Discuss Miller's presentation of Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman.
Josh Gunnell September 2003
English Literature Coursework
Arthur Miller
Death of a Salesman (1949)
'He had all the wrong dreams. All wrong.'
Discuss Miller's presentation of Willy Loman in
Death of a Salesman
Willy Loman is the central character in this play of flashbacks and mind tangents set in the New York and Boston of the late 1940's. Miller's intense interest with Willy is in his protagonist attitude and belief in the American Dream, the belief that in America, one man can make it to be somebody and be counted for. Death of a Salesman has frequently been understood as a commentary on the American Dream and whether the dream's economic prosperity is truly available to anyone who works diligently, and the importance the dream places on material wealth invites selfishness and social injustice.
Willy is a salesman, husband and a father. Willy has a tendency to lie to his children (just one of Willy's moral lapses), Biff and Happy, about the amount of business he undertakes, as the 'New England Man'. His wife, Linda, is a bit more understanding towards him even though she has knowledge of his lies and unfaithfulness. Her role as a loyal and often shy housewife and mother does not necessarily represent all women's lives in the 1940s, nor does Miller necessarily approve of the role. However, her behaviour does suggest the cultural notions, common in that period, of restraint, or even timid, femininity; and, as the play bears out, masculinity of the time was overly identified with the virile figure it of athlete, businessmen, and soldiers.
Willy's compulsion to lie has sometimes made him unable to distinguish between fact and fiction, and often chooses illusion over reality. For instance, Willy comes back to his children after working in New England telling them that he has been selling all day at large quantities before confessing to his wife that has can only just afford to pay for what society believed were the middle-class signs of success, to be able to provide items for his family such as a house, a car, a college education for his children and the household appliances. One constant reminder of his failure to keep to these standards is the faultiness of the refrigerator's fan belt that broke even though it was brand new. I think that this quote about the fan belt is a resemblance upon Willy Loman's life:
Linda: Well, the fan belt broke, so it was a dollar eighty.
Willy: But it's brand new.
Linda: Well, the man said that's the way it is. Till they work themselves in, y'know
Willy has spent all his life trying to provide his family with everything they would need this only means him having to work even harder to provide more. Willy Loman and the age of 63 is exhausted after years of work as a travelling salesman, although we do not know what product he actually sells. Willy is trying to reach a level of success that would allow him to stop travelling and afford the household bills that always seemed to swallow ...
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Linda: Well, the man said that's the way it is. Till they work themselves in, y'know
Willy has spent all his life trying to provide his family with everything they would need this only means him having to work even harder to provide more. Willy Loman and the age of 63 is exhausted after years of work as a travelling salesman, although we do not know what product he actually sells. Willy is trying to reach a level of success that would allow him to stop travelling and afford the household bills that always seemed to swallow his diminishing wages.
Willy was proud of children in their adolescence. He had faith in Biff that he would achieve a football scholarship to a good university. Biff is a hero to his father and to himself, but to the world a nobody and a failure; and his inability to make the material success required of him in order to compensate his father for his own failure tragically complicates and embitters their relationship.
Willy felt that Happy could be a bit more like Biff, in that Happy was not as popular or as athletically built as Biff was. Willy and his sons are athletic, rather than studious; in Willy's mind, a likeable personality is more important for success than academic grades. Willy brings Biff up under false pretences, such as advising him to lie and cheat at school. Willy himself cheated on his wife with an affair with a woman in Boston. Although Linda is aware of this she decides to inform Biff and Happy that Willy has contemplated suicide.
Miller's first half of the play might be taken to illustrate some form of neurosis in which the submerged ideal revenges itself upon the materialist by questioning the value of his achievements, by comparing the hope with the reality, by daring even to suggest that the achievement is an illusion. In this instance, Miller seems to stress that protective illusion is what the broken man has always lived by, and the struggle of his son to tear it away and rescue them both from an illusion that is, in fact, killing them makes a second, and much better, half of the play. The play has an ingenious arrangement of scenes and a stage set-up that is so specific, for a desired image to be put into the readers mind. As such, the play asks the audience to notice not just what is being said by characters, but what music, costumes, set design, and the unheard actions contribute to the over all effect.
At the beginning of the play we hear of Biff's return visit at the age of 34, which brings up the topic of complaining to his wife Linda about the disappointment in Biff's failure to find a steady, serious job. Willy tired, a confused, and argumentative, a man who loves his son and tried to infuse him with a salesman's enthusiastic optimism and self-confidence.
We become familiar with the salesman philosophy of success that has guided Willy to his current less-than-successful state through these various flashbacks during Act 1.This quote from Miller on Willy in Death of a Salesman is the philosophy Willy lives by and who he is.
