Analysis of A Tragic Character of Death of a Salesman
INRODUCTION
As is known to all, one’s personal experience of life and social environment
undoubtedly will affect his views towards life and his notions of art. As Arthur Miller’s explained, “The writer who wants to describe life must describe his own
experience(5).” In addition, “the best work that anybody ever writes is the work that is on the verge of embarrassing him---where he puts himself on the line(6).” According to Walden, Arthur Miller’s social conscience stemmed from the economic effects of the Depression which he experienced when he was a young man(189). Therefore, it is basic and necessary to know about his growing background and his works before introduction and analysis of Death of a Salesman.
Arthur Miller was a prolific American playwright, essayist, and prominent figure in twentieth-century American theater, born in New York City on October 17, 1915. He was the son of Isidore Miller who was a Jewish businessman migrated from Austria, and spent his first fourteen years of life in Harlem, a middle-class neighborhood of mixed ethic people. Miller’s childhood was comfortable, but the Great Depression of 1929 inevitably had great impact on his views about life. His career as a playwright began while he was a student at the University of Michigan. His successful plays
include All My Sons, Death of Salesman, The Crucible, A View from the Bridge, After the Fall, Broken Glass and so on, among which Death of Salesman is the most
successful one. Since its premiere in 1949, it has been widely acclaimed and won the Pulitzer Prize. Many critics described Death of Salesman as the first great American tragedy, and Miller gained eminence as a man who understood the deep essence of the United States.
The story of shows Death of Salesman the last twenty-four hour about the life of Willy Loman, an diligent traveling salesman, whose values, ideas and vanity is smashed into pieces by the fact that he is a total failure both in his family and the society. The postwar economic boom has shaken up his life, which causes that he is eventually fired and begins to hallucinate about significant events from his past. Linda, Willy’s loyal, loving wife, suffers through Willy’s grandiose dreams and
self-delusions. She has nurtured the family through all of Willy’s misguided attempts
at success, and her emotional strength and perseverance support Willy until his collapse. Biff Loman, Willy’s thirty-four-year-old elder son, represents Willy’s vulnerable, poetic and tragic side. He cannot ignore his instincts, which tell him to abandon Willy’s paralyzing dreams and move out West to work with his hands. However, he ultimately fails to reconcile his life with Willy’s expectations of him. Happy Loman, Willy’s thirty-two-year- old younger son, represents Willy’s sense of self-importance, ambition and blind servitude to societal expectations. Happy has lived in Biff’s shadow all of his life, but he compensates by nurturing his relentless sex drive and professional ambition.
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work. In the book Death of Salesman, there exists three themes. First, there is no doubt that one of themes is the American Dream. Willy believes absorbedly in what the promise of the American Dream that aspiration, hard work and individual enterprise will be rewarded with prosperity, regardless of family background. Unfortunately, Willy clings to the superficial qualities of attractiveness and popularity, which is at odds with a more gritty, more rewarding understanding of the American Dream that
identifies hard work without complaints as the key to success. Willy’s blind faith in his distorted version of the American Dream leads to his rapid psychological decline when he is unable to accept the disparity between the Dream and his own life. Second, it refers to abandonment. Willy’s life charts a course from one abandonment to the next, leaving him in greater despair each time. When Willy is very young, his father leaves him neither a tangible money nor an intangible legacy. Then his brother departs for Alaska, leaving his to lose himself in a stunted version of American Dream.
Through these experience, Willy develops a fear of abandonment. However, when his son Biff fins out about his adultery, Biff also drops Willy. Third, it’s about betrayal. Willy’s primary obsession throughout the play is what he considers to be Biff’s betrayal of his ambitions for him. However, Biff’s betrayal stems from Biff’s
discovery of Willy’s affairs with The Woman---a betrayal of Linda’s love. Besides, there is another betrayal that Willy has betrayed him with his unending stream of ego-stroking lies.
In Death of Salesman, Miller creates a colorful and vivid world and depict a society full of problems, which are all the reflection of life and the playwright’s questioning of the present social value.
Analysis of A Tragic Character
The whole play is written both in time sequence and in accordance with the
protagonist’s psychological movement. The structure of events is the direction
reflection of Willy’s view on his life and lives in his own world full of contradictions. “Young Biff and Young Happy appear from the direction Willy was addressing(Miller
68).” “Charley has appeared in the doorway (Miller 120).” Like these examples, past and present flow into one another perfectly. So in Death of Salesman, Miller not only depicts what happened in an 24 hours about the life of Willy Loman, but also
describes the whole life of Willy. Besides, from depicting past, we can see that the purpose is to escape the depressing present.
