Parris. Goody Nurse and Giles Corey symbolize “unabated moral sanity and good will” (Bu*censored* 130). John Proctor is a basic hero who opposes evil. He was, however, indiscreet with Abigail Williams, this of course is only a fabrication by Miller. Mill
’s plays constantly
stress the value of the nuclear family, the ties of loyalty between
husband and wife, and their protectiveness towards their
children. Marriage can be destroyed… soured by nagging
sexual guilt (as the The Crucible),… it nevertheless remains
an emotional stronghold, the instinctive centre of people’s
lives, without which society itself falls in anarchy and
self-destruction (Elsom 140 – 141).
Proctor does in some ways represent an enemy to the community because he does not like the representative of the church. He doesn’t go to church regularly and did not take his sons to be baptized. Moral judgments are made by the good people and Salem’
leaders. “The courts condemn the “witches,” to be sure, and this act is the most flagrant example of over-zealous righteousness in the play” (Bu*censored* 130). The town is unmerciful in its destruction of witchcraft.
Miller originally thought of naming his play The Inside of His Head instead of Death of a Salesman. He wanted a huge head to appear and then open up so that we could see inside.
This, in dramatic terms, is expressionism, and correspondingly
the guilt of William Loman is not… a single act, subject to public
process, needing complicated grouping and plotting to make it
emerge; it is rather, the consciousness of a whole life. Thus the
expressionist method, in the final form of the play, is not a casual
experiment, but rooted in the experience. It is the drama of a
single mind, and moreover, it would be false to a more integrated
- or less disintegrating – personality (Williams 11 – 12).
Through the years expressionism has become sensitive to the experience of weakening. It can be categorized in two ways, personal and social. “The continuity from social expressionism remains clear, however, for I think in the end it is not Willy Loma
as a man, but the image of the Salesman, that predominates,” maintains Williams. The social theme in the alienation of Willy is his transition from selling goods to selling himself. He becomes the merchandise which will at some time become economicall
useless. The convincing sense of Death of a Salesman is one of false awareness, “…the conditioned attitudes in which Loman trains his sons – being broken into by real consciousness, in actual life and relationships. The expressionist method embodies
his false consciousness much more powerfully than naturalism could do” (Williams 12). Slang is used perfectly in the play because it is a result of their lifestyle.
In 1950 Death of a Salesman was attacked in America as part of a communist movement threatening the American way of life and capitalism. Stage productions and movie shows were closed because Senator Joseph McCarthy accused individuals in this field o
being communists. Actors, writers, and directors confessed to socialist principals to save their careers. Those who denied the charges found themselves unemployed (Griffin 5).
Death of a Salesman is one of the lasting plays of our time. It’s strength lies in the ability to evoke sympathy and pity rather than fear and incite anger and controversy (Trowbridge 43). Probably the most significant comment about Death of a Salesm
is not its literary achievement but the impact it has had on readers and viewers in America and overseas. Its influence continues to grow in world theatre (Jackson 36). Death of a Salesman has been described by Professor Francis Fergusson as “poetry
n the theatre” (Jackson 35).
It is a myth which projects before the spectator an image
of the protagonist’s consciousness. The playwright attempts
to reveal a tragic progression within the consciousness of the
protagonist. He employs, as the instrumentation of vision, a
complex theatre symbol: a union of gesture, word, and music;
light, color, and pattern; rhythm and movement (Jackson 35).
The most important asset that playwright Arthur Miller holds is his knowledge of the theater. He knows that plays must deal with matters of interest to the public. It is almost impossible to not be impressed with a play by Miller because they are writ
n realistically. “A play,” according to Miller, “ought to make sense to common-sense people… the only challenge worth the effort is the widest one and the tallest one, which is the people themselves” (17). In Tom F. Driver’s writings he states that,
We must remember that the only success both popular and critical Miller has had in this country is Death of a Salesman” (20). He does have weaknesses in his writings. Miller has too narrow a view of man in society. He has not investigated human natu
fully, restricting him to a specific social theory. Miller’s idea of the real world in which humans must deal is limited and how he sees life is not extensive. He does not possess the curiosity that would help him to solve problems.
One might say that he sees the issues too soon, sees them in
their preliminary form of social or even moral debate, but
not in terms of dramatic events that disturb the audience’s
idea of basic truth, which is the foundation for it’s moral attitudes.
Miller is a playwright who wants morality without bothering to
speak of a good in the light of which morality would make sense.
Man must be made to create his values and live up to them
(Driver 22).
