Death Of A Salesman By Arthur Miller Analysis
In ‘Death of a Salesman’ Arthur Miller presents the theme of disillusionment and depression, the struggle to cope with urbanization and lost identity. Willy Loman’s character as portrayed by Miller captures the trauma of one who cannot compromise and change with the new trend of a mechanized and modernized world and hence suffers from perpetual neurosis. The other characters like Biff, Happy, Bernard, and Charley contribute in bringing out the different aspects and nuances of Willy’s character. The play centres on the emotional and psychological journey of Willy from a stage of desperation to succumbing to depression. The conflict between rationality and a deliberate slipping into the dream world and the character of Willy who simply refuses to see reality make the story realistic and one with which one identifies.
Willy Loman’s character is said to be trapped in adolescence. Though he has reached the ripe age of sixty and is the father of two grown up sons he still idolizes the romantic concept of the rags to riches story. To him his uncle Benjamin represented ideal manhood. He is still mesmerized by the aura of his uncle who used to say on his accumulating huge wealth “Why, boys, when I was seventeen I walked into the jungle, and when I was twenty-one I walked out. [. . . ] And by God I was rich' (Miller 48). His obsession with virility and machismo might be understood as his failure to live up to society’s expectation of a successful male. He would boast about his being a successful salesman in his youth and tried to take refuge in an imaginative past. He wanted his sons to be what he could not. Willy wanted his sons to be popular, famous and well-established but failed to incorporate in them the tenacity and diligence required to be an achiever.
Like a child Willy would go by apparent and temporary moments of joy and victory but did not have the far-sight to chalk out the right directions for his sons. He lived in an illusion that his sons were the best and the brightest among all the other kids in the vicinity. But when he came to realize the truth it was too late. He has become an old man and both of his sons were men in their thirties and yet not settled with a job and a wife. He was all the more depressed when he found that the others have gone way ahead of him in terms of money, social status and established children with secure future. Charley whom he used to pity is father of a successful and renowned son. Willy’s disillusionment is complete when he understands that he had over estimated his children’s potential and had built false expectations of them.
Willy had been blind to reality when it came to self-knowledge. He hardly understood himself and his sons who were like him. His immaturity that made him escape into a colourful past also prevented him from accepting the present reality. The inability to face the truth and recognize his failure heightened his pathos and bitterness. His life seemed to be stagnated and fixated with false hopes that his sons would find a foothold in their respective lives (Ardolino). Like Willy his sons too seemed to be stuck in their boyhood. They seemed to be lost and still brooding over their good old school days, fun, games and girls. Biff, who was apparently more conscious than Happy, admits of his failure 'Maybe that's my trouble. I'm like a boy. I'm not married, I'm not in business, I just--I'm like a boy' (Miller 23). In comparison to the three Loman men the other male figures like Willy’s father, uncle Benjamin and Bernard are attributed with distinctive aspects of manhood.
Willy’s father was an adventurer who set forth to Alaska leaving behind Willy who was a toddler (Thompson) but he is regarded by Willy as one with great strength and life force (Thompson). Uncle Benjamin is described to be 'a stolid man, in his sixties, with a mustache and an authoritative air' (Miller 44). To Willy he embodies 'the mystery of success, the Eleusinian rite known only to initiates' (Porter 30). The meeting between Willy and Bernard is ironical as Willy had always held Bernard as inferior to his sons both in intelligence and looks. Willy never realized that his sons except for good looks neither have the competence nor urge to do something meaningful.
Willy grew hateful of the changing cityscape with the greenery giving way to concrete structures. He felt claustrophobic both physically and mentally. The very words “The way they boxed us in here. Bricks and windows, windows and bricks' (Miller 17) make his suffocation obvious. At this point it is worth mentioning that if Willy’s father and his uncle represented a romantic past of mystery and adventure, Bernard stands as an expression of present reality. Contrary to Willy’s ideal of a successful man Bernard is the achiever of the modern age. He is a man of few words and means business. Probably Willy’s ideal never existed and it was the dawning of the realization that devastated him. He understood that he did not fit in anywhere. He could not go back to the past that was part of his wishful thinking nor could he surrender to the demands of the modern urban culture.
In conclusion it might be said that Willy represents the common man who wishes to make it big someday and expects his children to realize his unfulfilled dream. Where Charley’s dream comes true Willy’s does not. Apparently Willy seems to be impractical and stubborn but within he is a dreamer and the tragedy lies not in his untimely death but in the death of his dreams. He was lonely till the end as he could not trust others to understand his sense of loss and alienation. In his death he is more a tragic hero who could not come to terms with defeat and loss of self-esteem.
Works Cited
- Ardolino, F. “Like father, like sons: Miller's negative use of sports imagery in Death of a Salesman”. Journal of Evolutionary Psychology 25. i–ii (2004): 32–9
- Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman. New York: Viking, 1949.
- Porter, Thomas. 'Acres of Diamonds: Death of a Salesman. ' Critical Essays on Arthur Miller. Ed. James J. Martine. Boston: Hall, 1979. 24-43.
- Thompson, T. W. “Miller’s Death of a Salesman”. The Explicator. 60. 3 (2002): 162-63.