Nobody dast blame this man. You don't understand: Willy was a salesman. And for a salesman, there is no rock bottom to the life. He don't put a bolt to a nut, he don't tell you the law or keep your medicine. He's a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back- that an earthquake. And then you get yourself a couple of spots on your hat, and you're finished. Nobody dast blame this man. A salesman's got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory
Excerpt from Death of a Salesman
We are introduced to the neighbours Charley and Charley's son of Bernard who unlike Biff and Happy is more studious than athletic. Unlike Biff, Happy has made something of himself. He now owns his own apartment. This is to show that the false pretences that Biff had been brought up by, from Willy, proves that if you go about things honestly you can achieve it. Happy was the less noticed of the two brothers and was always looking a chance to impress his father when he was younger, but now it looks like he is getting a bit more attention but his father always seems to complain and the chance that Biff had thrown away and not the success of his other son. The evening of Act 1 winds down as Biff and Hap attempt to cheer up Willy by promising to go into business together, as this is what Willy had always wanted.
In Act 2, which encompasses the day following the evening of Act 1, Willy asks his boss for a new, none-travelling a job. Yet after complaining to Howard for his years of service to the company he should be allowed to work closer to home. Willy keeps reducing himself but Howard is taking no chances and instead of relocating him he fires him instead. He again seems to lose moral sense in that he reduces himself to less than he current earns, claiming that this should be given to him without question, for his service to his father and his company over the many years Willy has worked for.
Bewildered, Willy asks his friend Charley were for another of many loans and, while doing so, meets Bernard, now a successful lawyer. Willy and in a conversation with Bernard is in fact asking himself how did it all go wrong with Biff.
In the evening, Willy rejoins Biff and happy at a restaurant and eventually tells them his bad news; unable to depress a father who wants good news at the end of a terrible day, Biff fails to tell Willy that he did not get the loan that would have made it possible for Happy and him to start business together. Whilst at the restaurant Willy has a flashback of Biff coming to find him at the hotel where he is having his affair. Biff had just told him that he had flunked his math paper and now was unable to graduate. At which he asks him if he had copied for the answers off Bernard (yet again the pretences are false), Biff had and was only 4 marks off graduating. This again is one of Willy's moral lapses having to satisfy himself by having an affair. Miller seems to say that there is a moral in that if you
In the next scene we are taken into a memory of Willy's when Biff comes to Boston and just after a flunking maths, which has endangered his chances for college by preventing him from graduating high school.
In the present after the discovering Willy is having an affair Biff and Hap returned to the house, where their mother reproaches them for abandoning Willy in the restaurant.
By now Willy is feeling mixed emotions, he has lost his real identity he has become a lonely, helpless individual with the intensity with which he strives to match his dream, the American Dream. Delusion, Willy is planting a garden in the dark and having an imaginary conversation with his elder brother Ben, who made a fortune in diamonds as young man. This conversation represents Willie's self-conscience.
Ben: It's called a cowardly thing, William.
Willy: Why? Does it take more guts to stand here the rest of my life ringing up to zero?
Ben: That's a point, William.
Willy is contemplating suicide so his life insurance can benefit towards the financial side of his family struggle. Biff interrupted the conversation and tries to explain the non-granted loan to Willy, as well is his decision to leave so as not to disappoint Willy ever again. Willy believed that Biff has been unsuccessful out of spite for him. Triggering the next argument between Biff and Willy.
Biff: ... I'm not bringing home any prizes any more, and you're going to stop waiting or me to bring them a home!
Willy: You vengeful, spiteful Mutt!
Biff: Pop, I'm nothing! I'm nothing, Pop. Can't you understand that? There's no spite in any more. I'm just what I am, that's all.
Willy: What're you doing? What're you doing? Why is he crying?
Willy is remarked by the sudden realisation of Biff's affection for him, and suddenly he completely changes his attitude towards him.
Willy: Isn't that-isn't that remarkable? Biff-he likes me!
Linda: He loves you, Willy!
Happy: Always did, Pop.
Willy: Oh, Biff! He cried! Cried to me. That boy- that boy is going to be magnificent!
Inspired by this realisation, obviously disorientated, Willy sneaks away that night and kill himself in a car accident, thinking his life insurance money will give Biff a new start and that a well attended funeral will prove his own popularity. Only family attended the funeral.
In the requiem, Biff pinpoints Willy's tragedy-'He never knew who he was.' He lived a false dream. The seeds of his self-destruction were in him from the start. It is not enough to say that Willy was just a 'little man as victim'; although one can only sympathize with his hatred of the stifling conditions of a modern industrial society, those conditions are only incidentally to blame for his tragedy. It is true that he behaves extremely stupidly, but then so did Othello, King Lear and many other tragic heroes (Stupidity does not preclude tragedy.)
So to say that Willy Loman did have all the wrong dreams is true and in this tragedy, Miller says
'To me the tragedy is that he gave his life, or sold it in order to justify the to it.'
Willy is truly as Miller suggests the 'low-man' living on a dream, which eventually drives him to suicide, trying to redeem himself by bankrolling Biff and his business. But 'He had all the wrong dreams. All wrong', the statement is true and Willy had tried to bring his children up under them. This resulted in Biff losing everything he had going for him after his teenage years and in much need of financial support. After the realisation of Biff's love for Willy, Willy commits suicide to claim the $20,000 life insurance.
Miller's presentation of Willy is one in which we can see how the inner mind tangents of an over-worked believer in the American Dream has adapted to the high demand world of work, and how he failed in relying on false hope to get him through every day.
