Death of a Salesman (Penguin Plays)
by Arthur Miller
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Book Reviews of Death of a Salesman (Penguin Plays)
Book Review: Waste of a Dream!!
Summary: 3 Stars
Willy is a salesman and is trying to kill himself. Linda, his wife, is supportive and trying to keep Willy happy. Biff, his favorite son, does not like his father but his mom tells him to keep his father happy and do a job he does not want to do. Biff doesn't get the job and Willy got fired from his job. Happy, the other son, has a job he does not like and is going to get married but no one pays much attention to him.
I think Arthur Miller is trying to tell us to do a job you like and if the money comes with it great. People waste their lifetime doing things that they do not like to do and it can affect their relationship with their family and friends, their job, and them self. Willy had a dream but when he saw someone as a salesman calling to people on the phone he thought that would be a good idea. Salesmen are happy when they get a compliment. When all their customers die or retire and you get negative comments, it hurts them really badly.
Their job decreases and they come home sad. Biff knew something that Linda didn't know and that was Willy had an affair with someone else. Because Biff saw that it changed his attitude about his father, he became more protective of his mother, and because of that he didn't like to be bossed around and stole things from every job he was in. What you do now can affect your family now and forever. Biff knew the truth and was trying to tell Willy but Linda and Happy didn't want him to because they wanted Willy to be happy.
In the end Biff cries on Willy because he was concerned for his dads safety. He took out the gas tube but when he brought it to Willys attention Willy denies ever seeing it. Biff starts to explain everything accepted the affair. Happy tried to stop him but it didn't work. Linda tried to stop him but that didn't work either.
Willy didn't want to hear any of it but Biff talked and told why he didn't take summer school and how Willy ruined his life. This family has lack of communication. If Willy sat down with Biff and they talked about what was expected of each other maybe they wouldn't have argued so much. Linda and Happy would have talked with them and had family meetings then maybe it wouldn't have ended the way it did.
Biff would have gone to summer school and have a good job by now. Happy would have been married and Willy would still have a job and not stuck in his past. But since his father and brother, Ben, left him he had no role model to look up to and so it affected everything. I think Biff is the only one who won't make the same mistakes as his father did and go do a job he likes.
I recommend you read this play to get a grasp on life and know what you do now affects people in the present and the future. If you made a bad choice it will affect your children and their grandchildren all the way to like the fifth century unless someone in your family chooses not to make your same mistakes. That is why most people who are divorced their children will be divorced and so on and so on and so on until someone decides I don't want to be like that and that is a good and new impact.
Book Review: Review for Death of a Salesman
Summary: 4 Stars
Death of a Salesman is a play about a salesman named Willy Loman who wants to live the American dream, popularity and fortune. The play starts out as Willy comes home to his wife, Linda, from a business trip. Throughout the play, Willy relives events in his past that are positive and make him feel wanted. In reality however, everyone around New England doesn't know or care about Willy. The only people he has are his wife and two sons, Biff and Happy. Willy wants his older son, Biff, to follow in his footsteps to become a salesman. The problem with this is that Biff has lost respect from his father over the years and he wants to become a farmer in Texas and make his own living. This conflict between Willy and Biff shapes the entire play and its outcomes.
I think that Arthur Miller's main purpose in writing Death of a Salesman is to show, not only the people of America but also the world, that the American dream is not the only dream. This is evident in this play because Willy tries to become like everyone else. He thinks that the only point to life is to live how America thinks people should live. This is known as the American dream. Although this is a very nice accomplishment, this shouldn't become an obsession to the point where you go mentally insane. This was also evident in the life of Willy Loman. Willy was always having flashbacks of when his sons were in high school and when he was doing great business as a salesman. Willy is so stuck in these flashbacks that he literally goes insane, which leads him to suicide.
The greatest lesson that I have learned is that we should all watch what we do. Our actions are based on our decisions, and they also play a key part in how we shape our future. If we don't do the right things, than we may not have a good future. Willy certainly didn't watch his actions. Over time, Willy Loman did things that he didn't even think about. One of these was having the affair with The Woman. His emotions of loneliness led to the decision to have an affair and that led to the actions. And that action led to the result of Biff losing respect for him. When Biff lost respect for him, Willy went crazy because of how horrible his life is. At the beginning of the play, he is complaining about things such as whipped cheese and apartment buildings. This shows that Willy is realizing what that affair did to him and to Biff. Anyway, I am saying that we should all watch our actions. If we don't watch our actions, our future will be molded into something that we can't control. Since Willy didn't watch what he was doing, he ended up in a lifetime of despair and loneliness. I don't think anyone wants that kind of life. Watching our actions also means that we need to make the right decisions.
In conclusion, I would recommend this play because it teaches you many things that you may never have realized. It also teaches you things about yourself just from reading it. This play is a significant play because it can take the life of one person to change the life of another. That is why I highly recommend Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller.
