Function Of The Symbolism In The Death Of A Salesman - Research Paper Example

Function Of The Symbolism In The Death Of A Salesman Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman is the poignant story of the fall of a man honestly chasing the American dream. Willy Loman believes that by working hard and buying into the consumer driven lifestyle of 1950s America he can succeed in life. However, Willy does not achieve his dreams but is instead ripped apart by them. In this carefully constructed play, it is Miller’s use of symbolism,perhaps more than any other factor, which communicates a sense of inevitable failure to the reader. Griffin states that ‘the play’s symbolism is built on contrasts: the everyday and familiar with the faraway and unattainable, the happy camaraderie of the past with the lonely, frustrating present, dreams with reality, and the destructive, self-centred law of the jungle with love.’ (Griffin 53) This essay seeks to establish the veracity of this claim. By focusing particularly on the contrast between dreams and reality, this essay will establish how Miller’s use of symbolism operates in this play, and how it succeeds in bringing the deep tragedy of the play alive. It will focus on Willy as the principle character trapped between dreams and reality, and how his relationship with his own home symbolically reflects his position. Within the play, Willy Loman exists in three states; semi-understanding (reality), denial (dream) and transition (a shifting situation between dream and reality). In the first of these states, which are few to begin with and become increasingly rare as the play continues, Willy manages to connect, at least partially, with the situation in which he finds himself. The situation is one of repression and frustration and his there are many metaphors within his speech which reflect this sense of hopelessness. In the opening conversation of the play, between Willy and his wife Linda, Willy returns home in confusion and mentally exhausted. His work is getting too much for him and he is unable to concentrate even on driving his car. Willy is clearly carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders and, as a result of his conscious frustration, Willy makes some chillingly honest statements, even if he himself is not aware of the powerful messages his words convey. Linda and Willy discuss their son, Biff, who has not realised the dream of his father and become rich. Instead, he has led something of a nomadic life, wandering between farms. In this moment both Biff and their other son, Happy, are living at home. However, Willy, exasperated, still complains that ‘figure it out. Work a lifetime to pay off a house. You finally own it, and there’s nobody to live in it.’ This offhand comment is in fact filled with much more meaning than might initially appear to be. Even if Happy and Biff were to move out, Linda and Willy would still remain within the house. However, Willy’s comment that ‘there’s nobody to live in it’ is a metaphor for the level of non-existence that he has been reduced to. By Willy’s own standards, man is only successful if he becomes rich. Willy has not realised his dreams and so he is a non-entity. By his own words he excludes himself from his own household. Willy is an empty shell of a man. As Wilmeth (2000: 111) succinctly explains,‘Willy Loman becomes a symbol of the forgotten little man who is a victim of the materialism of society as well as a victim of his own personal mistakes and agonies’. This comment, however, has another, more profound significance which links the house with its strikingly symbolic role in the play. This is a play which takes place exclusively in the house of the Lomans. The set is, therefore, of crucial symbolic importance within the play itself. In the opening stage directions, Miller describes the play in the following way; As more light appears, we see a solid vault of apartment houses around the small, fragile-seeming home. An air of the dream clings to the place, a dream rising out of reality...The entire setting is wholly, or, in some places, partially transparent...Whenever the action is in the present the actors observe the imaginary wall-lines, entering the house only through its door at the left. But in the scenes of the past these boundaries are broken, and characters enter or leave a room by stepping ‘through’ a wall on to the forestage. The house itself is one of Miller’s most powerful tools in the construction of the symbolism of his play. The description opens with the ‘solid vault of the apartment houses’ in juxtaposition with the ‘small, fragile-seeming home’. The simple house of Willy Loman has become surrounded by towering apartment blocks. While the apartments are strong, real and a sign of development, the Loman household has sunk into nothingness. The march of progress has left the Lomans behind, and their house represents this. Willy is actually aware and resentful of this. The apartment buildings have come to represent for him a kind of prison. He is trapped within his own home, threatened by the blocks, just as he is trapped within his own futile dream of success. He simply cannot keep up with progress. Willy makes a series of poignant statements to this effect. He comments initially on ‘the way they boxed us in here. Bricks and windows. Bricks and windows.’ The house is suffocating him, representing all the worries and disappointments that Willy carries through life with him. Willy also feels threatened by the apartment blocks. They represent progress and he resents the way the constantly invade his life, reminding him all that he has not achieved. Talking with Linda he remarks that ‘the street is lined with cars. There’s not a breath of fresh air in the neighbourhood. The grass don’t grow any more, you can’t raise a carrot in the backyard. They should’ve had a law against apartment houses.’ Here, Willy blames the lack of fresh air on the apartment buildings, reminiscing back to an almost Arcadian idyll of agriculture and fresh air. Indeed, as Jacobson (1975: 256) concurs, the play ‘juxtaposes Loman’s pastoral longings for the past with the overbearing actualities of the city towering around him. From this statement, Miller makes it clear that Willy, for all his attempts to live the American dream, is in fact instinctively attached to a simpler time. His current lifestyle will never make him happy. Willy continues his rant against the apartment blocks, remembering how fruit trees were cut down to make room for it. He complains that ‘they should’ve arrested the builder for cutting those down. They massacred the neighbourhood [Lost] More and more I think of those days, Linda. This time of year it was lilac and wisteria. And ten the peonies would come out, and the daffodils. What a fragrance in this room!’ This is then immediately compared with ‘smell the stink from that apartment house! And another one on the other side...How can they whip cheese?’ In these two contrasting statements, which centre on the symbolism of the house, Willy’s true priorities become clear. He longs for the sweet smell of nature, not the stench of the modern city. This stress between his attempts to adapt to modernity and his instinct for the simple life prove too much and Willy finally begins to fall apart. It is significant that at the very moment that Miller marks Willy as ‘lost’ the discourse shifts from the apartment blocks to the past. Willy escapes into an earlier and easier time, to try to cope with his difficult relationship with the present. Once he returns to the discussion of the apartment blocks he can only managed two comments before he burst out with ‘how can they whip cheese?’ Neither the past nor the present can provide Willy with solace, and so he returns to his anger over an earlier conversation with Linda. This psychological breakdown is traced throughout the play and as Rathore (2004: 148 ) comments ‘symbolism is largely psychological in Death of a Salesman as all the bewilderment, illusions, false hopes and ideals of Willy keep entering his life and crushes him in the end’. The house is a constant reminder of this. In the opening stage directions, Miller describes the house as ‘wholly or in some places partially transparent’. This is a further reinforcement of the symbolic role it has within the play. Home is not a refuge for Willy. It is not a private place where he can escape from the stresses of the world. Rather, it is where his weaknesses and fears are most exposed. The transparency of the house is representative of Willy’s inability to keep up his pretence of happiness. It is, further, representative of the effect of this unhappiness on his relationship with the rest of his family. The transparent house is of central importance to the play because, as Gray (2004: 704) notes ‘this is also a tale of domestic realism in which Miller uses elements of expressionism and symbolism to transmute the story into a tragedy.’ The transparency of the house’s walls reflects the superficiality of the relationships between the people within it. Willy no longer has an understanding of his sons. Indeed, Biff comments of his father that ‘I just can’t get near him’. The walls of the houses may be non-existent, but there a strong psychological walls built between the characters. Miller plays on this metaphor of the house when he explains that ‘whenever the action is in the present the actors observe the imaginary wall-lines...but in the scenes of the past these boundaries are broken’. The past was a time when the family had a better understanding and where nothing stood between their understanding each other. They can move freely around the set because they are emotionally and mentally liberated. In the present, they must respect the (invisible) walls of the house, because they are hemmed in by their own fears, disappointments and confusions. Willy, however, is painfully ignorant of what his house really represents. The house continually forces him away from understanding and into his dream world. Willy wants success, and he measures success in terms of financial security. Money is, in his confused understanding of the American dream, the most important thing. The house therefore, as his most valuable asset, continually forces him to believe that, in buying it, he has achieved something in life. His relationship with his sons is strained, as is his relationship with his wife through his emotional and psychological instability. It is in the house, therefore, that Willy attempts to seek solace, unaware that it is nothing but an illusion. In the following dialogue, Willy and Linda are discussing the house; Linda: After this payment, Willy, the house belongs to us. Willy: It’s twenty-five years! Linda: Biff was nine years old when we bought it. Willy: Well, that’s a great thing. To weather a twenty-five year mortgage is- Linda: It’s an accomplishment. Wily: All the cement, the