Death of a Salesman Arthur

Death of a Salesman

Arthur Miller believed that while tragedies can be written about people of great influence, such as kings, that any human being can be the center of a tragedy because all human beings are flawed. In his play Death of a Salesman, Miller demonstrates that "the heart and spirit of the average man" ("Tragedy and the Common Man" by Arthur Miller" can be the source for theatrical tragedy.

Miller emphasizes that his play will be about an average person by the way he names the central character "Willy Loman," which is pronounced "low man." Willy Loman is a traveling salesman with two grown sons and a loyal wife. In the first act, Willy reveals that a common man can feel despair as he talks with his wife, Linda, after coming in from an unsuccessful sales trip:

WILLY: Figure it out. Work a lifetime to pay off a house. You finally own it, and there's nobody to live in it.

LINDA: Well, dear, life is a casting off. It's always that way.

WILLY: No, no, some people - some people accomplish something

From these lines we already have a hint about Willy's tragic flaw: he has lived a simple life, raised a family, bought and paid for a home, but he doesn't' feel he has "accomplished something." Willy is a salesman, a job in which he might have risen to the top of his trade and made a lot of money, and lived the part of the American dream that says that wealth and status are what is important about a person.

Later in the scene, Willy shows more emphasis on superficial appearances as the way a man should define himself as a success: he sees it as important to be popular. He comments that the boys' Uncle Charley is liked, but not well-liked. Willy is so blinded by superficial traits that in a flashback he tells Biff it's OK if he isn't a hard-working student and barely manages to graduate from high school because he's a football star, and popular, and has been offered three different athletic scholarships for college. A classmate of Biff's, Bernard, tries to get him to study, since he has to take important tests the next week, and Biff blows Bernard's concerns off. Willy says about Bernard:

WILLY: That's just what I mean. Bernard can get the best marks in school, y'understand, but when he gets out in the business world, y'understand, you are going to be five times ahead of him. That's why I thank Almighty God you're both built like Adonises. Because the man who makes an appearance in the business world, the man who creates personal interest, is the man who gets ahead. Be liked and you will never want. You take me, for instance. I never have to wait in line to see a buyer. "Willy Loman is here!" That's all they have to know, and I go right through... Knocked 'em cold in Providence, slaughtered 'em in Boston.

Willy's tragic flaw is that he is so busy trying to force himself to be something he is not that it blinds him to his good qualities. Willy is liked. He is not the most popular person in the world but he has a good, loyal friend in Charley, and a wife who loves him. His older son, Happy, is doing well in business and could afford to cover his father's expenses so Willy could retire. But to Willy, a person has to be extremely popular and do very well financially, or he is a failure. By Willy's standards he has to see himself as a failure. Charley offers him a job, but Willy insults him, telling him that a man who handle tools is not a man.

Linda sees the real humanity in her husband, and tells her sons:

LINDA:... I don't say he's a great man. Willy Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper. He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. He's not to be allowed to fall into his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person

But Willy can't accept that kind of attention as proving him a worthy man. He can't let go of the idea that popularity and wealth are what are most important in a man.

In the second act, Willy receives a terrible blow. He explains to his boss, Howard, how he met a salesman when he was about 19, and admired the man's skills, and decided that sales was the very best job a man could have. But he tells Howard he's tired, and he wants to work in the store instead of on the road. Howard keeps telling him there's no opening for floor sales, and then finally tells him the truth: the company is going to let Willy go. Howard says:

HOWARD: I think you need a good long rest, Willy... And then when you feel better, come back, and we'll see if we can work something out.

He tells Willy that this is no time for false pride and that he should ask his sons for help, but Willy has run on false pride all his life. He can't let go of it now that his career is crumbling around him. In the middle of this desperation, he flashes back to his Uncle Ben, who really could close a big deal with just a phone call, who went to Alaska with nothing and came back rich. This just helps prop up Willy's notion that it should be easy to achieve wealth, making him all the more a failure because he has worked so hard but not accomplished it.

Everywhere Willy turns there are signs that he held on to false beliefs. He runs into Bernard who is grown, has two children, and is doing very well professionally. Biff, it turns out, failed math, didn't make up the credit, and never got his high school diploma. Near the end of the play, we find out why. Biff caught his dad with another woman while Willy was out of town. Biff idolized his father, but sees him give stockings to a strange woman while Linda repeatedly mends hers. More than anything, Willy has always wanted Biff to love him and to do well. As Willy's career is falling apart, he sees Biff as a failure, and all he and Biff do is argue.

Planting vegetables in the back yard that will never grow, Willy imagines his funeral large funeral with people coming from hundreds of miles to mourn his passing, and money to provide for Linda. The one thing he has done well is pay his life insurance.