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Death of a Salesman

Death of a Salesman


The most nearly established allegory about human anguish and suffering in an industrialized period is Miller's masterpiece, Death of a Salesman. In Death of a Salesman, Arthur presented an account about the nature of human catastrophe in the twentieth century that seems, progressively more, to be pertinent to the entire framework of civilized occurrence. The supremacy of Death of a Salesman over other worthy American dramas is the compassion of its myth: the serious association of its central character—the Salesman—to the understanding of the entire present-day life. In the representation of sales man, Arthur conveys a figure that is a ritual envoy of an industrialized civilization. (Aarnes, 1988) The outward show of the Salesman Loman as the theme of moral investigation stirs the contemporary viewer at that alternately pleasurable and painful fringe of awareness that is the prefecture of tragedy. The performance of his suffering, fall, and fractional enlightenment, aggravates a mixed reaction: that annoyance and delight, resentment and compassion, pity and fear.

The four themes of "Death of a Salesman" include escape and denial from reality, contradiction with social norms, and the quest for order versus disorder comprise the three major themes of Death of a Salesman. Beside this American dream, capitalism and materialistic approaches are also relevant and associated themes with these three major themes. The most important theme of Death of a Salesman comes out to replicate typical tragedy chiefly in its reception of the belief of the vital responsibility of the person.
The theme of Death of a Salesman is to investigate the insinuations of a life for which individual human—not gods—are entirely responsible. Miller produced in Death of a Salesman a new structure that exceeded his conscious motive. Death of a Salesman is not linked with such human failings as may find everlasting social, political, or even psychological cure. Willy Loman, like the traditional tragic protagonist, symbolizes the cruel paradox of human existence. Loman looks for determining a design in the paradoxical movement of life to impose upon it a sense of meaning greater than that conferred upon it by actuality.
Death of a Salesman takes place only some years after World War II has finished. America is taking pleasure in a postwar economic detonation, but the war has reasoned a shake-up in American society, changing the manner people view business, leisure, themselves, and others. The Lomans live in Brooklyn, a busy suburb of New York City. The set of Death of a Salesman presents Willy as living in a claustrophobic urban setting indicative of the harsh life he has chosen. His home is delimited by apartment houses that emanate a threatening orange glow. When memory takes over, this glow gives way to a more dreamlike background with shadowy leaves and music, evoking a happier pastoral era. Without Willy's memories, the dream of a happier, Edenic life cannot exist in this city.

Many of Willy's activities can be seen as highly thematic. He plants seeds just as he plants false hopes: both will die and never come to fruition, largely because the house has become too hemmed in by the city. The front porch, constructed from stolen lumber, is indicative of how the Lomans' live, as well as their house, have been built on something false. Willy does not fit into the modern world of machinery. To illustrate this point, Miller frequently depicts Willy's uneasy relationship with machinery such as his car, his refrigerator, and Howard's tape recorder.

Investigation of the play's social theme has centered frequently on its treatment of the "American Dream" or "success myth," the theme that any American can achieve material sensation and a relaxed life through hard work and dedication to business. Though there has been some attempt to defend Miller as an mainstay of the American Dream, most critics who have written on this subject have attempted to explain Willy's demise as a failure on his, and often Miller's, part to comprehend American history and values. Willy's failure to achieve the American Dream is a personal one, this line of reasoning goes, not an inevitable result of the American economic system. Willy has convinced himself that the way to succeed is to be well liked, and he passes this belief on to his two sons. In the world of Death of a Salesman, people get ahead through hard work (Charley and Bernard), in- heritance (Howard), or sheer luck (Ben). Neither Howard nor Ben wastes any time trying to be liked, nor both are depicted as selfish, brusque, and rude. Howard represents an uncaring and exploitative business world in which being well liked holds no relevance. Ben is a hard man who survives the jungle by plundering it. (Susan, 2000) Charley, on the other hand, is successful, content, and a nice guy. As children, Biff and Happy idolized their father and looked down on Bernard for his more cautious lifestyle and belief in work.

Although Willy abandons to encourage in his sons the ethical values a father should teach a child. Biff emerges victorious in high school as a football player, but he harvests no advantage from this for the reason that he never goes to college. Away from his father, Biff achieves self-knowledge and begins to be acquainted with his own true nature, replacing his father's dream with one of his own. Bereft of even a small number of decencies Willy retains, such as a principles and a sense of dependability, Happy cuts an entirely disreputable figure, taking bribes from manufacturers and sleeping with the fiancées and wives of men higher in the firm than he.

While dreams, illusions, and self-deceptions feed the theme of this play, Linda, in comparison seems very much planted in veracity with her concerns over house payments, mending, insurance premiums, and her husband's care. Nonetheless Linda's clear sight she allows her family's dreams to burgeon; she even promotes them. One of the most passionately discussed issues in recent years has been the portrayal of women in the play, particularly Linda. Early critics usually saw Linda as a positive illustration, and sometimes an ideal, of the loyal, nurturing wife and mother. Linda has even been portrayed by Charlotte Epstein as prodding Willy to his doom.

The critics have suggested that Miller crafts a world in the play where the most imperative obsession for men is to connection effectively with other men, and women appear as either sex objects or idealized, selfless wives and mothers. In Death of a Salesman one finds The Woman and Miss Forsythe on the one hand, and Linda on the other. (Susan, 2000) The character of Linda in the daydream scenes, observed through Willy's remorseful adulation of her, is quite diverse from the Linda in the scenes of the present, who is, as director Elia Kazan perceived, like a tiger protecting her young when she defends Willy from the boys.

Death of a Salesman, from the first night of its apprehension on the stage, has been documented as a noteworthy and contentious play. It has served as a site for groping some of the most multifarious and difficult questions about the relationships among human beings, and between human beings and social institutions, in a democratic society.
In conclusion Death of a Salesman comes out to replicate typical tragedy chiefly in its reception of the belief of the vital responsibility of the person. For Death of a Salesman, like other examples of the contemporary genre, elevates to meaning a new protagonist: the common man. Perhaps of greater importance is the fact that it removes the ground of the tragic conflict from outer event to inner consciousness. Death of a Salesman is described as a tragedy of consciousness, the imitation of a moral crisis in the life of a common man.







References

Aarnes, William. (1988). "Tragic Form and the Possibility of Meaning in Death of a Salesman". Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman: Modern Critical Interpretations. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 84-110.
Miller, Arthur. (1958). Death of a Salesman. New York: Viking Compass Edition.
Susan C. W. Abbotson, (2000). Student Companion to Arthur Miller. Greenwood Press. Westport, CT.
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Posted by: Kate L. Rizal

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