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CHAPTER – III
DEDICATION AND SACRIFICE IN
DEATH OF A SALESMAN
Miller’s plays reveal his deep concern for ordinary people and their values. He
is concerned with larger issues, values, morality and justice. Though Miller started
writing in 1930, he totally differs from his contemporaries in many aspects. His
passionate concern is that attention must be paid to the aspiration, worries and
failures of all men especially, of the little man who is the representative of the society.
According to Miller, truth, courage, responsibility and faith must be the central values
of men. Death of a Salesman is a play which centres round the problems of an
ordinary common man of the society.
It was in Broadway, on February 10, 1949, that Death of a Salesman was first
produced. It was excitingly staged by Elia Kazan and given memorable performances
by Mildred Dunnock, Arthur Kennedy and the excellent Lee J. Cobb as Willy Loman.
To many spectators, the play seemed to be the most meaningful and moving
statement made about the American life upon the stage in a great many years. Since
then to the people who have seen the play, the vision of Willy Loman has been
overpowering, shattering and unforgettable. It is generally considered as Miller’s
masterpiece.
In Death of a Salesman, Miller has managed to rise above the ordinary flat-
lands of moralization and thesis drama. This play is a consummation of virtually
everything attempted by that part of the theatre which has specialized in awareness
and criticism of social realities. It is the climax of all efforts since the 1930’s to
observe the American scene and trace, as well as evaluate its effect on character and
personal life. Miller’s achievement lies in bridging successfully, the gulf between a
social situation and human drama. The elements in this play are so well fused that the
one is the other. The play succeeds as a character drama and an exceptionally good
example of so-called ‘middle-class tragedy’. It follows the fate and final reckoning of
a commonplace man in a commonplace environment.
Miller’s intention was to write a monodrama – a play called The Inside of his
Head – which would re-create a man’s entire life in terms of past and present – by
means of his recollections at a particular point of self-reevaluation, late in life. Death
of a Salesman is a drama of man’s journey into himself. It is a man’s emotional
recapitulation of the experiences that have shaped him and his values.
The plot in Death of a Salesman delineates the hero and arranges the events of
action. Americans consider success as a requirement of life and every free citizen;
irrespective of his being genius or mediocre, must treat it as his ideal towards which
he should constantly strive. So Willy’s search for success is the central idea of the
play.
Death of a Salesman depicts the life of Willy Loman, a traveling salesman,
aspiring for things beyond his reach. He not only lives in a world of illusions, but also
draws his family into it. The competitive spirit, the rat race of modern life is regarded
as something disgusting by Willy. His sons not only fail to live up to his expectations
but also they insult and blame him for their failures. The personal responsibility of
the individual to the society and the society failing the individual is the theme of this
play. Miller, by bringing the downfall of Willy, strikes at the very roots of the modern
society.
Willy Loman is a modern everyman as Miller himself once remarked. Being a
man of ideals, he is disappointed to find that his ideals are not recognized by the
larger world in which he lives. His dreams (which occupy half of the play), destroy
him and he dies in order to turn them into reality. His futile philosophy is opposed by
three main alternatives; the pioneering adventurous nature of Ben, the sensible
practicality of Charlie and the loyalty of Linda.
In Death of a Salesman, Miller employs new techniques of style, in order to
depict the inner reality of his characters. The subtitle, Certain Private Conversations
in Two acts and a Requiem, indicates that a good part of action in the play is intended
to be internal. Miller’s attempt is to give a glimpse into the mind of the central
character. Hence the psychological aspects of human behaviour are more in
prominence. The setting and representation of the action of this play, therefore,
represent a new approach adopted by the playwright. At the same time, Miller is still
concerned with the theme of man being a victim of the evils of a commercial society.
However the individual is humanized in detail and depth. The ultimate feeling is that
although in many respects man is a victim of society, he himself may be a weak
individual who is partially responsible for his fate.
The play Death of a Salesman is studied as a profoundly symbolic criticism of
the worship of material success. Willy Loman, a rounded and psychologically
motivated individual as well as a familiar American Babbitt embodies the stupidity,
immorality, self-delusion and failure of middle class values. He is not a man who has
a definite aim in life or one who strives desperately to achieve his goal. He is a man
who has accepted an ideal shaped for him and forced on him, by the making of his
society. His love for his delinquent sons has made him, in John Gassner’s apt phrase,
“a King Lear in mufti”
(John Gassner 102)
In the race of the survival of the fittest, Willy Loman is unable to keep pace
with the ‘high man’ of the American commercial civilization and hence dies
unnoticed. He is often seen as a deluded victim rather than as a dear sighted heroic
challenger. As such, Willy Loman is a much more interesting victim of the American
success myth because when he dies, he still embraces the dream that is killing him.
