Death of a Salesman & Downsizing

The contemporary phenomenon of downsizing is especially difficult on aged workers because it is often the oldest employees who are targeted for downsizing because they make more money than their younger counterparts and they can be lured into early retirement. As one human resource expert states "Sometime in the past you probably had to let employees go in a downsizing move. If cost-cutting was a big consideration, the odds are good that you terminated some older workers" (Kennedy 1). Because of downsizing, traditional work-related factors such as loyalty have been on the wane in corporate America. Since the end of the 1980s, more than 4 million jobs have been eliminated in industry, from high-tech to insurance (McGarvey 1). In a past era, employee loyalty and corporate loyalty were highly valued by both employees and firms. However, the phenomenon of downsizing has created a new environment wherein many argue concepts of loyalty are no more "Downsizing changed all the old rules. It fundamentally altered the employer-employee relationship. Employers once preached job security. The message of downsizing was that corporate loyalty to employees is dead. Therefore, employee loyalty is also dead" (McGarvey 1).

If we examine Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, we can readily observe that the situation of the protagonist, Willy Loman, is very similar to employees who feel their company offers no job security. Willy

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ays them off. Yet, Willy's dementia and depression are brought on more by the face that Willy needs work to define himself and to have respect for himself. Without this, he has nothing. As Otto Rank comments on the effect of work on men "Man works primarily for his own self-respect and not for others or for profit�the person who is working for the sake of his own satisfaction, the money he gets in return serves merely as fuel, that is, as a symbol of reward and recognition, in the last analysis, of acceptance by one's fellowmen" (Fitzhenry 381). Willy has always defined work and work success as the measure of the man. Willy feels inferior to his brother Ben. Ben has made a success of himself, but Willy is not so much enthralled with Ben's level of income as he is by the fact that Ben started with nothing and made a killing in diamond mining. When Happy says that someday he would sure like to know how Ben did it, Willy explains "What's the mystery? The man knew what he wanted and went out and got it! Walked into a jungle, and comes out, the age of twenty-one, and he's rich! The world is an oyster, but you don't crack it open on a mattress" (Miller 41). Willy's mind continues to deteriorate because of his anxiety over me

Category: Literature - D