he play.
“Death of a Salesman illustrated the ruin of a family because the father was a failure. Domestic happiness was shown to depend, not just on personal relationship, but on the way in which men and women coped with the injustices of society” (Elsom 139).
Throughout the play we have seen Willy’s guilt when Linda mends her stockings, we have heard the laughing of another woman, and we have heard Biff call his father a fake. While Willy was in the bathroom the two boys left with the girls. This next flashb
k is the climatic failure in Willy’s relationship with his son Biff. The flashback brings us to Willy’s hotel room in Boston. Biff knocks on the door continuously and Willy tells the woman to hide in the bathroom. Willy opens the door and Biff tells
m that he has flunked math. Biff showed Willy the imitation he gave in front of the class before being caught by the teacher. They both laughed. The woman hears the laughter and comes out. Willy gets her out of the room as quick as possible and she
mands the stockings Willy promised her. Biff accuses Willy of being a liar, a fake, and giving away “Mama’s stockings.”
Suddenly Stanley, the waiter at the restaurant, interrupts Willy’s flashback and tells him that Happy and Biff have left with the girls. Willy asks if there is a seed store nearby. Now that his world has closed in on him he needs to leave something ta
ible behind.
Biff and Happy come home with flowers for Linda. She throws them on the floor and yells at her sons for treating their own father worse than a stranger. Happy begins to lie, saying that they had a good time, but Biff stops him and agrees with his mot
r. Biff hears a noise outside and Linda tells him that Willy is planting his garden. Now we see Willy outside talking to Ben he thinks Biff has been spiting him all of his life and that if Biff sees the number of people at Willy’s funeral then he will
ave respect for him. At the same time, Biff will have $20,000.00 in his pocket. With that sum he could truly be magnificent. Willy’s talking to Ben has convinced himself that he has finished his life. So rather than, “stand here the rest of my life
nging up a zero,” he decides he will commit suicide. Biff comes out to Willy to let him know he is leaving for good and to ask for help to tell Linda. Willy refuses and warns Biff that spite will destroy him. Willy wants to talk about Oliver, but Bi
has finally connected his thefts with Willy’s philosophy of being well-liked. Biff becomes angry and confronts Willy with the rubber hose. He tells Willy that they should tell the truth. He says that he has stolen himself out “of every good job sinc
high school.” Biff also tells Willy, “You blew me so full of hot air I can never stand taking orders from anybody.” Biff has come to realize that his father is just a, “hard-working drummer,” and he sees that he is, “nothing! I’m nothing.” Biff trie
to get Willy to “take that phony dream and burn it before something happens.” Biff is trying to make Willy face reality, but ironically Biff’s attempt only convinces Willy that his dreams are right. Biff becomes so infuriated that he suddenly breaks d
n and cries, asking Willy to burn his world of illusions. This makes Willy feel he is needed by Biff and motivates him to commit suicide because now he feels he will be leaving something for Biff. Willy was amazed that Biff still loves him and doesn’t
ate or want to spite him. Willy says, “Isn’t that a remarkable thing.” Ben reappears and after Happy and Linda go to bed Ben reminds Willy that its, “Time William, time.” With life closing in around him, Willy gets into his car and enters the jungle o
death. Miller wonderfully states that Willy’s decision to die happens when “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
ve the love of his wife and sons. Willy is dying throughout the play not 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 he memorably
chieves a pathos that none of us would be wise to reject (Bloom 6).
Willy’s life has been a struggle to get something paid for before it is all used up. He had finally succeeded in paying for his house before it was all used up, the only problem is his life is all used up.
As a general rule, to which there may be exceptions unknown
to me, think the tragic feeling is evoked in us when we are in the
presence of a character who is ready to lay down his life, if need
by, to secure one thing – his sense of personal dignity. From
Orestes to Hamlet. Medea to Macbeth, the underlying
struggle is that of the individual attempting to gain his
‘rightful’ position in society… Tragedy, then, is the consequence
of a man’s total compulsion to evaluate himself justly… His
‘tragic flaw,’ a failing that is not peculiar to grand or elevated
characters. Nor is it necessarily a weakness… his inherent
unwillingness to remain passive in the face of what he conceives
to be a challenge to his dignity, his image of his rightful status…
those who act against the scheme of things that degrades them,
and in the process of action everything we have accepted out
of fear of insensitivity or ignorance is shaken before us and
examined, and from this total onslaught by an individual against
the seemingly stable cosmos surrounding us – from this total
examination of the ‘unchangeable’ environment – comes the
terror and the fear that is classically associated with tragedy
(Levin 171).