lumber, the reconstruction I put in this house! There ain’t a crack to be found in it any more. All that Willy has worked for, a house of his own, has almost been realised. Indeed, it is one of the great tragedies of the play that Willy is so delighted that the house will soon be his, but also reduced to ruination by the very effort of getting there. The terms which Willy uses in this dialogue compare his relationship with the house to that of a marriage. He refers to ‘weathering a twenty-five year mortgage’ in the same way that one might discuss the ups and down of a partnership nearing its silver wedding. This is a tragically poignant use of words which sees the house take on ever more complex meanings. In Willy’s mind, the house has taken on more importance than his family, more importance even than his own wife. His role is to provide for his family, to support them economically, to put a roof over their heads and food in their stomachs. But he has forgotten the importance of human interaction and the importance of love. Throughout the play Willy fails to understand the mistake he is making, and this scene is no exception. He proclaims that ‘all the cement, the lumber, the reconstruction I put in this house! There ain’t a crack to be found in it any more.’ The physical construction of the house is strong and this is all Willy sees. He does not understand that the physical construction of the house must, through the relationships within it, become a home. This is what will make it strong, not cement, lumber and reconstruction. Willy claims that there is not a crack in his house. This stands in striking contrast to the transparent building which the audience sees. Willy believes that his house is strong, when in fact it has crumbled around him and disappeared. Willy has no where left to go. Everything he has ever believe in has crumble around him, and vanished. Roudane (1995: 75) comments on this relationship between spoken word and set that ‘Miller sought in Death of a Salesman the verbal equivalents for his character troubled inner selves...stage symbol [was] to assume [an] important role, [a] role accentuating the conflicts that the Lomans articulated to audiences through language.’ Conflict between set and characters is, therefore, at the very heart of this play. The house is present from the plays inception to its tragic end. It marks the opening and has the final say as the curtain falls. Linda is the last person to speak, just as she was the first. These are her closing lines; Linda: I made the last payment on the house today. Today, dear. And there’ll be nobody home. [A sob rises in her throat] We’re free and clear. [Sobbing more fully, released] We’re free. [Biff comes slowly towards her.] We’re free...we’re free... The house has been paid off, and Willy is dead. All his hard work as a salesman has come to nothing. Linda’s ‘there’ll be nobody home’ echoes Willy’s words at the beginning of the play, but this time they reflect reality. Willy will never return to his house, because it, through what it represents, has ruined him. Linda’s cries of ‘we’re free’ may appear to refer to their freedom from their mortgage, but they also symbolically represent Willy’s freedom, in death. The house, which has stood symbolically for Willy’s ruination throughout the play, is the final witness at his death. Death of a Salesman, therefore, is a play haunted by symbolism. It pervades the speech of all the characters and is reflected in the props they use. However, most dominatingly of it, symbolism is contained within the very set itself. The house is ominously present in the opening lines of the play, deliberately used by Miller to foretell the impending doom, and it remains so until the play’s bitter end. Further, the metaphor of the house works its way into the characters’, and particularly Willy’s, speech so that their words become laden with additional meaning. This adds a profound sense of inevitability to the play. From the outset it seems that Willy is doomed, and his relationship with the house only acts to reinforce this in the mind of the viewer. The transparent house allows the audience not only to look into the life of Willy Loman but, more importantly, to understand his soul. Bibliography Primary Sources Miller, Arthur (1998) Death of a Salesman: Certain Private Conversations in Two Acts and a Requiem. Ed.Bigsby, C.W.E. London: Penguin Classics Secondary Sources Gray, Richard J., (2004) A History of American Literature. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell Griffin, Alice (1996) Understanding Arthur Miller. South Carolina: University of South Carolina Pres Jacobson, Irving (1975) ‘Family Dreams in Death of a Salesman’ American Literature. Vol. 47, No. 2 pp.247 – 258 Murphy, Brenda (1995) Miller, Death of a Salesman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Ram, Atma (1988) Perspectives on Arthur Miller. New York: Abhinav Publications Rathore, Sushila (2004) ‘Reflection of Reality though Symbolism in Death of a Salesman’ in Critical Perspectives on American Literature. Ed. Raman, Meenakshi. New York: Altlantic Publishers Roudane, Matthew C., (1995) ‘Death of a Salesman and the poetics of Arthur Miller’ in The Cambridge Companion to Arthur Miller. Ed. Bigsby, C.W.E. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Wilmeth, Don B., (2000) The Cambridge History of American Theatre: Post-World War II to the 1990s. Ca,bridge: Ca,bridge University Press Read More