According to Harold Bloom, Miller is not an articulate writer but he is not a bad writer either. Miller articulates, in language that can be appreciated by popular audiences, certain new dimensions of the human dilemma (Jackson 36). Both Death of a Sa
sman and The Crucible if properly staged are very effective dramas. Death of a Salesman is the best of the two, ranking as one of the half-dozen crucial American plays. There are still many other questions about the staging of the play that can not be
bsolutely answered correctly. Each person will have different ideas as to why Miller used the music the way he did, about the way he uses language, about the comic lines and how they should be read, about the order of the scenes, and about the change f
m the present to a scene from the past because of the use of a certain word and phrase (Schneider xx). “Yet its literary status seems to me somewhat questionable, which returns me to the issue of what there is in drama that can survive indifferent or ev
poor writing” (1). “Thus with all our efforts, and good intentions, we have not yet achieved a theater; and we have not, I believe, because we do not see life in historic and dramatic terms” (Kernan 2). “Our greatest novelists and poets continue not
see life in historic and dramatic terms, precisely because our literary tradition remains incurably Emersonian, and Emerson shrewdly dismissed both history and drama as European rather than American” (Bloom 2). Whether the play is a narrative or a lyr
al one the American style usually leans towards romance and musing, or something bizarre, rather than drama. “Miller, a social dramatist, keenly aware of history, fills an authentic American need, certainly for his own time” (Bloom 3). Bloom question
if it has the aesthetic dignity of tragedy, but no other American play is worthier of the term, so far (5). The author has captured a kind of suffering that is universal, probably because his hidden model for this American tragedy is an ancient Jewish
e. Willy Loman is not Jewish, but there is something about him that is and according to Bloom, “the play does belong to that undefined entity we can call Jewish literature. The only meaning of Willy Loman is the pain he suffers, and the pain his fate
uses us to suffer. His tragedy makes sense only in the Freudian world of repression, which happens also to be the world of normative Jewish memory” (5). In the Jewish environment everything has already happened and nothing can be new again because the
is a meaning in everything and everything hurts. That order known to Jewish memory is the secret strength of Death of a Salesman and the reason for its ability to endure shrewd criticism. Miller wonderfully states that Willy’s decision to die happens
hen “he is given his existence…his fatherhood, for which he has always striven and which until now he could not achieve.” Willy is really a good man who only wanted to earn and have the love of his wife and sons. Willy is dying throughout the play n
because he wants to be successful but by the common desire to be loved even though he feels he does
not deserve it. “Miller is not one of the masters of metaphor, but in Death of a Salesman he memorably achieves a pathos that none of us would be wise to dismiss” (Bloom 6).
Deciding if Death of a Salesman is or is not a tragedy is determined by the reader or viewer interpreting it. “Is Willy, for instance, a born loser, or is he a game little fighter who, having been sold a bill of goods about the American Dream, keeps s
gging it out against unequal odds” (Weales xvi)? It is often believed that tragedy only happens to people of higher status. In Barrett H. Clarks writings he states that Miller believes that the common man experiences tragedy as well as kings. Miller
els that this should “be obvious in the light of modern psychiatry, which bases its analysis upon classific formulations, such as the Oedipus and Orestes complexes, for instance, which were enacted by royal beings, but which apply to everyone in similar
motional situations”(Popkin 537). Tragedy is the result of man’s total duress to judge himself justly according to Miller (Popkin 537).
John Gassner calls Willy a “loud-mouthed dolt and emotional babe-in-the-woods… and if so, does his love for Biff somehow let him transcend that characterization” (xvi)? Willy has been called a “low-man” by Schneider, a “common man” by Eleanor Clark,
“victim” by Wiegand, a “poor, flashy, self-deceiving little man” by Ivor Brown, a ’schizophrenic’ by Hynes, and a ’social-martyrdom image’ by Raymond Williams. “Clurman is interested in him as a salesman, but Fuller, who has understandable interest in
alesmen, prefers him as Everyman.” Weales also writes that “Bierman, Hart, and Johnson find a basis conflict between the salesman and the man in him” (xvii). Willy has a complex personality and all of these things at once. It is because of all the fa
s and lies, the realities and fantasies that Willy has the potential to actually kill himself. He does not realize whether he is condemning or defending himself when he speaks (Weales xvii).
Many readers feel that the play is about Biff and that it is a play about a son’s troubles with his father. “Willy’s recognition of Biff’s love does not alter his basic self-delusion about success, the audiences attention, sympathy, concern turn to Bi
, who… finds his ‘true self,’ finds understanding, pushing Willy out of the spotlight” (Clurman and Gassner xvii). Schneider states that
For me, the Requiem of the play is ironic, the gathering
of people who never understand Willy at all, and how
much more effective it would be if Biff’s ‘I know who I
am, kid,’ were taken as still another sample of Loman
self-delusion, the true legacy (the insurance being the false) of Willy (xviii).
