America has long been known as a land of opportunity, a place of great possibility, as the phrase "The American Dream” indicates. In Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, we follow Willy Loman as he reviews a life marked by the desperate pursuit of a dream of success. 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. Through reading this classic drama, we will investigate both what is truthful and what is illusory in the American Dream. We will also contextualize this play within mid-century social crises of value, politics and economics.
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.
Miller famously stated this about the play: “I wished to create a form which, in itself as a form, would literally be the process of Willy Loman’s way of mind.” How does he do this?
Below note your observations about the play's structure, staging, and content. What questions do you have as you are reading the opening scene? (Try to read through the whole play, but focus your comments below on the first act.)
One aspect of the play that i have found very interesting is the flute music. I was at first puzzled as to why flute music would be randomly playing, but later i realized that it fits perfectly with the psychological expressionism of Willy, present throughout the rest of the play. It later reveals that Willy's father used to make and sell flutes; this explains a lot. Willy has lived his entire life under the shadow of his father. while his brother found wealth and adventure, Willy was stuck in his father's profession. The flute seems to me to be the constant reminder in Willy's life that he will never find success in his job, never be able to truly support his family, and must escape the way his father did. Although there are probably many uses for the flute music in the play, i found this to explain it somewhat.
ReplyDeleteOne of the aspects of "Death of a Salesman" that has most interested me was the way the stage was set for the house, with the characters adhering or observing the "imaginary wall-lines" except when breaking the boundaries to leave. This, that is, the strict observance of the unseen except for when it stands in the way, seems to reinforce the action and plot of the play itself. Willy Loman is caught up within these "imaginary wall-lines." Only, these "wall-lines" are within his mind and govern his every action and thought. He has built within his mind a mansion that is furnished in gilt gold, this mansion is the life that he creates for himself- one which, in reality, he cannot fill because he is not that man. Charley at the end of the play states it very well when he says that "He's a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine." Willy, among so much else, was a dreamer and lost the wall-lines that kept him to himself becuase he was unable to be satisfied with the life he had, and so re-created his own life to fit the lines he wish he had.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Whitney about the focus on spatiality in the play; I noticed that the claustrophobia and lack of freedom of apartments is sort of a recurring sub-theme. The modern apartment complex evolved historically from the cheap, slummy worker's housing of the industrial revolution... it's the kind of space that doesn't square well with the American Dream of owning a spacious, individual home. In fact, Willy dreams aloud about how -- once they finally have enough money -- they'll have a nice house out in the country with a luxurious garden, etc. Late in the play we hear Willy yelling "They boxed in the whole goddamn neighborhood."
ReplyDeleteThe whole time I was reading this I kept thinking about the oscillating psychological states Willy goes through. I couldn't help thinking about Don Quixote, whose humorous mental problem was holding fast to delusive idealism in the face of a reality that continually contradicted it. This is also shockingly similar to the psychological situation of Blanche in Streetcar -- idealism carried to the point of madness... lying to oneself and others about the truth of one's situation. Willy is forever going abruptly from being overpowered by the chimera of the American Dream to the depressing reality of his life (and the life of his children) in America. Unlike with Don Quixote, the effects of idealism here are not at all funny. They are almost unbearably tragic. A more recent narrative that traces out the schizophrenic split at the heart of the American Dream is the movie (originally a book) Requiem For a Dream...
For me, the most tragic part of this tragic situation was the way that Linda, Willy's wife, believed in, or was at least intoxicated (Ah, the terrible powers of love...) by the ideal Willy paints of himself. She has faith in the way he sees himself. She carries this faith to the point where she's willing to hate her sons for their sheer existential presence, simply because it flies in the face of the ideal Willy has painted for his family. Perhaps we always love a sort of phantom-image of a person and never the person in reality... this, at least, seems to be the case with Linda and Willy -- would her love still be possible if she could see how ridiculous her husband was 'in reality'? Probably not. It is illuminating then that she no longer seems to recognize him in death and can't make herself cry at his funeral...
Death of a Salesman has always been my favorite play, hands down. However, re-reading it and watching the University production last summer has me a little afraid.
ReplyDeleteIt's my belief that Arthur Miller wanted the play to be exactly how it's staged, withing Willy's own mind, but as I get older and can relate to his thought process and see his own actions and consequences, I find myself being trapped in Willy's thoughts, which I'm certain is what Arthur Miller wanted the entire time.
My thought process is simple: What is the American Dream? Are we not meeting Willy's standards? By my description, a 20-something college kid who will be lucky if she has a job upon graduation, am I something Willy wouldn't respect? Maybe the American Dream is dead, and we're all just trying to get by, which is what Willy learns in some messed up sort of way. And what of the people around us, are they standing up for their own virtue when in reality they are just cheating on their wife/stealing money from their job/lying to us all?
It's like a bad soap opera, instead of as the world turns it's, A day closer to the death of a salesman *Que cheesy music*....