Willy has little choice than to conform and be destroyed in the process. Choudhuri, a
critic, in his book, An Outsider’s View, says:
Willy Loman’s artificial optimism, his innocent acceptance
of modern business morality, his illusion of success, his
bewilderment over a failure and his final collapse neatly sum up
the possible life history of an American little man who lives a kind
of dual existence in the world of his dreams and in the world of
reality
(Choudhuri 68)
The play centres round Willy Loman, a traveling salesman for Wagner
Company for thirty-four years. He likes to think of himself as being indispensable to
the company, especially in the New England territory which was his beat. Many years
ago, Willy had met another traveling salesman Dave Singleton who would go into
town, check into a hotel and do all his business over the phone. When he died, people
from all over his territory came to attend his funeral.
When the play opens, Willy has just come back from New England, tired and
exhausted. He tells his wife Linda that he can no longer concentrate on his driving.
He also asks about his son Biff who has just come home after having been away for
quite a long time. It is after fourteen years that Biff has returned home. He and his
brother Happy try to think of some job that he could do and settle down in New York.
Biff thinks that he could ask Bill Oliver with whom he had worked, some years ago,
for a loan of ten thousand dollars, with which he could start a business. Willy says
confidently that his two sons could conquer the world. He also says that the important
thing in life is ‘to be liked’ and ‘to have personal attractiveness’. Willy Loman’s
experience in his material ambition reflects the illusion which is the product of a
society based on commercial morality. The original American dream is the promise of
a land of freedom with opportunity and equality for all. Ever since the civil war, the
American dream has become distorted to the dream of business success.
The central theme of Death of a Salesman is derived from an explanation of a
particular aspect of culture, the twentieth century culture in which illusions take the
place of dreams and fantasy substitutes reality. This phenomenon, ignorance of reality
or non-recognition of facts, has been a potent source of European theatre since the
time of Greeks; Loman’s whole life has been shaped by his commitment to success
ideology.
Arthur Miller has emphatically portrayed in this play Death of a Salesman, that
illusions are the product of a society based on commercial morality. But he has
carefully focused our attention more on the sorrow and humiliation of Willy Loman
that on the denunciation of a social system. However in condemning Willy Loman to
die by his own hand, Miller is actually condemning the economic system that
fashioned his end. Hence the play has become ‘a signal event’ in the theatre and has
given a true dramatic intensity to the theatre of ideas.
In Death of a Salesman, the entire action takes place in one day, that is, the last
day of Willy Loman’s life. But a larger portion of this action is devoted to the
projections of Willy’s memory. They depict various incidents and developments of
Willy’s past so that the background story gradually unfolds itself on the stage along
with the happenings of the last day. Thus a major part of the play consists of action in
retrospect. In his ‘Introduction’ to Collected Plays, Miller describes this technique as
“the form of confession… now speaking of what happened, then suddenly following
some connection to a time twenty years ago”. (Introduction to Collected Plays 32)
The goal of a salesman is to make a deal, earn profit – accumulation of profit
being an unquestioned end in itself. Willy Loman is a devout believer in this concept
of salesmanship which has brought about a rat race competition.
Willy: …. Because the man who makes an appearance in the
Business world, the man who creates personal interest is a man
who gets ahead. Be liked and you will never want.
(DOS 145)
In another occasion Willy remarks:
Willy:…. The wonder of this country is that a man can end with
Diamonds here on basis of his being liked.
(DOS 185)
In the words of Ronald Hayman in his book on ‘Arthur Miller’:
Willy’s faith in magic of personal attractiveness as a way to
success carries him beyond cause and effect to necessity.
(Ronald Hayman 40)
Willy’s obsession with ‘personal attractiveness’ is revealed when he speaks to
Linda. He says:
Willy: Biff Loman is lost. In the greatest country in the
world a young man with such personal attractiveness gets lost.
(DOS 50)
He has a firm belief that success falls inevitably on the man with the right
smile, the most charm – the man who is not just liked but “well liked”. Gerald Weales
observes this point in his critical essay, Arthur Miller: Man and his Image:
Nothing is more important to Willy Loman than his family;
but his main idea in bringing up his sons is to teach them to cash
in on their personal attractiveness – to equip them in effect, for
successful careers in selling.
