him? Why does Biff show him the rubber hose? Why does Biff confront Willy and Happy?What does Biff do that elates Willy? How does Happy try to attract Willy�s attention? How does Ben influence Willy at this point?Requiem

What is a requiem? What is the purpose of this final act? To what extent is it successful?Charley says: "No man only needs a little salary." To what is he referring? What else does a man need?Explain the irony of Linda�s last speech.Digging Deeper

In what ways does Willy not fit into the definition of an average working man building a secure home for his family? In what ways does he represent Everyman? How does Willy represent more?How does Miller use tension in the family to underscore Willy�s character? How does he use the stage set to influence the audience�s perception of the tension?What is the turning point in Willy�s life? Is Willy the main character in this play or is Biff? Why? What does Biff discover about himself? How does this discovery affect his relationship with Willy? How is Biff�s self-realization dramatic? What is the climax of the play?Who suffers most from Willy�s delusions? Why?Does Linda help or hinder Willy in overlooking his small sales and his dishonest attempts to make them seem bigger? How else does she influence Willy? Discuss Linda�s remark, "Attention - attention must finally be paid to such a man!" What is the effect of the switch in Linda�s speech to this very formal statement? Why does Miller use it?How is Willy�s killing himself for the insurance money symptomatic of the way he has lived? What legacy does Willy leave his family?What is Willy�s dream? What is he searching for throughout the play? Why doesn�t he find it? Did he have a chance of fulfilling it? Did he have the wrong dream? Inappropriate attitudes? Is he a born loser, or does he stand in his own way to success? Explain.Does Biff�s antagonism cause Willy�s failure or merely intensify the failure he already experiences?How does what Biff learns in Boston influence his life? Why can�t Biff be what his father wants him to be? Why does Biff steal things? Does Biff use Willy�s behavior as an excuse for his own waywardness? What does he say to Willy about the way he wants to live and what Willy expects of him?Discuss the significance of Willy�s being a younger son with an absent father. How does that influence his behavior with his own sons? In what ways does Happy�s situation reflect Willy�s? How has Willy treated Biff? How is it different from the way he has treated Happy? Why is the athletic trophy in Willy�s room instead of in Biff�s?Compare the way Biff treats his father with the way Happy does. Why is it hard for Biff to tell Willy the truth? Why doesn�t Happy want him to?From the author�s description at the start of the play, what do we know about Linda? What can we guess? Does she know about the Woman in Boston? What makes you think she does or doesn�t? Why does she repeatedly enter with a load of wash?How does Ben affect Willy? How does he influence the events in the play?Willy is proud of putting up the living room ceiling and making a cement porch. How is the image of working with his hands carried through the play?Why does Miller let us know in the title that Willy�s death is coming? Why doesn

�t he make it a surprise? Is Willy�s death in a car more or less appropriate than a suicide using the rubber hose on the water heater would be? Why? What harm does Willy�s death do? What good?Discuss the symbolism of the two heavy sample cases and the stockings. How does Miller use the characters� names as symbols? What do they mean? What is the significance of Loman? Why Willy instead of Bill? What other symbols does Miller use and to what purpose?How are the angular shapes and the lighting described in the opening scene important to the meaning of the play? Why does Miller have the buildings closed in by other buildings? How does he use the stage setting as a statement about time? What do the leaves stand for? How is music used?What is the effect of having scenes from the past staged in addition to the current action of the play?What would you say are the false values which the play reveals? What are the true values which the play upholds?Daniel E. Schneider, in "Play of Dreams,"* states that the play is really about a man and his sons. Do you agree that the primary theme of Death of a Salesman is the conflict between father and son and between firstborn and second-born sons? Support your opinion.Some reviewers believe that the play is a criticism of capitalism and the American way of life. Discuss your reasons for agreeing or disagreeing with them. What are the social implications of the play?* included in the Viking Critical Library edition.

WRITING RESPONSESDo you agree with Willy, who believes that contacts and personality are what make a salesman a success, or with Charley, who believes that a salesman must have confidence in his product and the ability to sell it? Select an opinion to agree with, and give evidence to support your belief.Biff says, "He had the wrong dreams." What was wrong about Willy�s dreams? Was there a right dream for Willy? Is Willy ever a success? Explain. What dream could Willy have followed successfully?Who is Willy�s foil in the play? Explain how that person serves as a foil for Willy, noting specific differences between them.How do you define tragedy? According to your definition, is Death of a Salesman a tragedy? Is it a tragedy according to the classic definition? Explain how it is or isn�t.List Willy�s slogans in life. Describe how his slogans match his character.In a five-paragraph essay, identify three instances of irony in the play and explain what is ironic about each.Define your idea of success - what it is, how it can be achieved, of what value it is to the person achieving it. Write it as an editorial for your school newspaper.Write an obituary for Willy Loman that could appear in his town�s newspaper.EXPLORING FURTHERThe recent film version starring Dustin Hoffman differs from the staged version in having numerous sets. Compare the filmed version to the staged version described in your book. Does the film resemble a stage play in any way? Miller says the media of film in itself changes the play. How is this true?Read Eudora Welty�s "Death of a Traveling Salesman."* How is the isolation and loneliness of Welty�s salesman similar to Miller�s? How is it different?Read Irwin Shaw�s "The Eighty-Yard Run."* Darling�s golden moment on the practice field is the turning point in his life. How is that success similar to Biff�s? How is Biff�s life different from Darling�s?Read Walter D. Moody�s "The Know-It-All Salesman."** To what extent does Willy Loman fit Moody�s description? How have Willy�s flaws gotten in the way of his sales?Interview four or five salespeople for different companies. Find out what they t

hink is necessary for success in sales. Give an oral report on your findings.Read some biographical information about Arthur Miller. What are the subjects of his other writings? What have critics said about his importance in modern drama? In what ways are his experiences reflected in his writings?Research the signals which suicide victims usually give. What typical signals did Willy give? Could Willy have been prevented from killing himself? What resources are available in your community to help potential suicide victims?Improvise some dialogue that could have been exchanged between Biff and Bernard, or another character, which reveals something about their personality differences.Make a sketch of the stage set as you envision it from Miller�s description at the start of the play.