Review of the play 'Death of a Salesman', by Arthur Miller (1949)
Willy Loman is a salesman. His life smells of fulfilled expectations: he's got a wife, two grown-up sons, a nice car and an almost paid-off house with its yard. However, he is into a big crises. Business has been going down for some time, and his company isn't helping him in spite of having worked there for thirty-six years – rather, they are paying him strictly a commission of what he sells, so no sales mean no money. He is left with no choice but to borrow money from his neighbour in order to face his payments. Also, he is feeling increasingly incapable of driving the hundreds of miles his job requires, he has already passed through a road accident and feels another one might be coming. He feels he's coming to a dead end, and his mind keeps shifting through his memories and his fantasies altogether.
There's an elephant in the room that is never mentioned in the play, but must be addressed: this the United States, so you get no pension for retirement. Willy and Linda go through the never-ending list of payments to be made, and it is clear that no money has been saved for retirement. Sixty-three is an age unfit for most jobs, specially given the existing healthcare in 1949 – yet failing to sell means the salesman is left-off with no income to feed on. When Willy feels himself become unfit for the only job he can do, he feels that there's no future for him.
Arthur Miller architects an effective playwriting technique similar to the inner word in Literature. The audience gets to experience the turmoil in Willy's mind through the recall of his memories, his fantasies and his particular mythology of people important for him. Scenes are enacted inside the play where characters from Willy's past show up, and the characters from the present are played representing a younger age. Willy not only recalls these scenes but he experiences them, so other characters perceive that he's speaking alone.
Of course there is a socio-economic reading: salesmen are disposable, the cut they take from the sales is the only money they get, so when money stops flowing they are just disposed of as an used-up paper towel. And the salesman job is a lonely one, salesmen have no colleagues that can support each other. And to top all that, projecting confidence is a requirement to succeed at selling, so the salesman is disallowed from showing his weaknesses and receiving sympathy. The socio-economic reading goes on about the sons Biff and Happy, as they are stuck on low-pay jobs. Happy is confident that eventually he will become a well-paid manager when his boss left the job, but for the moment this means that his expectations are put on hold. As for Biff, a notorious athlete at high-school, there's a full sub-story on how he lost his faith on his father and become unsettled for life. There is a common theme of deceptiveness in these stories, everybody has been fed with success stories that are never to become real, at least not for ordinary men. Biff, having been struck off deception once, is the one to realize that they have been living on a huge lie.
This kind of sums everything up: people get hooked up on deceptive expectations, get unsatisfying jobs and stand them for life on an unrealistic expectation of success. It is not that the characters find their jobs unsatisfying, but that they led themselves to stand their jobs, and their lives, on false expectations.
What's notorious about the development of the play is its seamlessness, the way the constant recall of scenes doesn't slow the action but complements it and makes for an accurate portrait of the salesman's mind. This well-oiled mechanism gives an unique insight that wouldn't be obtained through other formulas like following the chronological order. No doubt, a masterpiece.
There's an elephant in the room that is never mentioned in the play, but must be addressed: this the United States, so you get no pension for retirement. Willy and Linda go through the never-ending list of payments to be made, and it is clear that no money has been saved for retirement. Sixty-three is an age unfit for most jobs, specially given the existing healthcare in 1949 – yet failing to sell means the salesman is left-off with no income to feed on. When Willy feels himself become unfit for the only job he can do, he feels that there's no future for him.
Arthur Miller architects an effective playwriting technique similar to the inner word in Literature. The audience gets to experience the turmoil in Willy's mind through the recall of his memories, his fantasies and his particular mythology of people important for him. Scenes are enacted inside the play where characters from Willy's past show up, and the characters from the present are played representing a younger age. Willy not only recalls these scenes but he experiences them, so other characters perceive that he's speaking alone.
Of course there is a socio-economic reading: salesmen are disposable, the cut they take from the sales is the only money they get, so when money stops flowing they are just disposed of as an used-up paper towel. And the salesman job is a lonely one, salesmen have no colleagues that can support each other. And to top all that, projecting confidence is a requirement to succeed at selling, so the salesman is disallowed from showing his weaknesses and receiving sympathy. The socio-economic reading goes on about the sons Biff and Happy, as they are stuck on low-pay jobs. Happy is confident that eventually he will become a well-paid manager when his boss left the job, but for the moment this means that his expectations are put on hold. As for Biff, a notorious athlete at high-school, there's a full sub-story on how he lost his faith on his father and become unsettled for life. There is a common theme of deceptiveness in these stories, everybody has been fed with success stories that are never to become real, at least not for ordinary men. Biff, having been struck off deception once, is the one to realize that they have been living on a huge lie.
This kind of sums everything up: people get hooked up on deceptive expectations, get unsatisfying jobs and stand them for life on an unrealistic expectation of success. It is not that the characters find their jobs unsatisfying, but that they led themselves to stand their jobs, and their lives, on false expectations.
What's notorious about the development of the play is its seamlessness, the way the constant recall of scenes doesn't slow the action but complements it and makes for an accurate portrait of the salesman's mind. This well-oiled mechanism gives an unique insight that wouldn't be obtained through other formulas like following the chronological order. No doubt, a masterpiece.
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