(Gerald Weales 70)
Willy’s dialogue with his children substantiates this:
Willy: Bernard is not well liked, is he?
Biff: He’s liked, but he’s not well-liked
Happy: That’s right pop.
Willy: That’s just what I mean… You’re
both built like Adonises.
(DOS 146)
He tells Biff that his brother Ben always liked him and also that he should be
aware of how much personal attractiveness he had.
The next day Willy Loman plans to take his sons out for a dinner. He is so
pleased with himself that he decides to ask Howard Wagner, the owner of the firm
with whom he worked, for a job based in New York. Wagner tells him that there is no
vacancy in New York and besides that he could no longer represent the firm in New
England because he was doing harm to the company. Willy’s fortunes change
drastically: he is now without a job and has to go to an old friend, Charley to borrow
money to pay his insurance premium. It is now understood that Willy had been
borrowing fifty dollars a week from Charley and then pretending that this amount
was his salary. Charley offers Willy a job in New York but he says that he could not
work for him. Willy now leaves to meet his sons.
Biff and Happy meet in a restaurant. Biff tells his brother that he had been
living under an illusion all these years and that he never held a regular job and he
wanted to tell everyone of the state he was in; especially his father who still thinks
that he was capable of great things. When Willy arrives, he tells his sons that he had
been fired and refuses to listen to Biff’s story. Willy thinks that Biff has an
appointment the next day and when he learns that there was no such thing, he gets
angry. Biff and Happy leave the restaurant and Willy is left alone.
When Biff comes home at night, he finds his father planting seeds in the
garden and talking to his brother, Ben. But this is just an illusion because Willy had
not seen his brother at all for years and Ben had actually died before nine months.
Biff tells his father that it would be best that they part company because he was no
longer a great leader of men but a simple ordinary person. But Willy refuses to
accept this and says that he would become a great man. Biff breaks down when he
sees that his father incapable of seeing the truth. Willy thinks Biff is still a child and
needs him. He then decides to commit suicide because with twenty thousand dollars
as insurance money, Biff could make a grand success of himself. Thus Willy
commits suicide. He is seen as a forgotten man because no one attended his funeral.
The brief ‘Requiem’ shows the Willy family and Charley paying their homage
to Willy. Linda, full of remorse, does not understand why Willy killed himself. Biff
blames Willy for having the wrong dreams and is ready to go away on his
wanderings. Happy is determined to carry on his struggle to realize Willy’s dream of
success. He understands that Willy was the product of a commercial society and he
could not help being a salesman. A salesman, according to Charley, “is a man way
out there in the blue riding on a smile and a shoe shine. A salesman is got to dream,
boy”. (DOS 222) This description of Willy makes him a universal character.
Willy’s problems as a father are shown to be a direct result of his own
deprivation as a son. As his father left when Willy was a child, he remains a dim
figure in his son’s imagination. Willy’s resolve to give strong guidance to his sons is
a result of his sense of the lack of such guidance in his own life. He says:
Dad left when I was such a baby…. I never had a chance to talk to
him and I still feel a kind of temporary about myself.
(DOS 159)
Much of Death of a Salesman is devoted to recreating the happy past, when
Willy Loman’s sales were bigger. Miller introduces Loman right from the beginning
as a salesman, who has lost his small ability to sell and is therefore in the danger of
losing his job as well. He also faces the risk of losing his livelihood, and above all his
self-respect. He is a little man, a low-man in the eyes of the society, as his name
indicates. He is introduced as a salesman but there is no mention of what he sells; the
information, perhaps, is held back by Miller. Willy Loman stands for ‘all low-men of
American community’.
Since Willy’s career is based on things that are ephemeral, he is not a success
in business. His devotion to his family stands on his way to success in business. To
add to this, he is found carelessly sure of himself. His sons fail to understand him
though they love him thoroughly. Willy wants his sons to succeed where he has
failed. Thus he ruins Biff’s life with impossible aspirations and false ideals.
As Arthur Miller says, the trouble with Willy Loman is that he has
tremendously powerful ideals. The fact is that he has values and the fact that it cannot
be realized drives him just as it is driving a lot of other people also. Willy is shown as
lacking human decency in many respects, but is still a tragic figure.