I was thinking about adaptation today in class and am wondering what you all think about to what lengths one should go to adapting to change. Willy is too proud to adapt at all, where Charley seems as if he's completely adapted and Howard who knows nothing other than neo-business.
ReplyDeleteIf a person doesn't adapt at all (Willy), he'll perish both in business and life (you can't take care of yourself and family if you don't have a job). If you adapt too much, you risk losing all your previous values (some of Willy's beliefs about business could actually be admirable). Charley seems to be a good balance between the two. He's successful, yet he has the heart and pity to offer Willy a job (something that would probably be detrimental to his business). Howard is just from another generation with different business practices. He knows nothing about favors.
When should you adapt, and when should you rebel against the way things become?
After reading the first act, it seems as though their family is in a vicious cycle. Linda, though she is supportive and understanding of her husband, seems to be enabling Willy’s destructive behavior. Though Willy’s concerns and resistance to change is normal, his attempts at suicide seem like a serious matter that the family should be concerned with and try to help him. Also, the parent’s relationship with Happy and Biff seems a little weird to me. When I think about other generations and how they were raised, I don’t think of parents that communicate their issues to their children. It seems like more of a modern idea, not that it even really happens now. But money issues and suicide just doesn’t seem like a topic to talk about, or at least I wouldn’t if I had kids.
ReplyDeleteAs far as adaptation goes, I think Willy should try to adapt. There’s nothing wrong with using his previous values in a society that is progressing. You can see it sometimes in society now, the random business person who is actually honest and nice rather than the typical annoyed employee who doesn’t care and is just punching their time card. Though it probably isn’t the most common thing, there is nothing wrong with having character in a business world. I agree that Charley is a good example of someone who balances this. I don’t think the question so much is when to adapt and when to rebel, but rather how to have a balance of both. Nothing says everything has to be done the old or new way. I’m sure there are some older people out there that do things how they were taught to, where now we rely on computers, calculators, and the internet for even simple answers we should probably know.
A thing that I noticed about the play was the intermixing of the present day plot and the past. It seems a little confusing at first and really throughout the play, but by doing this it helps to show the confusion in Willy's mind. I also think that actually watching the play would help to clear up this confusion. Also just reading the lighting notes I found that they would be pretty cool to see because I think they convey mood better than anything in the play.
ReplyDeleteJust for kicks I have to add one thing. I don't feel sorry for Willy at all. One cannot blame capitalism or society for his troubles because the whole country has to work with these things and others are managing to do it (Charley). The problems that Biff and Happy have, I think, stem directly from Willy and how he brought them up with lies and improper discipline. So Willy gets no sympathy from me.
Alex
While I agree with what everyone has said so far, I think one think yet mentioned that really resonated with me upon reading the first act was Willy’s habit of contradiction. In the first scene, Willy calls Biff a lazy bum and divulges his fears that his 34 year old son has wasted his life. But later Willy contradicts himself and praises Biff saying he is anything but lazy. He does this act of contradiction several times throughout the play. I think Miller created this fault in Willy for multiple reasons. One, it shows Willy’s mental unsteadiness to the reader. He’s not able to have one straight affirmative thought but rather he’s constantly unsure of himself. Two, it parallels Willy’s mind in the sense that he is living in two worlds. One a fantasy, the other reality. By saying the truth and then contradicting himself by speaking a lie, Willy is creating his own truth, his own reality. Free from the ugliness of his actual life. This is very reminiscent of Blanche in Streetcar. The third and final reason Miller gives Willy his contradicting nature is to also parallel the American Dream, which in essence is one big, giant contradiction. It’s a promise that will never come true, a “reality” that is completely false and unobtainable to most everyone. The American Dream says one thing, and then delivers another.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with Alex. Willy is quite an annoying character to me. I don't think anyone or anything is to blame but himself. I feel that the accumulation of his life is directly the result of his decisions, not society, not circumstances. Just him. His character creates no sympathy from me as harsh as that is.
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting that Ben says, “The jungle is dark but full of diamonds” (2389). This seems to be the overall meaning of the play. Though life and careers may be hard, even in darkness you can find a diamond. I also don’t really get why Willy killed himself. I mean things really weren’t that bad. Sure, a few obstacles to overcome, but there’s worse situations to be in. I guess overall I didn’t really feel bad for any of the characters in the end. Everything could have been prevented had they communicated in a better way.
ReplyDeleteI'm bothered by everyone's lack of sympathy for Willy. He is delusional and pathetic. He is so insecure and desperate for approval that he creates myths about his salesmanship. There is a level of weakness that must be pitied in someone who feels the need exaggerate to his own children to gain their love and respect. Certainly this is bad parenting, as we see in personality flaws of his children, but the shifting landscape of the American economy has ripped the identity as a "salesman" away from Willy and left him with no tangible self-worth in the form of social and economic capital. Yes, he sucks as a parent and can't do his job well enough to make basic payments, but should we really find zero sympathy for a man who clearly loves his children, vehemently hopes for their success, but lacks the ability to and consequently suffers psychological affliction?