A few days later Charley, Linda, and the boys went to Willy’s funeral. They were the only ones there; no sellers, no buyers, not even Howard came to pay their respects. This is the final proof that Willy was not well-liked, his dreams were phony, and
is whole life was one big illusion. Biff comments on Willy having all the wrong dreams, but Charley says a salesman has to dream. This shows Biff now has a firmer grasp on reality, but Happy is as lost in his world of dreams as Willy was. While the ot
rs walk away Linda remains at the grave a few minutes. She tells Willy that she made the last payment on the house that day, but now there is no one to live there. This is ironic because early in the play Linda told Willy the whole house smelled of sh
ing lotion after the boys had left. Willy says, “Figure it out. Work a lifetime to pay off a house. You finally own it, and there’s nobody to live in it.” For Willy, death was an escape from feeling boxed-in by the city and by the people around him,
ut now, ironically, Willy is boxed-in by his grave. The play closes with a melody of a flute.
Miller’s main problem in his writing is the conflict of themes. It is hard to determine whether his play is about politics or sex. If the important scene in Death of a Salesman is the one with the tape recorder then it is political, however, if it is
bout sex then the important scene is the one in the Boston hotel. John Mander and Eric Bentley agree with this criticism. They also agree that The Crucible may not be about McCarthy but about love in the seventeenth century (Overland 52). “More sympa
etic critics find that the plays successfully embody the author’s intentions of dramatizing a synthesis of the two kinds of motivation, Edward Murry, for instance, has made the same observations as have Bentley and Mander, but in his view the difficulty
f branding Miller wither a ’social’ or a ‘psychological’ dramatist points to a strength rather than to a flaw in his work: ‘At his best, Miller has avoided the extremes of clinical psychiatric case studies on the one hand and mere sociological reports
the other… he has indicated…. how the dramatist might maintain in delicate balance both personal and social motivation’” (Overland 52). The hotel room scene has an enormous impact that it has a tendency to diminish the other scenes of Willy’s dile
a. “If the play is read, if one treats it as one would a novel, balance is restored and a good case may be made for a successful synthesis of ‘psychological’ or ’social’ motivation as argued, for instance, by Edward Murray” (Overland 55).
In Death of a Salesman we can see the influences by O’Neill on Miller’s work. “The disintegrating protagonist might also have come from Tennessee Williams, though in Williams’ hands Willy Loman would have had a flamboyant self-destructiveness rather t
n an unchangeable habit of knocking his head against a wall of unapprehended actuality. But Death of a Salesman does not represent the mature Miller. He became more independent, more forceful, and more deeply imaginative in The Crucible (1953)” (Heilm
142). Lee Fischer works are “thematically and technically influenced by Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman,” reflects Jens Kistrup (855).
In Death of a Salesman and The Crucible Miller seems to demonstrate a superiority to other American dramatists in the representative interpretation of universal dimensions of accumulated experience. He tries to investigate the reasons that men are res
nsible for their actions. Death of a Salesman and The Crucible is an investigation of man’s existence. Death of a Salesman seems to mimic classic tragedy mainly in its acceptance of the principle of the responsibility of the individual. Like other co
emporary genre, the protagonist is the common man. “Perhaps of greater importance is the fact that it removes the ground of the tragic conflict from outer event to inner consciousness” (Jackson 28 – 31). Willy Loman and John Proctor exhibit Miller’s c
cept of the tragic hero. Both of them struggling to maintain the image they have of themselves. Miller maintains that this is the prime criterion of tragedy (Nicoll 798). Loman’s suicide, as in traditional tragedy, is a contradiction to his victory o
r the circumstances. “It is an act of love, intended to redeem his house. Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman is, perhaps, to this time, the most mature example of a myth of contemporary life” (Jackson 35).
Miller’s creative genius has made an impact on the world of drama for years to come. Many upcoming characters will be influenced by the dramatic roles of Willy Loman and John Proctor. These two plays bring a succession of conflicts to a dramatic end:
having each man die with dignity.
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