Dillingham believes that Linda adds to Willy’s plight, but according to T.C. Worsley Linda is the perfect wife. Willy’s wife interacts with all the people in his life. She cares for their children Happy and Biff. She washes and mends the clothing and
rries about paying bills. She loves and admires Willy (Griffin 49). Most of the critics believe that Linda is the character that the audience should admire. Robert Garland feels that she is “the one character in the play who could see clearly what wa
going to happen. There is no doubt about what that means in the context of the play. It is not necessary to decide, that Linda is the central character in ‘Salesman,’ but it is important to decide just what her function is in the play” (xix). Accordi
to Schneider the lesser characters should not be ignored. Of importance is Happy’s feeling of guilt because he hates his older brother, Biff. It is questionable whether Charley, Bernard, Howard, or Ben are acceptable character or stereotypes. “If the
lay belongs, as Gassner says it does, in the tradition of American realism, then those characters may stand out as unreal, stock. If, however, Miller’s borrowing of expressionistic techniques allows him to use a type character when he needs one to make
point, they may be functioning legitimately within a particular scene” (Schneider xix).
Willy is a victim of ignorance. Willy “the protagonist is still only a man to whom things happen, who is not capable of even a belated understanding, and who is seen in a vocational and technological rather than a broadly human context” (Heilman 143).
nd according to Heilman, Miller “wrote pathetic drama, the history of an undivided character experiencing pitiable obsolescence” (160). Miller tracks suffering to the ancient cause, ignorance and he follows Loman’s progress from ignorance, suffering, t
enlightenment. “As in Classic tragedy, the price of this ‘Odyssey’ is death, but, through his personal sacrifice, the protagonist redeems his house, and promises to his posterity yet another chance.” Loman’s suicide, as in traditional tragedy, is a con
adiction to his victory over the circumstances (Jackson 35).
Arthur Miller structured Death of a Salesman to show Willy Loman’s pleasures, dreams, and hopes of the past. Thus the central conflict of the play is Willy’s inability to differentiate between reality and illusion. In the opening of the play numerous
otifs are presented. The first being the melody of a flute which suggests a distant, faraway fantasy: Willy’s dream world. This is playing in the background as Willy enters carrying his burdensome traveling suitcases. He has been a traveling salesma
for the Wagner Company for thirty-four years. Willy left that morning for a trip and has already returned. He tells his wife Linda that he opened the windshield of the car to let the warm air in and was quietly driving along when he found himself drea
ng. Later when Linda suggests taking a ride in the country on Sunday with the windshield open, he realizes that the windshields don’t open on new cars and he was remembering the 1928 Chevy, alluding to his life being an illusion. Linda would like Will
to work in New York so he would not have to travel, but he refuses as he is, “vital to New England.” This is another illusory motif; the reality is in fact that Willy is a hindrance to the company. He tells Linda he is, “vital to New England,” to cove
up his inability to get a position in New York. Willy asks Linda about his boys, Biff and Happy, who are home for the first time in years. He can not understand why Biff, thirty-four years old, can not find a job and keep it. After all, Biff possesse
so much, “personal attractiveness,” yet another motif. To Willy a person must not be liked, but well-liked. When a person is well-liked the entire world opens up for him, as it did for David Singleman, a salesman who was so loved and respected that he
ent to a town, picked up a phone, and placed order after order. When David Singleman died at the age of eighty-four buyers and sellers everywhere attended his funeral, but that was a time when selling depended on the salesman’s personality and not the
oduct. Willy sees all the, “personal attractiveness,” in Biff and expects him to have a successful career. Willy complains he feels all cramped and, “boxed-in.” The bricks and windows in the city make him feel too closed in and nothing grows anymore.
e remembers a good time in his life when the boys were young and flowers were growing in the backyard, but now the outside forces are smothering him and he makes useless attempts to plant things in the backyard.
The focus switches from Billy to the two boys talking up in their bedroom. Biff tells Happy what he has done in the last fourteen years and the reason he does not keep a job is because when spring rolls around he feels he has to move on to another pla
. Happy talks about having an apartment, a car, and plenty of girls – all the things he has ever wanted – but he is still lonely. This is because he has never bothered to find out what he really wants. Biff says men built like them are meant to work
tside in the open air and they should meet a steady girl to marry. Biff wonders if a man, Bill Oliver, would remember him. He had stolen a carton of basketballs once, but Happy assures Biff that he was well-liked by Oliver, a philosophy they learned f
m their father. Downstairs, the boys can hear their father talking to himself and the focus is brought back down to Willy who is reminiscing a time in 1928 when he came home from a trip and the two boys were polishing the car.