Death of a Salesman is that rare thing: a modern play that is both a archetype, and a tragedy. Many of the bang-up plays of the twentieth century are comedies, social problem plays, or a combination of the ii. Few are tragedies centred on one character who, in a sense, recalls the theatrical tradition that gave usa Oedipus, King Lear, and Hamlet.

But how did Miller come to write a modern tragedy? What is Decease of a Salesman about, and how should we analyse it? Before we come up to these questions, it might be worth briefly recapping the plot of what is, in fact, a fairly simple story.

Death of a Salesman : summary

The salesman of the title is Willy Loman, a travelling salesman who is in his early on sixties. He works on commission, then if he doesn't make a sale, he doesn't get paid. His job involves driving thousands of miles effectually the Usa every year, trying to sell enough to put food on his family'south table. He wants to become a desk job so he doesn't have to travel around any more: at 62 years of age, he is tired and worn out.

He is married to Linda. Their son, Biff, is in his thirties and usually unemployed, globe-trotting from ane temporary task to another, much to Willy's displeasure. Willy'southward younger son, Happy, has a steady job along and his own domicile, and is therefore a success by Willy'due south standards.

However, Happy, despite his proper name, isn't happy with the life he has, and would quite similar to give up his job and become and work on a ranch out Due west. Willy, meanwhile, is similarly dreaming, but in his case of the past, rather than the hereafter: he thinks dorsum to when Biff and Happy were pocket-size children and Willy was a success as a salesman.

The Lomans' neighbour, Charley, offers Willy a chore to assistance make ends run into, but Willy starts to reminisce about his recently deceased blood brother, Uncle Ben, who was an adventurer (and young Willy's hero). Linda tells her sons to pay their male parent some respect, even though he isn't himself a 'great man'.

It emerges that Willy has been claiming to work every bit a salesman but has lately been borrowing money as he can't actually observe work. His program is to have his own life then his family will receive life insurance money and he volition be able, with his death, to do what he cannot do for them while live: provide for them. Biff agrees reluctantly to get dorsum to his former dominate and inquire for a job so he can contribute to the family housekeeping.

Meanwhile, Willy asks his dominate, Howard, for his desk job and an advance on his next pay packet, but Howard sacks Willy. Willy then goes to Charley and asks for a loan. That night, at dinner, Willy and Biff argue (Biff failed to get his ain former job back when his old dominate didn't even recognise him), and it turns out that Biff once walked in on his begetter with another adult female. Willy goes abode, plants some seeds, and then – hearing his brother Ben calling for him to bring together him – he drives off and kills himself. At his funeral, only the family are present, despite Willy's prediction that his funeral would be a big thing.

Death of a Salesman : analysis

Miller's family unit had been relatively prosperous during the playwright'south childhood, only during the Great Depression of the 1930s, as with many other families, their economic situation became very precarious. This experience had a profound impact on Miller's political standpoint, and this tin be seen in much of his work for the theatre.

Death of a Salesman represented a decisive change of direction for the young playwright. His previous success as a playwright, All My Sons, was a social drama heavily influenced by Henrik Ibsen, simply with his next play, Miller wished to attempt something new. The mixture of hard-striking social realism and dreamlike sequences brand Death of a Salesman an innovative and assuming break with previous theatre, both by Miller and more widely.

In his essay 'Tragedy and the Mutual Man' (1949), which Miller wrote to justify his creative decision to make an ordinary American human the subject of a theatrical tragedy, Miller argued that the mod world has grown increasingly sceptical, and is less inclined to believe in the idea of heroes. As a outcome, they don't see how tragedy, with its tragic hero, can be relevant to the modern world. Miller argues, on the contrary, that the world is full of heroes. A hero is anybody who is willing to lay down his life in order to secure his 'sense of personal dignity'. It doesn't matter what your social status or background is.

Death of a Salesman is an instance of this ethos: Loman, who cheated on his married woman and lied to his family unit well-nigh his lack of work and his reliance on friends who lent him money, makes his final gesture a tragic just selfless act, which volition ensure his family unit have money to survive when he is gone.

Of course, this doesn't mean that Miller is somehow endorsing the hero's final and decisive human activity. The emphasis should always be on the word 'tragedy': Loman'due south death is a tragedy brought about partly past his own deportment, just also by the desperate straits that he is plunged into through the harsh and unforgiving world of sales, where one time he is unable to earn money, he needs some other means of acquiring it so he can put food on the table for his family.

But contrary to what we might expect, at that place is something positive and even affirmative about tragedy, as Arthur Miller views the art form. For Miller, in 'Tragedy and the Common Man', theatrical tragedy is driven by 'Man'southward total compunction to evaluate himself justly'. In the procedure of doing this, and attaining his dignity, the tragic hero oftentimes loses his life, but at that place is something affirmative about the events leading up to this final human action, because the audition will be driven to evaluate what is incorrect with society that information technology could destroy a man – a human willing to take a moral stand and evaluate himself justly – in the style that information technology has.

Does Willy Loman deserve to be pushed to take his own life just so his family can pay the bills? No, and so at that place must be something within society that is at fault. Capitalism's dog-eat-canis familiaris attitude is at least partly responsible, since it leads weary and worn-out men similar Willy to dream of paying off their mortgage and having enough coin, while simultaneously making the achievement of that task equally difficult as possible. When a younger and ameliorate salesman comes along, men like Willy are nearly always doomed.

But by placing this in front end of the audience and dramatising it for them, Miller invites his audience to question the wrongs within modern American gild. Thus people volition gain a greater understanding of what is wrong with society, and will be able to amend information technology. The hero'south expiry is individually tragic merely collectively offers social club hope.

So it may be counter-intuitive to depict a tragedy like Decease of a Salesman as 'optimistic', but in a sense, this is exactly what information technology is. Miller takes the classical idea of the tragic flaw, what Aristotle had called the hamartia, and updates this for a modern audience, too: the hero's tragic flaw is redefined equally the hero's inherent unwillingness to remain passive in the face up of what he conceives to be a challenge to his dignity and rightful status in society. At that place is something noble in his flaw, even though it will pb to his own devastation. So really, the flaw is not inside the private or hero equally much as in order itself.

A cardinal context for Death of a Salesman, like many keen works of American literature from the early to mid-twentieth century, is the American Dream: that notion that the United states is a state of opportunity where anyone can make a success of their life and wind upwardly stinking rich. Miller'south weaving of dream sequences in amongst the sordid and unsatisfactory reality of the Lomans' lives deftly contrasts the American dream with the American reality.