The play has often been approached as a psychological drama with strong
Freudian colouring. From this point of view, it is found that the work concentrates on
family values and especially the father’s affection for his sons. Willy and Biff are
more like brothers than father and son and it is Biff who attains mental maturity first.
It is Willy’s own faults which ruin him. All the flashbacks and hallucinations in
Death of a Salesman are in Willy’s own anguished conscience. As is often said, every
great tragic figure has been true to his fault and precisely this is Willy Loman’s
commitment. His tragedy becomes unbearable because Miller has drawn the portrait
of a good man driven by false ideals, but who still represents the homely, decent,
kindly virtues of middle-class society. Willy may not be a great man but the pressures
of society make him a tragic figure. When Willy’s mistake is viewed in the light of
the present, it is inferred that he lacks moral stamina in his character through the
years which has resulted in his present irrational behaviour.
In the ‘Introduction’ to Collected Plays, Miller says that the tragedy in Death
of a Salesman grows out of the fact that,
Willy Loman has broken a law without whose protection
life is insupportable if not incomprehensible to him and to many
others; it is the law which says that a failure in society and in
business has no right to live. Unlike the law against incest, the law
of success is not administered by statute or church, but it is very
nearly as powerful in its grip upon men.
(Introduction to Collected Plays 35)
The nobility in Willy is found, not in the salesman, the symbol for the dream of
success, but in the father, the symbol of love. Till the end of the play, he tries to buy
his son’s respect and love at the cost of his own life and refuses to accept himself for
what he is. Success becomes an obsession with him and when he fails to succeed, he
shifts his ideal to his son, on whom it sits as a burden intolerable as death.
Regarding Willy’s dream, Neil Carson says:
It seems clear from the rest of the play, however, that we are
intended to blame Willy (as Biff certainly does) for having all the
wrong dreams or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that we
are to blame him for holding on to those dreams long after they
cease to correspond with any possible reality.
(Neil Carson 57)
When the play is analysed, the inevitable question comes to mind. Is the play
primarily a socio-political criticism of American culture or does Willy Loman fall far
enough to be a tragic figure? According to Miller himself, either of these two views is
too simple and each destroys the possibility of the other. Certainly the play Death of
a Salesman cannot be both tragic and social for the two forms conflict in purpose.
Social drama treats the little man (Willy Loman) as victim and arouses pity and no
terror (for man is too little and passive to be tragic figure). Tragedy on the other hand,
destroys the possibility of social drama, since the tragic catharsis reconciles or
persuades to disregard precisely those material conditions. Jean Gould in his critical
book Modern American Playwrights has rightly stated:
The brilliance of Death of a Salesman lies precisely in its
reconciliation of these two apparent contraries. Miller has created
a sort of narrative poem whose overall purpose can be understood
only by a consideration of its poetic as well as narrative elements.
Death of a Salesman remains unequalled in its brilliant and
original fusion of realistic and poetic techniques, its richness of
visual and verbal structure and its wide range of emotional impact.
(Jean Gould 110)
In Death of a Salesman Miller finds appropriate symbols for the social realities
of his time and place. He achieves through a series of emotional confrontations
among the members of a single family an emotionally valid psychological statement
about the particular conflicts of the American family as well as the universal
psychological family struggle. By placing all these events, with in the context of one
man’s thoughts, rambling over his past and present life, he achieves an internal drama
of man’s epic journey to self-knowledge through experience. The entire play, in this
sense, is a recognition scene.
Though Willy is a tragic hero in the action of the play, he never achieves heroic
stature because of Miller’s strong criticism of his society. In the end, it is not Willy
Loman as a man, but the image of the salesman that predominates. It is the man, who,
from selling things has passed to selling himself and has become, in effect, a
commodity which like other commodities will at a certain point be economically
discarded.
Willy’s memories do not materialize at random. They are
triggered by certain incidents in the present and Willy is changed
by remembering
them.
(Neil Carson 48)
The behaviour of Miller’s characters is controlled by the constant threat of
economic and political crisis that has made society what it is.
Willy is obsessed with bringing his family up. He is mesmerized by two
romantic images: first of his brother, Ben who walked into the jungle at the age of
seventeen and walked out again, rich at the age of twenty-one; the second, of a eighty
four year old salesman who was still so popular, that in any of the thirty cities, he
could just pick up the phone and wait comfortably in his hotel room for the buyers to
come to him. The actual Willy, as he is understood, is far away from what he
conceives of himself. The play reveals to us the final disintegration of a man who has
never even approached his idea of what by rights he ought to have been. Willy’s ideal
may have been the old salesman in his green velvet slippers, but his model is that
mythic figure, the traveling salesman of the dirty joke.
