Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman

Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman is a tragedy that examines the false values of American life. In particular, it deals with Willy Loman, a lower middle class salesman, and his family. Loman seeks the American dream of success achieved through his own efforts but dies without ever achieving it.

Like any richly faceted work of art, it offers no single truth about the characters, who resonate and refuse to be reduced to single dimensions. As a result, this play is an American tragedy on many levels, beginning with the ongoing debate over whether Willy's fate can be considered truly tragic when he is "only" the Common Man, and rather a weak and confused one at that.

Unlike such critics, Miller insists on Willy's nobility because he never gives up the struggle. While directing a production in Beijing, Miller admitted to the cast that "Willy is foolish and even ridiculous sometimes. He tells the most transparent lies, exaggerates mercilessly, and so on." Then Miller added, "But the one thing he is not, is passive," and argued that Willy's lies and evasions are "his little swords with which he wards off the devils around him," and that this kind of restless activism, this refusal to accept a life of frustration, can lead to progress as well as to tragedy (Miller, Beijing 27).

Yet if what Willy believes is false, the quality of his belief itself is significant. It is ideology (Miler, Beijing 80) that motivates him, ideology that comes out of a false idea of his own ide

in the unlikeliest moment of threats and conflict, that he is loved by his boy, his heart of hearts" (Miller, Beijing 247). This unsparing love makes Willy want more for his sons than they want for themselves, but spares himself no more than it does them. As he tells Bernard, Willy can't just walk away from things, can't leave well enough alone--even at the cost of his own life. Willy's suicide is a result of this dogged refusal to settle for the frustrations life has offered, not an attempt to resign from his problems. In seizing on this solution, Willy is making one last attempt to help Biff "succeed." But it is success on Willy's terms--a final, even desperate commitment to material success--and the solution is imposed without reference to what anyone else wants. And what Biff wants is to succeed with his father so that he can carry Willy's blessing as he lives his own life within his limitations instead of constantly butting against them. "Why am I trying to become what I don't want to be?" Biff asks. "..... when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am!" (Miller, Death 132). Yet the process of getting to that statement is difficult because Willy has robbed Biff of his identity; by alway

Category: Literature - A