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Death of a Salesman

Originally Published: 1949

Pages: 448

Available on: Kindle, Paperback, Hardcover

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Death of A Salesman is a tragedy that was written by the famous American playwright, Arthur Miller, featured on Broadway and winner of the Pulitzer Prize. It is a classic that is widely considered to be one of the greatest American dramas, and should still be heralded in American literature for years to come, as it deals with ever-present themes of complicated family dynamics, identity, ambition, self-denial, and more. 

The play is complicated and heart-wrenching; we readers follow a family dynamic imploding internally over past mistakes, deception, and disappointment. Death of A Salesman explores the role of family and identity, the destructive nature of self-denial and how a selfish moment of weakness can impact lives for years to come.

The main characters of the play are those of the Loman family: parents, Willy and Linda, and their two sons, Biff and Happy. The play spans only a 24-hour period, but reaches back in time to a crucial moment that impacted the family forever. 15 years before this moment in time, a young Biff made the horrifying discovery of his (seemingly) perfect father’s infidelity. The shock of the uncovered affair shifted the boy’s admiration and trust to a tone of denial and deception that took over Willy’s life.

Willy is a salesman, a self-made man who pursued the American dream with all his might, but fell short and had been scrambling for years to cover his failure, both as a husband and a businessman—from his family and himself. In the play, Willy has come to the end of his career and life, looked back on it, and seen only barrenness. Unable to handle the bleak reality of his failures, he takes his own life at the play’s conclusion.

Willy’s state of mind is tortuous; he prefers to escape to happier times, to reminiscences when his sons were young and still believed in the perfect, impenetrable perception of their father. Willy searches, searches, searches; he rambles on and on about random, insignificant details; he complains about silly things; he sifts through his memories like pages, desperately seeking evidence of accomplishment and fulfillment, any evidence that he had raised his two boys right after all. In Death of A Salesman, present and past, truth and falsity, weave into a suffocating puzzle of hallucination and surreality. 

Over the course of the play, the difference between his sons Biff and Happy become a highlight of the story: how they cope with and differently interpret their father’s disintegrated life, career, and mentality. Happy wishes to keep his father in a near coma-like state of “happy” passivity, of denial and pleasant deception. Happy’s fate is cut out before him; he  continues to conform to society, and becomes attached to the same superficial dream of a successful business career and aspiration to greatness that had captivated and destroyed his father.

Biff, on the other hand, becomes the protagonist and strong character of the play. He is able to see his father as the weak and pitiable (but still highly determined), and loving man that Willy is, and he decides to break free of the direction that ruined his father. The play is in a fashion a bildungsroman, for Biff realizes, in this course of events spanning 24 hours, that he had been pursuing the wrong dream and career in business; he had been pursuing someone else's dream all along, 

This play is certainly not a pick-me-up; it is solemn and sad.

The story of Death of A Salesman strikes chords with readers, for everyone can recall the feeling or specific shocking moments of incredulous disappointment or surprise as we grow out of childhood, when our perspectives of our parents change for good. Parent figures are hardly human to their children until, eventually, their human flaws and weaknesses are brought to the light, changing the way their children see them. A child's awe and adoration eventually fades into either an ongoing, more meaningful admiration and respect, or into a traumatic loss, crippling the relationship. Such was the case with Biff and Willy; his trust in adult figures is suddenly betrayed at the discovery of his father’s affair.

You should read this play if you appreciate bildungsroman, have a flair for the dramatic, want to increase your knowledge in classic American literature and theatre, and are interested in the themes of family, tragedy, and the long-standing American dream.

Arthur Miller is a much-loved playwright and screenwriter, also known for the plays All My Sons and The Crucible. Fun fact, he was married to Marilyn Monroe for five years!

Enjoy this quick and thought-provoking play!