Death of a Salesman Written by Arthur Miller - Essay Example

DEATH OF THE SALESMAN (AMERICAN DREAM) Preface Introduction 2 Death of a Salesman and ic tragedy 3-8 Conclusion 9 Bibliography 10 Death of a Salesman Introduction The play by Arthur Miller Death of a Salesman is considered to among the best modern tragedies not only in American but in world dramaturgy. It shows contemporary social contradictions and failure of dreams on the example of personal tragedy of a salesman Willy Loman and his family. The play displays idea of American dream from different perspectives giving different meanings of it to the reader. It demonstrates a life example of a person whose aspirations and daydreams were ruined and turned to be false. The pursuit of American dream, which was considered to be based on financial prosperity and wealth, at the end turned into a serious problem and a number of misfortunes for Lomans family. The thoughts and beliefs of Willy Loman, the main character of the play, such as: “Be liked and you will never want.” (p.33) and “Riding on a smile and a shoeshine,” and “. . . personality always wins the day.” (p. 65) were common for contemporary American society of Loman and remain to be common nowadays. But as the result, unsuccessful salesman and unhappy man, Loman, understands that these ideas were nothing more than absurd and false. The main hero Loman evokes sympathy of the reader even though that his “life is a casting off” and he is not respected by his family either his wife or his children. Death of a Salesman and classic tragedy Loman’s life experience full of wins and loses, disappointment in people, who never understand him, customers who abuse him and his financial difficulties make us feel sympathy for him. From such point of view his life, full of misfortunes and his personal sufferings make him to look very tragic. By the words of Aristotle, famous Greek philosopher and the first theoretic of tragedies, the tragedy of the heroes should make the spectators feel sympathy and compassion to the main hero. But he also added that at the same time the heroes of the classic tragedy had to be strong personalities who might be even idealized. Aristotle notes that positive heroes of the tragedy have to be noble, and that they are personalities only in case they make noble decisions in the process of the play. The character and his actions have to be correspond, there has to be logics observed in his actions and words. But in Arthur Miller’s play The death of a salesman it’s not clear observed during the whole development of the plot. We observe nothing but a personal tragedy of an elderly man, who is 63 by now and who has quite a lot of personal and financial issues at the age when a usual person commonly uses and enjoys the fruits of his life, of his success and personal realization. After working for thirty four year period for his boss Hovard, Willy is fired: “You can’t eat the orange and throw the peel away--a man is not a piece of fruit!” (Miller, 61). Trying to overcome hardships and troubles that he has been facing during whole life, Willy realizes that today’s society has few opportunities and goods to be offered to an individual like he. “If it is true that tragedy is the consequence of a man’s total compulsion to evaluate himself justly, his destruction in the attempt posits a wrong or an evil in his environment. And this is precisely the morality of tragedy and its lesson. The discovery of the moral law, which is what the enlightenment of tragedy consists of, is not the discovery of some abstract or metaphysical quantity”. (Miller, Common man). The problem of Loman is that he had been living for a long time accepting social myths and ideals of his society, instead of accepting universal values and needs of a person. His personal fault is obvious as he was not a man who could accept and live in the world of illusions and do whatever he wanted, he was dependent upon circumstances lie every other person . Instead of that we see the opposite, his character was not fully determined and he was often illogical and unconfident in making the vital and important decisions, which affected his future life. This uncertainty and indefinite position turned into a personal tragedy at the end of his life. The lack of ability and to some extend the lack of desire to understand and feel the situation makes Loman similar to the tragic hero, who realizes at the end of his life nonsense and insignificance of himself and his personality. But the words of Aristotle that a tragic hero “lives for honor and fame” can not be fully applied to the case of Willy Loman. At the end of his life Loman becomes indifferent to his family members, his wife and two sons. His manner of talking to close people shows his ill nature and irritation. Lomans’ words “You’ll retire me for life on seventy goddamn dollars a week?” (Miller, 28) prove cruelty towards his sons Happy and Biff. Willy pressures hardly on his older son, Biff, to help him when he had a real time of need, “Hap, [Willy] got to understand that I’m not the man somebody lends that kind of money to,” (Miller, 81) Earlier, Biff makes a trip to Boston, not telling his Dad, to a hotel where Willy Loman stayed. He has an aim to ask Willy come back to New York and somehow persuade Biff’s math teacher to “pass Biff” in a math class so that it doesn’t affect his graduation. But in the hotel, Biff notices the ‘woman’ in his father’s room. Understandably Willy, being shocked by such an unexpected visit of his son, tells that the lady is in the room because of problems with shower in her room; but later he changes the story and telling that he is acquainted with her through the work :“They’re painting her room so I let her take a shower here. Go back, go back...” (Miller, 93). The atmosphere at Loman’s corresponds to his ill nature. He often complains on his wife and shouts on her when she intervenes in his conversations with Biff and Happy or interrupts him. To what Willy’s reaction is full of anger,“[to LINDA]: Stop interrupting!” (Miller, 47). The actions of Willy are justified, because his father had been never with him when he needed. Still Willy is a good father and husband, despite the cases and issues of misunderstanding and irritation which take place in his family. He devotes time family and especially he cares about kids. For the most part of the play he is one who doesn’t abuse wife, but his behavior still causes troubles to his close people. Loman faces troubles while he is working and has difficulties trying to sell anything that will make him money: “A hundred and twenty dollars! My god, if business don’t pick up I don’t know what I’m going to do!”, (Miller, 23). Even though he works hard, the results are not fruitful at all. The work of a salesman which takes a lot of time traveling became hard one day and since then Willy could barely cope with his responsibilities. The things turn from bad to worse when he gets fired from his job, because of a request to change his work to one closer to his house. He struggled with financial problems that were enlarged by debts, bills and no payments for his premium insurance. But in reality he doesn’t do anything reasonable to resist these circumstances, as he lives in illusion that everything will be changed for better one day. But the booming made jobs more competitive causing additional motivation for workers to work harder and better in order to save their workplaces. “For, if it is true to say that in essence the tragic hero is intent upon claiming his whole due as a personality, and if this struggle must be total and without reservation, then it automatically demonstrates the indestructible will of man to achieve his humanity.” (Miller, Common man) Seeing no exit in the chain of personal problems, Willy decides to make a very desperate deed: he gets into his car and crashes on purpose so that his family would be able to get money from his premium life insurance. Such epilogue suits Aristotle’s ideas about tragic hero: “His heroic qualities contribute to his downfall.” There is one more fact which serves as evidence that Death of salesman is a tragedy and it’s a possibility of victory of Willy Loman over his misfortunes. The character of the Willy Loman is developing during the play, he passes a long way full hardships, mistakes and faults before he understands that his views and outlooks on lots of daily and important things in life were wrong and that he has top change at least anything. This has a credit to be called a victory. As Miller writes in article Tragedy and the Common Man : “… that for a piece to be truly tragic an author can not hesitate to leave anything out and must put in all the information they have “to secure their rightful place in their world.” (Miller, A. Tragedy and the common man) Although we don’t observe Willy as a hero who is able to overcome the difficulties and hardships himself, some kind of a “greater force” prevents him from reacting and striking back. The suicide committed by Willy gave an excellent example for Biff, his son, to think about. But nevertheless it was Willy’s fault, who failed to teach his son to be persistent and diligent; otherwise Biff would succeed working hard. Still the act of the suicide committed by Willy set an example for his children to thihnk about. It’s a big shame for the main hero that it appeared to be the only way to solve his financial problems in order to support the family. None will argue that suicide never gives the relief from the problems and anyhow helps in personal situation. But Willy Loman made such sacrifice for a better life of his family. From any perspectives it was not the smartest decision, but still it was a courage one, and it makes him to be a tragic hero. Conclusion It can be argued that the Death of a salesman has a lot of unclearness in order to be called a tragedy, as the hero is a common man, he has nothing much that would distinguish him from the rest of the crowd and would make us sympathize him, in a word he is not a classic tragedy hero of Ancient Greek tragedies or to the heroes of Shakespeare tragedies. But the fact that he changed his life and confessed in his faults distinguishes him from others. To my point of view in daily routine realities of modern life it means many more than heroic and romantic actions and words of Ancient Greek tragedy heroes or those of Shakespeare. Bibliography 1. Miller, Arthur Death of a Salesman Penguin Books,1998 2. Miller, Arthur Tragedy and the Common Man .(An essay in which Miller states that the common man can be a tragic hero) available on web resource: http://theliterarylink.com/miller1.html 3. Atkinson, Brooks. The Lively Years, 1973 (Brief discussions of the outstanding plays of 1920-73 by the former New York Times Drama critic) Da Capo Press 1985 4. Gerald Weales, ed., Arthur Miller: Death of a Salesman New York: The Viking Critical Library, 1981 5. Howes, Alan B Teaching Literature to Adolescents: Plays Glenview, Illinois: Scott, Foresman and Co., 1968, pp. 75-77. 6. Husain, Martha Ontology and the Art of Tragedy: An Approach to Aristotles Poetics Suny Series in Ancient Greek Philosophy Pape State University of New York Press, 2001 7. Murphy, Brenda Abbotson, Susan C. W. Understanding Death of a Salesman: A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historical Documents Greenwood Press 2000 Read More