Desire in Death of a Salesman - Essay Example

Desire in Death of a Salesman When Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman was written and produced in 1949, America was in the midst of profound and powerful tensions and contradictions. On the one hand, the nation had just won a major world war, bringing with an unprecedented sense of confidence, prosperity, and security. On the other hand, the Cold War with the Soviet Union was just beginning, and the nation was rife with anxiety about Communism, bitter racial conflict, and a huge economic disparity between the rich and poor. Artists and writers like Arthur Miller, dissatisfied with the status quo, were influenced by existential philosophy and Freudian psychology, both of which took off in popularity during the post-WWII years. Death of a Salesman is a scathing criticism of the American Dream, which stated that success was equated with the collection of material goods and social acceptance. Miller, like many post-modern writers, was captivated by the psychology of Sigmund Freud, which defined human existence through the human consciousness. The Death of a Salesman has been heavily influenced by psychoanalysis as described by Freud. Salesman was analyzed by psychoanalysts almost immediately after its debut on Broadway in 1949. According to Susan Haedicke, literary scholars have always been fascinated with the psychological processes of the Lomans and have analyzed the play in purely psychoanalytical terms. As a matter of fact, many of Miller’s plays tend to lend themselves well to Freudian analysis. Willy Loman’s flashbacks, for example, are a type of dreams and full of Freudian potential. They have been discussed at length and are the cause of Willy’s friends and family’s concern for his sanity throughout the play. BIFF: Why does Dad mock me all the time? HAPPY: He’s not mocking you, he... BIFF: Everything I say there’s a twist of mockery on his face. I can’t get near him. HAPPY: He just wants you to make good, that’s all. I wanted to talk to you about Dad for a long time, Biff. Something’s—happening to him. He—talks to himself. BIFF: I noticed that this morning. But he always mumbled. HAPPY: And you know something? Most of the time he’s talking to you. BIFF: What’s he say about me? HAPPY: I can’t make it out. BIFF: What’s he say about me? HAPPY: I think the fact that you’re not settled, that you’re still kind of up in the air... BIFF: There’s one or two other things depressing him, Happy. (1.131-140) Another aspect of Miller’s play that lends itself to Freudian analysis is the theme of desire. Freud has much to say about desire, and not just sexual desire. Death of a Salesman is full of characters longing for something. Willy Loman, for example, desperately wants the American Dream, and his son Biff desperately wants his father’s love and approval. For Freud, one’s desires express themselves in one’s dreams; Miller uses the motif of Willy’s flashbacks, which are really hallucinations that only he and the audience can see, to present Willy’s dreams, and by extension, his desires. According to Freud, “Desire is the subject’s yearning for a fundamentally lost object” (“Subject’s Desire”). There is nothing as lost as the American Dream for Willy, and for Biff, his father’s love. For Freud, any search for an object is an attempt to “refine” the object of one’s desire. All the characters in Salesman, especially Willy and Biff, spend their time attempting to do this. Being a tragedy, they both fail—Willy because the American Dream is an unattainable goal, at least for him, and Biff because his father’s love and acceptance depends upon Biff’s success and for, like Willy, accepting the Dream. Miller’s point is that the American Dream is impossible to obtain, making the Lomans as a family, as well as individuals, tragic figures. No wonder Willy descended into madness and resorted to hallucinations and eventually, to suicide. Fortunately for Biff, however, he was able to escape the unattainable by rejecting his father’s dreams, BIFF: No! Nobody’s hanging himself, Willy! I ran down eleven flights with a pen in my hand today. And suddenly I stopped, you hear me? And in the middle of that office building, do you hear this? I stopped in the middle of that building, and I saw—the sky. I saw the things that I love in this world. The work and the food and time to sit and smoke. And I looked at the pen and said to myself, what the hell am I grabbing this for? Why am I trying to become what I don’t want to be? What am I doing in an office, making a contemptuous, begging fool of myself, when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am! Why can’t I say that, Willy? (2.882) Biff’s brother Happy, however, does not have as much insight as Biff and vows to follow in his father’s footsteps. Biff is forced, perhaps fortunately for him, to end his quest for Willy’s love and acceptance when his father kills himself. Biff is then saved from the pointlessness of pursuing the Dream and is saved from madness. It is fitting that Willy’s desires express themselves in his hallucinations. For Freud, dreams are images of our desires. As Gale’s dictionary of psychoanalysis states, “Thus for Freud desire is satisfied just once, and any subsequent manifestation of desire is only an impulse that aims to reestablish, sometimes to the point of (psychotic) hallucination, the image of an irretrievably lost object.” Freud calls this “nothing but a substitute for a hallucinatory wish.” This is very definition of madness, exactly what Willy has been driven to by his tragic pursuit of the American Dream. Biff has seemed to escape his father’s tragic end by giving up the Dream. For Arthur Miller, sanity can only return to the Lomans, and by extension, to the American people, by giving up on the unattainable American Dream. In that way, Miller tapped into the psyche of an entire culture, and through his presentation of the Lomans and their tragic desires, demonstrated the insanity of much of American culture and values. Works Cited Haekicke, Susan. “Arthur Miller: A Bibliographic Essay.” The Cambridge Companion to Arthur Miller. Ed. Christopher Bigsby. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 273-294. Print. Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman. 1949. Print. “Subjects Desire.” International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis. The Gale Group, Inc, 2005. Web. Read More