Example Of Arthur Miller’s Sensational Play Death Of A Salesman Essay

Arthur Miller (1915- 2005) is the American playwright, essayist and a very significant persona who came to the literary arena after the Second World War. He has rightly been the representative of the candid American writers who used his pen to portray the causes and effects of racism, capitalism, the Vietnam War and has consistently defended the under privileged. Miller was born in an affluent family in 1915 in the Harlem section of Manhattan, New York. Miller wrote a number of excellent plays like The Man Who had All the Luck (1944), All My Sons (1947), Death of a Salesman (1949), The Crucible (1953) and many other works.
Death of a Salesman is always celebrated as a modern classic that depicts the manipulation of the individual and the tribulations of the mercantile society. The play stands apart from the rest of the plays by Miller. The play contains a deep vein of wittiest and an empathetic lenience hardly found in Miller’s works. The success of the play is definitely the result of a magnificent blend of myriad theatrical elements which is a result of the creative collaboration of the scene- designer, director and dramatist. The action of the play takes place in the house of Willy Loman, his courtyard, the city café, and many localities he visits in New York and Boston cities.
The play is essentially a tragedy in which both the past and present incidents are blended in expressionistic scenes consisting of a middle- aged travelling salesman, Willy Loman. Willy is an ardent believer in the American myth that feat is acquired by being “well- liked,” and his two sons, Happy and Biff have been groomed in this viewpoint. On the contrary, Happy and Biff grow up to be two mediocre non- entities who deny their father’s desire of fame and opulence. Willy recalls the blissful moments in his life when his sons revered him, so that, he can get away with the harsh reality of unpaid bills and family friction at least for some time. Linda, Willy’s wife, provokes Biff to raise money from a previous employer for a business venture that has been Willy’s much awaited ambition. She also persuades her husband to ask his own employer for a non- travelling project. Unfortunately Biff fails to obtain the money, and Willy is imperiously filed. The boys abandon their drunken father at the restaurant and walk off with the girls. Willy remembers the crucial moment when Biff’s faith in his father was shattered when he finds his father with a woman in the hotel room. Biff points out the fact that his father has built both his life and the lives of his sons on false yardsticks. Willy commits suicide to redeem himself from all the miseries and troubles. He hopes that his death insurance money helps his family to start afresh their life. In the concluding funeral at Willy’s grave, Linda discloses that the loan on their home is paid and that they are now free of debt. Apart from Billy’s attempts to take him to the West, Happy determines to stay back and make Willy’s dream of success come true. Glenn Mann comments “In Death of a Salesman memory is not the play. However, it is used as a technique to evoke all of Willy Loman’s dreams and his failures to realize them” (27).
The best novel feature of the play is for sure the unification of the past and present events. The story of the play, in fact, proceeds in two different gradations- factual time and reminisced time. The superficial plot really deals with the final twenty four hours of Willy’s life from his return home late Sunday night to his death Monday morning. The internal plot exemplifies the past memories of Willy that extends from his father to Billy’s failure in high school. It is not inaccurate to term the play as a domestic social drama and it is indeed accurate to consider Willy as the very victim of the capitalist society that values machines more than men. Willy is not the sole central character in the play. Moreover, the play can be seen as a conflict between a father and a son where Willy tries to grab hold of a phoney principle of material triumph and Biff clings to a more idealistic perception of acquiring liberty. As Galia Benziman points out
Verbalism and Symbolism are noteworthy facets of the play. The dialect and peculiar style of speech indicate their style of conduct. The characters use everyday words and expressions. The playwright uses pictorial descriptions to make the play realistic to the maximum. Willy’s elder brother Ben denotes the essence of social Darwinism or laissez-faire. The tape recorder is yet another key image. Howard’s association with the player is symbolic of the man’s unhealthy involvement with the machine that diminishes his responsibility to his fellow being. Willy’s frenetic inability to switch the player off symbolizes his vulnerability before a life that has carried out of control.
The action of the play takes place inside the protagonist’s mind and the technique resembles to that of the stream of consciousness which simultaneously projects the past and present of the character’s life. Impressive switches of actions take place through psychological conflict that dominates the play which finally causes the sons to become disillusioned with the father. The play also reveals Freudian symbolism. It exposes the Oedipal blood bath in accord with the suggestion of certain critics. There are several instances that display the unintended impetuses and drives of Willy and his sons. Even though the play deals with psychoanalysis, its main concern is with the communal and moral indices of the psychological relations and clashes. According to Stephen A. Lawrence “Willy is destroyed to the extent that both he and the society fail to acknowledge its demands” (549).
Death of a Salesman is the relationship between a man’s individuality and the image that the society stipulates up on him. The playwright shows the ways in which we disillusion those we love by having disenchanted ourselves. He understands the torment of family tensions, the reparations of friendship, and the soul- break that goes with ruined pride and lost poise. He is aware of the infidelities, not blind but open eyed, which are desired to upkeep mortals in their aloneness. As Robert A. Martin points out:
The tragedy inherent in Death of a Salesman is no longer only an American tragedy. It is part of the universal tragedy of love, grief, despair, and betrayal that today characterizes life in most countries of the world. With "a few right words" Miller has again and again expressed in his plays the thoughts and fears of people everywhere. And occasionally he has even pointed that whirling compass needle of their souls toward the stars (106).
Willy is absolutely a symbolic character who may rightly be regarded as an American Everyman. Willy is much more unequivocally an archetypal figure than any of the characters created by Miller. Willy’s difficulties are less subjective impasses that they are open issues. There is perfect blend of pathos and irony and has all the traits of a secret personal drama partly cloaked beneath the apparently innocent text.

Works Cited

Benziman, Galia. "Success, Law, and the Law of Success: Reevaluating "Death of a Salesman's" Treatment of the American Dream." JSTOR. South Atlantic Modern Language Association, 1 Jan. 2005. Web. 25 Feb. 2015. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/20064631>.
Berkowitz, Gerald M. American Drama of the Twentieth Century. London: Longman, 1992. Print.
Carson, Neil. Arthur Miller. New York: Grove, 1982. Print.
Chavkin, Allan. Death of a Salesman. The 1940s in America Hackensack: Salem, 2010. n. pag. Salem Online. Web. 24 Feb. 2015. http://online.salempress.com.
Lawrence, Stephen A. "The Right Dream in Miller's Death of a Salesman." JSTOR. National Council of Teachers of English, 1 Apr. 1964. Web. 25 Feb. 2015. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/373244>.
Man, Glenn. "Memory as Technique and Theme in "The Glass Menagerie" and "The Death of a Salesman"" JSTOR. The University of Notre Dame, 1 Jan. 1970. Web. 25 Feb. 2015. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/40066506>.
Martin, Robert A. "The Nature of Tragedy in Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman"" South Atlantic Modern Language Association, 1 Jan. 1996. Web. 23 Feb. 2015. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/3201170>.
Price, Steven. "Miller: 'Death of a Salesman' by Brenda Murphy; The Revisionist Stage: American Directors Reinvent the Classics by Amy S. Green; Anglo-American Interplay in Recent Drama by Ruby Cohn." JSTOR. Modern Humanities Research Association, 1 Oct. 1997. Web. 24 Feb. 2015. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/3734240>.