Death of a Salesman (Penguin Plays)
by Arthur Miller
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Book Summary Information
Author: Arthur MillerEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1998-10-06
ISBN: 0140481346
Number of pages: 144
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Book Reviews of Death of a Salesman (Penguin Plays)
Book Review: It Comes with the Territory
Summary: 4 Stars
"Death of a Salesman" is often referred to as a criticism of capitalism or as an exploration of the dark side of the "American Dream". There may be some truth in this idea. The central character, Willy Loman, is a man who has worked hard for the same company for over thirty years. According to all the tenets of capitalism, his qualities of diligence and loyalty should have been a guarantee of success, and yet his life ends in failure when he is dismissed by his employers without a word of thanks. Arthur Miller is sometimes attacked by political conservatives on account of his left-wing opinions, but in my view such an attitude is misplaced, as he was generally better as a writer of human drama than as a political propagandist. "The Crucible", for example, remains a great play even today, worth reading or watching not as an attack on McCarthyism but as a powerful drama with the strong figure of John Proctor, a flawed but genuinely tragic hero, at its centre. Similarly, the human side of Willy Loman's downfall is much more interesting than any political lessons that might be drawn from it; the play concentrates far more on Willy's relationships with his family than it does on that with his boss Howard Wagner.
Willy is a much weaker character than Proctor. He is the salesman of the play's title, a man in his early sixties, approaching retirement. Despite his long service, travelling from his New York base all over New England in the service of his employers, he has never enjoyed great success in his job. He is in financial difficulties, struggling to pay the mortgage on his house and the instalments on the consumer goods- refrigerator, vacuum cleaner, car- which were becoming popular in the forties but which represented a major commitment, even in middle class households. In order to make ends meet, he has taken to borrowing from his old friend Charley. His sense of failure, however, does not derive solely from his unsuccessful career. He also sees himself as having failed in his private life. Although his marriage to his loyal wife Linda has survived, despite the fact that he has on occasions been unfaithful to her, his relations with his two sons are strained. Biff, the elder, showed promise when young in both the academic and sporting fields, but failed to win a place at university after failing a maths exam at school, and since has become a rootless drifter, alternating between dead-end jobs and petty crime. Biff has been particularly alienated from his father since discovering one of Willy's affairs. Happy, the younger, has been more successful than Biff in his career, but in his private life is a selfish, cynical womaniser.
Willy is a character much given to violent mood swings, alternating between exuberant over-optimism and despairing pessimism. The younger Willy's optimism was largely focussed on his own prospects, believing that he had a talent for making himself "well liked" which would lead to a brilliant career. The older Willy's hopes are mostly focussed on his sons, especially Biff, whom he still believes (in the teeth of all the evidence) to be capable of great things. When his son disappoints him, Willy turns on him fiercely, accusing him of being a "lazy bum". Biff's lack of success in life does indeed derive partly from his own weaknesses, but Willy's unrealistic expectations are also partly to blame. There may be a connection between Willy's job and his capacity for self-delusion. As Charley says of him "A salesman's got to dream. It comes with the territory".
The play is written in two acts and a brief epilogue, but without any further formal divisions into scenes. On a number of occasions the action switches abruptly from the present into the past, as the characters act out episodes from earlier in Willy's life. Some of these episodes, in fact, may exist only in Willy's imagination, particularly those involving his older brother Ben, who is now dead although that does not prevent him from making several appearances. He seems to have been a wealthy man, although there are two versions of how he acquired his wealth, one involving business dealings in Alaska, the other diamond mining in Africa. Ben, in fact, is not really a character in his own right, but rather functions as a symbol of the failures and missed opportunities in Willy's life. This structure can make the play rather confusing when read from the printed page, but any confusion is generally quickly resolved in a well-directed stage or screen performance. (One particularly good filmed version is that starring Dustin Hoffman from 1985).
There is much more to the play than a critique of the capitalist economy or of the American way of life. It is also a character study and an exploration of the relationships within a family, especially father-son relationships (which was also an important theme of Miller's "All My Sons"). On a wider level it touches on the plight of the elderly, especially those whom society no longer seems to value, on the human need, too often disappointed, to aspire to a better life, and on the gap between appearance and reality. It is a play that deserves the high reputation it has acquired since it was written in the late forties.
Summary of Death of a Salesman (Penguin Plays)
The tragedy of a typical American--a salesman who at the age of sixty-three is faced with what he cannot face; defeat and disillusionment.Arthur Miller's 1949 Death of a Salesman has sold 11 million copies, and Willy Loman didn't make all those sales on a smile and a shoeshine. This play is the genuine article--it's got the goods on the human condition, all packed into a day in the life of one self-deluded, self-promoting, self-defeating soul. It's a sturdy bridge between kitchen-sink realism and spectral abstraction, the facts of particular hard times and universal themes. As Christopher Bigsby's mildly interesting afterword in this 50th-anniversary edition points out (as does Miller in his memoir, Timebends), Willy is closely based on the playwright's sad, absurd salesman uncle, Manny. But of course Miller made Manny into Everyman, and gave him the name of the crime commissioner Lohmann in Fritz Lang's angst-ridden 1932 Nazi parable, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse.
The tragedy of Loman the all-American dreamer and loser works eternally, on the page as on the stage. A lot of plays made history around 1949, but none have stepped out of history into the classic canon as Salesman has. Great as it was, Tennessee Williams's work can't be revived as vividly as this play still is, all over the world. (This edition has edifying pictures of Lee J. Cobb's 1949 and Brian Dennehy's 1999 performances.) It connects Aristotle, The Great Gatsby, On the Waterfront, David Mamet, and the archetypal American movie antihero. It even transcends its author's tragic flaw of pious preachiness (which undoes his snoozy The Crucible, unfortunately his most-produced play).
No doubt you've seen Willy Loman's story at least once. It's still worth reading. --Tim Appelo
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