The sons are Willy’s divided self of the future; one asserting the continuing
validity of Willy’s dream, the other rejecting it. As is common in most Miller’s plays,
The central situation centres around the child-father
relationship, in which the children at an age when it is about to
break loose from the family; in each case the father is faced with
the constant consequent breakdown of the family world he had
tried to create; in each case the conflict between the child and
father takes place in terms of the wider world breaching the walls
of protection, the father had built around the family
(Brooks Atkinson 70)
The play repeats, that archetypal plot in which the son looks
up to his father for moral direction, instead finds corruption that
shatters the bond of mutual respect.
(Tom Driver. 48)
Miller’s stage direction for this play makes it obvious that the setting is going
to be non-realistic. He makes a rather important use of music which symbolizes the
bucolic aspect of life which is one of the prominent themes of the play. That is why
even before any action starts on the stage, a flute is played and its melody is “small
and fine, telling of grass and trees and the horizon” (DOS 130). It is romantic in
contrast with which the set is that of towering, angular buildings in the midst of
which the salesman’s house appears like a cage. Another aspect of the set is that the
foreground area is in sky blue light whereas the background is to be in orange light.
Miller is trying hard not to be realistic as he states clearly in his ‘Introduction’ to
Collected Plays, “An air of the dream clings to the place, a dream rising out of
reality” (Introduction to Collected Plays 29).
The critic John Gassner in his book, The Theatre in our Times has noted,
a great deal of the richness in Death of a Salesman derives
from the intermingling of the real with the unreal.
(John Gassner 107)
Even Miller says that the dramatic projections of Willy’s memory should not
be regarded as flashback in a novel or film where the past scenes are re-created
independently and outside the consciousness of the characters. But in Willy’s case,
the quick changing scenes on the stage are the projections of Willy’s memories. And
sometimes, two memories project themselves simultaneously that along with the
present action, the total effect is that of multiple action. Consequently there is not
time sequence in them, because in real life too, memories do not flash to the mind in
a continuous time bound sequence.
The ‘American dream’ is symbolized by Dave Singleman, the salesman who
lived on trains and in strange cities and who by virtue of some dazzling, irresistible
personal lovableness built his fame and fortune. Finally the American dream is
symbolized, in its most noble embodiment, by Willy’s father, who not only ventured
into a pioneer’s wilderness with no security or assurance of success but who was also
a creator. He made flutes and high music. The music of flute also plays a significant
role in the play. This motif is skillfully employed to reinforce the meaning of the play.
The play both opens and closes with the music of the flute. In other words, the music
of the flute encompasses the entire action. It is heard at various other times too. The
flute becomes more important when, in the course of the play, it is understood from
Ben that his (and Willy’s) father used to manufacture and sell flutes. Willy’s father
too was a salesman. But there is an essential difference between Willy and his father.
Willy sells goods manufactured by others while his father produced his own flutes to
sell them, traveling with his whole family in a wagon and driving across the country.
So Willy’s father was both an enterprising and adventurous man, while Willy seeks
success only through a social charm, amiability and contacts. Towards the end of the
play, when Willy is planning for his suicide and then later Willy’s funeral, the flute
music captures Willy’s inability to emulate the example of adventurous father and
brother Ben. This flute music also suggests the world of illusion in which Willy has
spent his life.
Willy is a victim of this merciless social system which drives people to frantic,
all-consuming dreams of success. Willy is doomed not only by the grandiose nature
of these dreams but also by their inherent contradictories. The play seems to condemn
a system that promises and demands total commitment to success without regard to
human values. It is a system as Willy says to Howard, will, “eat the orange and throw
the peel away” (DOS 181). It is a society, in which the cruel inhuman son (Howard)
can replace his kindly father (Wagner) and say to a long time employee (Willy) who
gave him his Christian name: “Look kid, I’m busy this morning” (DOS 177). Willy,
with his limited sense of truth, does not realize the ethical implications of his cry of
protest. The blend of pathos and irony which marks the encounter between the two,
precludes any simplistic moral anger on the part of the spectators. But its troubled
echoes point at a social system which treats human beings as expendable and
demands from Willy, his final sacrifice.