Book Review: The shattering of the American dream
Summary: 5 Stars
One of the most popular and famous plays of post-O'Neill theater, Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman is the playwright's masterpiece and a true classic not only of American drama, but also of American literature as a whole. Though it came out in the late 1940's, its universal applicability has endured throughout the ensuing decades and the play still has much to tell us today. As has been noted, 20th century American drama tended to focus primarily on the family. The family presented in Death of a Salesman -- like the families in Tennessee William's The Glass Menagerie and Cat On a Hot Tin Roof -- is, in many ways, the prototypical American family, although many would not like to admit it. Salesman's dysfunctional family preceded the rosier, harmonious families that would come to dominate 50's television; it doesn't take a prophet or even a sociologist to determine which of the two is more true-to-life. In the Loman family, we can see much of ourselves and our families -- even if it is the parts that we would rather not think about and focus on. The play also deals with the capitalist system as it stood in the middle of the 20th century; most agree that, to the extent that it has changed since then, it has only been for the worse. Willy Loman, the play's main character and the prototypical Everyman, is a victim of the dog-eat-dog world of business that is a true manifestation of "survival of the fittest": good times are forgotten; nobody cares what one has done in the past: all that matters is, What have you done for me lately? The play shows how a man -- and yes, a man: the play was written in the 1940's, after all... and notice that the matriarch, despite the family's hard times, does not work -- is judged not by whom he is, not by his virtues, but simply by what he does and how much money he makes (of course, nearly 60 years later, this now extends to women as well.) It doesn't matter how good a man is, how much he loves his family, how much he cares for his children, how much he loves his wife -- if he can't make enough money to keep food on the table. A man who doesn't do that, at least in society's eyes, is a complete and total failure: nothing else matters. Willy's inability to escape from this system leads to his total and complete focus on money and work, driving his attention away from what matters most to him, his family, and ends in his tragic fate. Such a plight is, no doubt, familiar to many Americans. The right to the "pursuit of happiness" may be in the Declaration of Independence for all to read, but achieving the proverbial American Dream isn't always that easy: it's trying, it's difficult, it's hard -- and, indeed, it can be fatal. This is what the play tells us, and its truth is why the play has endured through the years and why it will continue to endure. This is a true masterpiece that deserves to be read by all.Book Review: Take a Second Look
Summary: 4 Stars
I wasn't terribly impressed with "Death of a Salesman" while I read it. The play simply didn't live up to its acclaim, its noble status in American literature. I've heard Salesman referenced countless times over my life, all 22 years of it. Salesman was written in 1949, a post-war era that supported the belief that starting anew was possible and wishes do come true. My first impression of the play was that it attempted to shatter the ubiquitous belief of an American dream, making it merely a quixotic fantasy. But after rereading certain passages and thinking about it for this review, I saw how very human its message is and how it is actually an incredibly despairing masterpiece that throws a new light at the idea behind the American dream. Through the utterly destroyed and distraught protagonist, Willy Loman, Miller represents the demise of the American dream and suggests the need to reassess such a unrealistic dream.
Loman is a revised, twentieth-century version of the classic tragic character. He does not display the typical chivalrous characteristics that many literary tragic characters do, such as Beowulf and Oedipus Rex. Loman, in fact, is pathetic and repugnant. As an older aged, crazy, and impoverished character, Loman isn't close to the traditional heroic figure. He cheats on his wife; builds up impratical hopes for his two sons; and makes imprudent business and life decisions. Such characteristics are sinful and generally not seen in the traditional tragic literary figure. But these traits are also very real and humanistic. Miller deftly jumps from the present to the past and back again, slowly "peeling the onion" (as Grass would call it) of the true Loman. This peeling process reveals what went wrong and what should've been avoided to prevent this most tragic ending. It appears that Miller is suggesting that seemingly innocuous decisions can--and do--destroy the American dream.
Such a bleak perspective on the American dream shouldn't come as a surprise to the reader/viewer. The late 1940s was a period of transition: America was forced to adjust from the war-driven, ration crazed society to a very corporate-driven, forced-fed consumer culture. Post-war America was full of tenuous hopes to climb the corporate ladder and to acclimate to a life of plenty, i.e. family members and money. For an ordinary, hard-working American, like Loman, this proved to be too much. Despite the play having a backdrop in the 1920s and '30s, it takes place in the late '40s, in the very much consumer focused society. It is fitting that the land of plenty left Loman and his family with nothing.
The play is very much alive today as it was nearly sixty years ago. Do read it. I'm going to try to see the play the next time it comes to town.
Book Review: The Life and Times of Willy Loman
Summary: 5 Stars
Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman," while confusing when just read through the text alone, is an awesomely crafted play that takes drama to the next level. Now being interested in plays, I decided it was time to read this one, being that this is considered a classic by many (which I could easily see why). Reading this play makes me want to write plays. Reading something like this makes me believe that I can some up with something great too. I am glad that I finally took the time to read it.The story is about a broken-hearted salesman, Willy Loman. He is a man no longer living in the real world but is mostly trapped in his own delusional world. He can't let go of the past no matter how hard he tries, and it's eating him up inside. He wants to believe that his family is a shoe-in for greatness, no matter how lonely and sad his wife is, or how much of a player/swinger his youngest son is, or how confused and anti-business his oldest son is. You put all of this together and you get a glimpse of an American tragedy that is so powerful and sad that it makes you think these things happen all the time. From Page 1 you know it's not going to end on a happy note, but you decide to take the path anyways. And a path worth taking it is.
I admit that I was confused at certain points, because through the text alone it is very hard to separate Willy's reality from his imagination. There are places where Willy departs from reality and goes back to the past and it makes it very hard for us to figure out what is going on if we're only reading it. When I saw the movie version after reading this, I was able to appreciate the play more. I understood what confused me and I was able to figure out what was happening. Despite some confusing moments it is still a tremendous play that is very involving from start to finish. You are able to sympathize with the main character, and with the rest of the characters as well. You know a writer has done the job right when you are able to feel or care for every single character (or at least almost all of them, being there will be a few minor characters you're really not supposed to care for that much. This is something that always happens in the world of fiction and is to be expected). Arthur Miller did an amazing job of writing such a realistic and emotionally driven play. The characters were realistic as well as the dialogue.
"Death of a Salesman" is more than just simply a stunning play; it is a beautiful portrait of a family dealing with hardships and troubles. As soon as I began the play I was unable to put it down until it was finished. If you want to read a great play and are interested in great works of drama, this is the one for you.
(Note: If you are confused by the play, see the movie afterwards. It really helps.)