Death_of_a_Salesman

Dramatic Dreams Death of a Salesman, a gripping drama written by Arthur Miller, illustrates the suffering and hardships experienced by a mercurial 60-year old salesman who is on an unusual journey to achieve the American dream. Similar to the numerous early American dramas, the main character has a dream of attaining prosperity and status in his community. Death of a Salesman unveiled the emotional breakdown suffered by the play’s tragic hero, Willy Loman, at the dramatic moment when he realized the only way he would be able to support his family was to commit suicide so they could obtain his life insurance money. Death of a Salesman mixes many of his personal interests, such as mythology and fantasy, and his remarkable life experiences into a landmark play that will be read, studied, and watched for many years to come. Born on October 17, 1915 in New York City, Arthur Asher Miller was the son of a highly regarded woman’s clothing (mainly coats) owner. Unfortunately, his moderately wealthy Jewish-American family ended up losing their business during the depression and had to move to Brooklyn, New York. He attended Abraham Lincoln High School. Graduating in 1932, he tried going to the city college, but quit after only two short weeks. Miller then started working at as a store clerk for a couple years to earn enough money to be able to attend the college of his choice—The University of Michigan. In Michigan, he faced harsh anti-semitism for the first time; he was the only Jew working there. The anti-semitism he faced motivated him to write a play he named Focus in 1945. He was exempt from military service during World War II because of a football injury to his left knee—which could have been a possible motivation for making Biff Loman a washed up football player in his play Death of a Salesman. As a journalism major, Miller became the reporter and part-time editor of Michigan Daily, the school’s newspaper. During his time working at that job, he wrote his first play in 1936, No Villain, which was later revised and renamed They Too Rise, won the Hopwood Award in drama. He then wrote other noteworthy plays such as Honors at Dawn and The Great Disobedience before graduating from the University of Michigan in 1938 with a BA in English and marrying his first wife, Mary Grace Slattery. He also had two more wives—including movie star Marilyn Monroe. Miller had a brief affair with Monroe during his marriage to his first wife, and eventually left her for Monroe. He may have incorporated this sentiment into Death of a Salesman when Willy Loman cheats on his wife, Linda His last wife was a photographer named Ingeborg Morath, whom he married on February 17, 1962. They had two children named Daniel and Rebecca. After Inge’s death in 2002, eleven more of Miller’s works were published. Unfortunately, after his final play opened, Finishing the Picutre, Miller experienced congestive heart failure and died on February 10, 2005. He is considered to be one of the greatest play writes of the 20th century. Throughout Death of a Salesman, Miller uses many allusions of mythology. As in his other works such as The Cruicible, Miller references God, the Devil, and other symbolic Gods. For example, in Death of a Salesman, Willy referred to Biff as some sort of God due to his outstanding athleticism. On page 68, Willy says, “Like a young God, Hercules—something like that.” This quote composed Biff’s football talent to that of Hercules, Zeus’s son, who was famous for his strength. He also claimed that both his sons, Biff and Happy, were built as though they were Gods. This is shown when Willy said, “Thank the Almighty God you both were built like Adonises,” on page 33. The name Adonis is a variation of the word “Adoni” meaning lord or powerful being. In other words, Willy felt as though God blessed his sons to be built as a powerful being or lord. Biff also called his father a Prince throughout the book. As Lawrence Rossinger noted, “A real Willy might use “Adonises” or Hercules” in the sentences assigned to him just as he and Biff might call someone a “Prince.” Rossinger revealed this while thinking about the all of the references that Miller set into the lines of the play. Without the conflict of fantasy versus reality in Death of a Salesman, it would not have been nearly as intriguing. Despite causing confusion at certain points, the battle between the two created a very interesting atmosphere. Just as Leah Hidomi said, “The conflicting inner selves that make up Willy Loman’s many-sided persona represent his experience of the outer world refracted through the distorting medium of his fantasies,” Willy Loman’s outlandish fantasies conflict with the reality of the outer world. Attempting to part his visions and illusions from actual occurrences, others saw him as if he was senseless and crazy. For example, he often imagined his deceased brother Ben Loman, and had full conversations, convinced he was talking to a real person. On page 52, the illusion of Ben says, "When I was seventeen I walked into the jungle, and when I was twenty-one I walked out. And by "God I was rich.” The topic of this quote, Ben’s luck in getting very rich with little effort, is what Ben and Willy usually talk about during Willy’s visions. Willy uses Ben’s success as a benchmark of what his sons can achieve. The most significant theme in both Death of a Salesman and Arthur Miller’s childhood is the quest to achieve the obscure American dream. As mentioned earlier, as a child Arthur Miller was forced to move because of his father’s business failing. In the book, Willy bases his life on trying to support his family by remaining a successful salesman and achieving the American dream, as his brother Ben had. James E. Walton once noted, “Willy Loman [is] in pursuit of the elusive American dream. Material goods, for many the essence of the American dream, take on importance for [him]. For Willy Loman, it is the refrigerator, the car, and the house. He struggles to keep up with the payments, borrowing money at times. His wife, Linda, informs us during the requiem that she has made the final payment on the house on the same day that Willy Loman was buried.” In a nutshell, this explains the futility of Willy’s struggles to take care of material items such as a refrigerator, a car, or paying off the mortgage on his house. Willy tried to instill his dreams own into his boys, for he could not fulfill them himself. Neither of them could accomplish what they were expected to, but out of the two only Biff gave up. Happy was determined to complete the tasks at hand to make sure his father did not die in vain. Happy once said, “I'm gonna show you and everybody else that Willy Loman did not die in vain. He had a good dream. It's the only dream you can have - to come out number-one man. He fought it out here, and this is where I'm gonna win it for him.” This shows his impressive fortitude towards accomplish the tasks at hand. Ultimately, it seems that Arthur Miller created his characters based on experiences he had and events he experienced in his life. Events in his book such as Biff’s washed up football career and Biff’s father cheating on his wife, Linda, intertwine with with own life. Just like Willy in Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller’s childhood was composed of his father’s quest to achieve the American dream as a salesman. Miller feels as though the American dream is the base for which most American dramas are written. He once said, "The American Dream is the largely unacknowledged screen in front of which all American writing plays itself out.” This is the basis for which he wrote Death of a Salesman.