Due to his affection, Willy tries to get the best for his sons, but unconsciously
spoils them, overlooks their dishonesty and tortures them with his ambition for them.
Willy always has a guilty consciousness of not having earned anything for his sons.
He realizes that he cannot sell himself in life, but can sell himself only in death, by
bequeathing to Biff, his paid up life insurance.
Miller sees Willy as a tragic figure as long as the intensity,
the human passion to surpass given bounds, the fanatic insistence
upon a self-conceived role is present.
(Allan Lewis 47)
The only member of the family who distrusts Ben is Willy’s wife Linda.
To her, the words of Ben are disgusting as they pose a threat to the family’s
stability and security. The strength and tenacity of her love for Willy and her
determination to hold her family together appear to be in reassuring contrast to
those around her. She represents the older values of decency, courage, sacrifice
and devotion. She has chosen a difficult path and has stuck to it. Indeed, it is
possible to suggest that part of the power of the play can be found not in the
way other members of the family tear each other apart, but in the way Linda
attempts to hold them together.
Linda is often oversimplified by critics and audiences. Her role in the
play is denigrated and caustic criticism is hurled on her, pointing to the obvious
bewilderment in her heart-breaking ‘I don’t understand’ (DOS 222) at the
funeral, she does understand Willy but only those aspects which are perceptible
to her. Other facets of his personality are beyond her comprehension of it is
precisely this uneasy combination of perception and incomprehensibility that is
integral to her relationship with the men in her family.
Miller, in describing her character in the stage direction, says:
Most often jovial, she has developed an iron repression of
her exception to Willy’s behaviour – she more than loves him, she
admires him, as though his mercurial nature, his temper, his
massive dreams and little cruelties, served her only as sharp
reminders of the turbulent longings with in him…
(DOS 131)
Linda has a painfully realistic insight into the character and situation of the
man she married. She knows that the fifty dollars, which he gives her as his pay
cheque, has actually been borrowed from Charley. She allows him his lie as she does
not want to rob him of his remaining dignity by informing him of her awareness of
his petty deception. She is also aware of his obsession with the idea of suicide. She
quietly subverts his plans instead of shaming him by revealing to him her knowledge
of it. Fully cognizant of his weaknesses, Linda can also comprehend Willy’s decency,
loneliness and heart-break. In her overwhelming devotion to him, she has helped to
build a doll’s house around him and consequently, has done to Willy, what he has
been doing to Biff and Happy. Also she has been spurred by the same motivation:
love. In being a good wife, Linda has extended her devotion to an extreme that has
become destructive not only to her husband but also to her sons, who have also
become victims of her gingerbread house. Describing her as ‘the mother earth’ Lois
Gordon explains:
In her love Linda accepted Willy’s greatness and his
dreams, but while in her admiration for Willy, her love is powerful
and moving, in her admiration for his dreams, it is lethal. She
encourages Willy’s dreams, yet she will not let him leave her for
the New Continent, the only realm where the dream can be
fulfilled. She wants to reconcile father and son, but she attempts
this in the context of Willy’s false values: she cannot allow her
sons to achieve that self hood that involves denial of these values.
(Lois Gordon 105)
To a great extent, Linda’s follies are attributable to her longing for security and
relatedness.
Willy could never deceive his wife with quite the same facility with which he
had impressed his sons. His wife Linda serves as a kind of conscience making him
confess his true earnings and his real sense of inadequacy. He succeeds in gaining
sympathy because more than for wealth or fame, he longs for friendship.
It is a poignant scene when Linda talks to her sons about Willy’s pitiable
condition. She describes the crisis which Willy is facing:
But he’s a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to
him. So attention must be paid. He is not to be allowed to fall into
his grave like an old dog. Attention must be paid to such a man.
(DOS 162)
Linda’s loyalty and affinity for her husband Willy is seen in the impeccable
scorn she shows towards her sons after their behaviour with Willy in the restaurant.
Linda: You’re a pair of animals! Not one, not another living
soul would have had the cruelty to walk out on that
man (Willy) in a restaurant.
(DOS 211)
May be the wife in Linda wants to be kind to the ‘unlucky husband’ even after
accepting all his faults.
Willy is also equally affectionate on his wife Linda. The love of Willy for his
wife Linda is realized from his conversation with Ben.