At the beginning of the play, Willy suffers from crippling self-delusion. His
consciousness is so fractured that he cannot maintain a consistent fantasy. In one
moment, he calls Biff, “Biff is a lazy bum (Miller 22).” In the next, he says, “There’s one thing about Biff---he’s not lazy (Miller 23).” his later estimate of his car is at odds---one moment he calls it a piece of trash, the next “the greatest car ever built
(Miller 91).” Willy changes his interpretation of reality according to his psychological needs at the moment. Labeling Biff a lazy bum allows Willy to deflect Linda’s
criticism of his harangue against Biff’s lack of material success, ambition and focus. Besides, denying Biff’s laziness enables Willy to hold onto the hope that Biff will someday fulfill his expectations of him in some capacity. This kind of satire fully shows Willy’s self-delusion and failure.
In the meanwhile, by the time the play begins, it introduces the strangely unnatural tone of the dialogue, which appears more attractive. For example,
“Maybe it’s your glasses. You never went for your new glasses (Miller 10).”
“I’m the New England man. I’m vital in New England (Miller 14)”.
and there is persistent vexed questioning, “Why do you get American when I like Swiss (Miller 24).” The above sentences shows the particularly Jewish-American idiom. In fact, such dialogues will parallel the complex struggle of a family with a warped version of the American Dream trying to support itself.
Furthermore, in Death of Salesman, there are many symbols representing the implications in order to deepen the theme like cars, diamonds, seeds and so on.
Cars represent freedom, mobility and social status in American. However, in this drama, Willy loses the control of his family car.
Willy: I’m tired to the death. I couldn’t make it. I just couldn’t make it, Linda. Linda (very carefully, delicately): Where were you all day? You look terrible.
Willy: I got as far as a little above Yonkers. I stopped for a cup of coffee. Maybe it was the coffee.
Linda: What?
Willy (after a pause): I suddenly couldn’t drive any more. The car kept going off onto the shoulder, y’know?
Linda (helpfully): Oh. Maybe it was the steering again. I don’t think Angelo knows the Studebaker.
Willy: No, it’s me, it’s me. Suddenly I realize I’m goin’ sixty miles an hour and I don’t remember the last five minutes. I’m---I can’t seem to---keep my mind to it (Miller 7-9).
As above shows, at the beginning of the play, Willy comes home exhausted, which means his car is going out of control. That is to say, his exhaustion with driving
symbolizes his tiredness from life. In addition, it also give a sense of what the end will hold.
Then, Ben’s incantation of “The jungle is dark, but full of diamonds” in Act 2 turns Willy’s suicide into a moral struggle and a matter of commerce. Diamonds stands for the material success as well as a “get-rich-quick” scheme that is the solution to all problems. According to Ben, Willy’s death likes a “diamond...rough and hard to the touch.” What’s more, what Willy really understands is that the product he sells is himself and in the end he sells his own life.
Another symbol is about seeds. Generally, seeds are regarded as a hope that Willy’s hope to his sons’ future. Besides, seeds also represents for him the opportunity to prove the worth of his labor. When Willy says, “Nothing’s planted. I don’t have a
thing in the ground” after both his sons abandon him in Act 2, we have a feeling he is a failure.
Thus, a conclusion can be drawn naturally that Willy dies as deluded as he lived.
Through the fictional character of Willy Loman, Miller manages to touch deep chords within the national psyche.
SUMMARY
To sum up, on the basis of the analysis above, we may draw a conclusion that death of salesman Willy is a corollary. In the last 24 hours of Willy’s life, he walks towards death step by step inevitably. Actually, the salesman’s condition is an enlargement of an insignificant facet of the general human condition. Miller shows that it is not an individual’s failure. While it is more like an embodiment for American’s life.
Therefore, Death of Salesman is not merely Miller’s autobiography but also an epitome of American history that represents everyone who is placed in the same situation. In Death of Salesman, the author successfully applied both literary and theatrical techniques to explore the inner world of protagonist, in order to build the dramatic atmosphere and deepen the theme of the play. In the meanwhile, readers are impressed and shocked by various conflicts and think deeply about their reality.
Through studying this book, I think this play conveys some philosophical ideas and shows more concern for humanity. It makes readers realize the value of life as well as the limited life. Therefore, we should live with more passion to discover the meaning of the life.
Works Cited
Miller Arthur. Death of Salesman. New York: Viking Penguin, 1981.
Walden Daniel. Critical Essays on Arthur Miller, Massachusetts: G. K. Hall & Co., 1979: 189-96
陶洁，《美国文学选读》（第三版）。北京：高等教育出版社，2011：281-292。 刘凡群 译，《推销员之死》。天津：天津科技翻译出版公司，2003。
姚克 译，思果 评，《推销员之死：选评》。北京：中国对外翻译出版公司，2004。