ReplyDeleteAnywho, my interest in the first act is the seeming absence of non-passive femininity created by Miller. Women are either the topic of Happy's crude remarks or the cushion for Willy, Biff, or Happy when they mentally implode. But I wonder if Linda plays a more influential role than she appears? Has she fed Willy's delusions or has she mitigated them by supporting him despite his failures? And does a great deal of Willy's insecurity owe to the fact that he cannot provide for his wife, despite never making that concern explicit? As we later find out in act two, Willy's resistance to Linda mending her stockings is rooted in a large web of guilt, both for not making enough money to replace her worn stockings and for cheating on her while on the road. In this sense, I see Linda as passive but highly influential to the plot development. She also functions as a very subtle voice of reason, controlling the testosterone in her house and often nudging arguments towards resolution. All of the sympathy and resolutions of the play began with suggestions from Linda.
Great comments! Keep it up!
ReplyDeleteMaybe a reflection of the work I took part in when we went out to the greek theater, but I am interested in the character of Uncle Ben, and actually focused on him during my readings.
ReplyDeleteWhere does he really come from? he arrives through the walls since it is a kind of flashback.. but other people can see him too (unless I completely misunderstood).
Is he a liar? I am not certain of his credibility: Willy keeps making up tales of how wonderful it can be to be a salesman etc, and he pulls out quite a few lies too (most notably when Biff finds out that he is cheating on his wife) and since Ben is his model, maybe it is a reflection? Ben is a liar as well and he never really went into the jungle?
Ben is also a great engine... to make Willy look pathetic: When Ben comes and ask Willy to come with him to Alaska to make money, Willy goes "Oh yes, I have to ask Linda" and so he does, and she answers "No you can't, you are doing well enough here"... and he is convinced by Linda, then Ben says something else, convincing willy again, which Linda counters, making Willy's conviction switch AGAIN. How mathetic is that... he is the "Man", the successful but bored man who brings money home etc, he is the one taking decisions.. yet his Uncle comes and tell him to do something, he directly thinks it is a good idea without thinking about it by himself, he has to wait for Linda to do it for him.
I think I can say in this light that Ben and Linda are my favorite characters: they are not very exploited, but they are powerful in their own way.
Benjamin Bertrand
I found this play very interesting and applicable to life today. For instance, sometimes families are so busy with their own lives that they neglect to realize when someone is really, really sick. This is a construct from society. Willy may have been able to have been saved had he not worked so hard trying at a job that he didn't even really enjoy. So we were asked in class yesterday, who do we sympathize with? I sympathize with Willy. It's very easy to work at a dead-end job for years and not even realize how unhappy it makes you. I worked at a company for eight years and I had to quit or be stuck there for the rest of my life. I think Miller wanted us to see that although Willy wasn't perfect, neither are any of us. He was obviously crying out for help and nobody seemed to even want to help him.
ReplyDeleteLinda drove me crazy, too. She acted like she was trying to help the situation but then really made it worse (in my opinion). I felt bad for Willy because she seemed to always be bringing up the bills, and money issues when it was clear he just needed a break from it all. Regardless, I ended up being angry at the play because of how it ends. Miller may have been implying that instead of being so nonchalant about people's problems, maybe we should try more to help.
I completely sympathize with Biff. Throughout the play, Biff is pegged as a roamer, a bum, a transient, etc... Now, I think it would be super cool to travel the country, trying to find the right lifestyle for myself, but in Death of a Salesman, this search for identity is deemed worthless, or at least second best to having a steady career. All of the characters, even his direct family, serve to antagonize this life search that Biff is involved with. Willy discredits anything he has done since high school, his mother only wants him to get a job to please Willy, and Happy doesnt necessarily take one side or the other, but he feeds the flames from both sides of the fence. I really think this is a poke in the ribs at the state of our society at the time the play was written, where urban settled life has become dominant over the rural, sequestered lifestyle.
ReplyDeleteTyler Sudderth
The appearance of Ben when the others could see him was just one of Willy's flashbacks, and when no one else could see him it was a hallucination.
ReplyDeleteI sympathize with Willy about as far as I can throw him. It's not like people can control losing their mind but if he wasn't so full of guilt because of what he did behind his wife's back that ended up hurting Biff he wouldn't have had the guilt that broke him in the first place.
Happy was a character that stuck out to me because I felt like in all the flashbacks Willy was more enamored with Biff than Happy, and sort-of ignored Happy every time they interacted. Then, after Biff left, Happy became this womanizing proud figure that Biff had been, to make his father proud of him and get some of his attention back it seems. While Biff was broken Happy took on his persona. Anyway, those are my thoughts.
Whitni Hudspeth