Willy: Now look, Ben, I want you to go through the ins an
outs of this thing with me. I’ve got nobody to talk to,
Ben, and the woman (Linda) has suffered.
(DOS 212)
Linda also points out to her sons the painful difference between Willy’s past
and present circumstances which proves her affection for her husband:
He (Willy) drives seven hundred miles and when he gets
there no one knows him any more, no one welcomes him. And
what goes through a man’s mind, driving seven hundred miles
home without having earned a cent.
(DOS 163)
Bechtold Heilman, a critic points out that:
Our reaction to Willy is like the experience we suffer in
contemplating on the highways a run-over and killed dog
(Bechtold Heilman 87)
According to this critic, there is pathos, but no elevation of spirit; there is no
expansive sense of the possibilities of human kind, only an acute sense of limitation.
Had Willy like Oedipus, come to understand his errors, to see through his delusions
to a clear vision of self, the audience might have got the full sense of tragic irony that
comes when a tragic hero acquires self-knowledge only at a point when he cannot
stop the consequences of his earlier ignorance. It might have been left with the
feeling that there was yet potential in Willy who might have finally abandoned his
futile dream and pursued a life of gardening or carpentry. But Willy dies in service of
the dream he has worshipped all his life, the dream has nurtured a vision of self that
bears little resemblance to reality and he leaves that dream as legacy to his sons
who‘ve no more chance of success than Willy has had. Willy’s weary form casts an
immense shadow over all modern drama, but because he goes to his death without the
wisdom of self-discovery, he remains a pathetic ‘low-man’.
Biff’s sympathy for his father’s suffering finally does overcome his
resentment. He makes a last and desperate attempt to open Willy’s eyes to the truth –
to make him understand that neither of them can achieve success for which Willy has
hoped. In the final encounter Biff says:
Pop I’m nothing: I’m nothing, pop,
Can’t you understand that? There’s
no spite in it any more..
I’m just what I am, that’s all
(DOS 217)
Willy realizes that Biff does not totally hate him for his failures but in fact
loves him. This realization leads him to his enlightenment. His false image of
fatherhood is torn by the truth that Biff loves him as he is in himself and not as he
would appear to be.
According to the old, traditional view, the tragic hero is to be a person of high
rank or status, so that his downfall could produce the appropriate emotional effect on
the audience. Besides, the old view of tragedy emphasized the element of fate as
being responsible for the misfortunes of the tragic hero. Even in the plays of
Shakespeare, although character is largely responsible for the undoing of the tragic
hero, the mysterious working of fate is distinctly brought into focus. In other words,
Shakespeare attributes human misfortunes mainly to the fault of the sufferers
themselves but partly to the hidden forces which are described as fate or destiny.
Miller seems to depart from both these concepts of tragedy. In the first place, the
tragic hero in Death of a Salesman belongs to the middle class which means that this
play is a bourgeois tragedy. Miller doesn’t believe in that a tragic effect can be
produced by the downfall of a highly placed individual. It is not the high social rank
of the individual but the intensity of his commitment to an idea or system that is
important. Secondly, although Willy is to some extent himself responsible for his
tragedy, the chief villain is society which means that it is a social drama. Miller’s
tragic vision is thus distinctively modern because the emphasis in the play is firstly
on an ordinary man and secondly on the social context, in which he lives, suffers and
dies. Death of a Salesman is unquestionably a deeply affecting play. In the words of
Eric Bentley, it has been regarded as:
One of the triumphs of the Mundane American stage. It
moves its audience tremendously; it comes close to their
experience or observation; it awakens their consciousness; and it
may even rouse them to self criticism.
(Eric Bentley 87)
Willy’s flaw and compensating virtues place him as a hero along the classical
lines. He, like Joe Keller in All My Sons, finds a readymade ‘society image’ to attach
himself, and becomes a victim of the attachment. Miller looks upon the salesman’s
ideal of success with an angry but discerning eye and he sees its hollowness and
treachery. Even a casual reader of Death of a Salesman would agree that Miller has
very much concerned with man and his family in this play. The success of the play
has proved his artistic achievement; Death of a Salesman ran into more than seven
hundred performances.
Death comes to Everyman, in the midst of life, and of
course is feared, the attempt made to avert it. But the action,
confidently, takes Everyman forward to the edge of that dark in
which he must disappear, and the most remarkable aspect of this
confidence is that physically, on a scaffold above the dark room.
God himself is waiting for Everyman to come.
(Raymond Williams 88)