Miller is highlighting the excessive and unnecessary emphasis that is put upon wealth in modern society. A man like Willy Loman feels like a failure to his family because he hasn’t become rich. He is desperate to impress his sons but wants them to fulfil his dream for him and so has missed out on building proper relationships with them and has taken their actions in life the wrong way. Such as Biffs desire to be a simple man, with no need for material possessions. Willy takes this as a failure as it is not what he sees to be a strong image of a successful man. When in fact Biff is much more admirable as he has realised the pitiful route his father has gone down and why he has ended up the way he is. Willy doesn’t appreciate that he doesn’t want to be part of the corporate machine that his father and brother are, striving constantly to be the best. Happy however is the opposite and is blind to the fact that his father’s business has ruined him and he is quickly heading down the same path. He has sold out to the American dream and when he realises, like his father, that he may not have all the money and glory that he expects, he may become a very dangerous and bitter man.
“Figure it out. Work a lifetime to pay off a house. You finally own it, and there’s nobody to live in it”
This tells us at the beginning of the act, Willy’s feelings about his sons. It makes him very troubled that they have left home, his whole life since their birth has been for his sons.
Arthur Miller was accused of being a communist and being against American democracy,
Which is perhaps why he chooses to focus on these issues so much in his plays. It means that his feelings on the subject of capitalism come from direct experience with the American government and I think this comes across in his writing.
Miller has created a very poignant character in Willy, which makes the story very powerful. It is very easy to feel sympathy for someone when they are failing in so many ways as Willy is, and has not fulfilled their potential. Arthur Miller makes Willy’s character very pathetic in certain scenes, in particular when he is in his boss Howard’s office and is begging him not to fire him.
Howard: “then that’s that then, heh?”
Willy: “all right, I’ll go to Boston tomorrow.”
Howard: “no, no”
Willy: “ I can’t throw myself on my sons, I’m not a cripple!”
Howard: “look kid I’m busy this morning”
Willy: “(grasping Howard’s arm) Howard, you’ve got to let me go to Boston!”
Willy is begging this man not to fire him, not to force him to admit to the fact that he is in trouble, that things aren’t going, as he would wish. And most importantly to Willy, not showing himself up as a failure to his sons. It is pitiful to see a grown man begging this way and is almost heartbreaking. Willy is so proud in front of his family that he would regress to feeling like a “piece of fruit” in front of this man just to keep up appearances. The fact that Howard calls Willy “kid” is also quite significant as this is very humiliating for Willy as he is older than Howard and has been working for the company longer than he has.
Willy often does this, acting differently in front of different people; this is another way in which Miller shows us how confused and insecure a man he is. He is constantly keeping up all these pretences and as the audience we know that the other characters see straight through them, while Willy thinks he has quite successfully fooled everyone and especially himself.
Miller makes Willy’s conversations with people very strange in a way to make Willy seem completely out of it. He contradicts himself and imagines things, which really shows that he is in his own little world and terribly confused within it.
“Biff is a lazy bum!”… “There’s one thing about Biff-he’s not lazy”.
These sentences are about three lines apart and are very effective.
I think another reason Willy comes across as slightly mad is because his brain is thinking on many different levels-past, present, future, and the subconscious. Miller uses the different parts and levels of the stage to represent this. Instead of thinking like this inside his head as most of us do, he thinks them very openly but has similar frustrations to us all. What he was meant to achieve, what is the point of his life.
Linda is very patient and humours him always, which accentuates the desperation of the situation.
Willy: “why don’t you open a window in here, for gods sake?”
Linda: (with infinite patience) “they’re all open, dear.”
These kinds of conversations give us a feeling of how Willy feels boxed in, by his job, his pretences that he is constantly keeping up. And how it is exhausting him.
An example of Willy’s fantasies is his brother Ben. Willy often speaks to his dead brother in hallucinations and flashbacks. Miller uses Ben as a device to show us what Willy really wants, he is a metaphor for all the things Willy doesn’t have and Willy sees not going with Ben as his one big mistake.
Ben: “when I was seventeen I walked into the jungle, and when I was twenty-one I walked out. And by god I was rich.”
Willy: “you see what I’ve been talking about? The greatest things can happen!”
The language Willy uses is very descriptive of his character, it is confused and repetitive in parts such as phrases like “personality wins the day” and “I am well liked”. These are like Willy’s personal slogans that he repeats when he is unsure of himself.
Miller uses flashbacks to confuse the other characters in the play. Willy’s speech often makes sense to us as we can see what he sees but is complete nonsense to the other characters. Such as when he is speaking to Ben in a hallucination and Charley in real life and the conversations become overlapped. We can see how others perceive him and that makes us feel sorry for him. I think Miller’s use of flashbacks also helps create sympathy with Willy as it shows us the life he used to have, what he used to be, an ambitious young man with his whole life before him, and now, he is in the same position financially but with no time to improve it. He has run out, in his mind and in the world he lives in. Willy knows this and is in desperate denial, and the audience know it too and wish there was something he could do or realise to make things better.
We are kept wondering what disrupt between Biff and Willy has drawn them apart until after Willy’s sons have left him. Then after Willy is left a lonely, unemployed man the adultery scene is revealed. This is to keep the audiences sympathy as otherwise we may have thought that Willy deserved everything he got, and Miller does not want hostile feelings towards Willy.
Miller helps us feel as if we are truly ‘inside Willy’s head’ by using the stage in a very clever way. The play is very naturalistic in most ways, but to create the effect of the fantasies that Willy is having he uses different areas of the stage as Willy’s different levels of consciousness. Different parts of the stage light up and characters wander on and off stage, it gives us the feeling that the stage is Willy’s mind. Also it makes the play a believable naturalistic one.
Miller uses a lot of music to demonstrate the nature of the scene. Music often starts up when Willy is having a flashback or when a moving moment of some sort is about to occur. This gives the scene meaning and also makes it more evocative as the emotion can be sensed through the music.
When reading the play you see also that Miller has included very detailed stage directions. The play is never standing still but constantly moving around and this gives the flashbacks and hallucinations more substance, they’re not flat like they so easily could have been, or confusing for the audience. I think Miller includes such detailed stage directions because the play could be so easily twisted. If Miller left it up to the director to decide how to play the scenes Willy could come across in a completely different way, which would totally alter the implication of the play. Miller does not want Willy to come across as crazy as he is not.
Miller has a very important message to tell in his play and has done it very effectively. Willy Loman and his family are the poor victims of American society who have been suffering because of what their government has set as a national standard. It is a tragic story and Arthur Miller has been extremely successful in making it powerful and touching.
