All throughout history, artistic media more specifically, theatrical playwrights have been based on things that have happened in reality. Fictional based stories are stretched just beyond the point of truth to keep the audience interested. This holds true whether one is reading or enjoying a theatrical show because exaggeration allows a certain element of lifelikeness. Would you rather read a science fiction novel or Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman? Obviously there is no hard answer because it all depends on viewer interest, but the truth is Death of a Salesman is more in tune with the real world because the exaggeration is subtle. Arthur Miller brilliantly brings to light life’s daily struggles of family dysfunction, betrayal, and life’s battle for success in his American classic Death of a Salesman.
Arthur Miller grew up in arguably one of the roughest times in American history, going though World War I, the Great Depression, and the horrific World War II. “Born in Manhattan on October 17, 1915, Arthur Miller was the second of three children for Isadore and Augusta Miller, a well to do Jewish couple” (Bloom 10). He worked various odd jobs in order to pay for college at the University of Michigan where he discovered his love for writing, and his future wife. “After he received his B.A. in 1938, Miller went back to New York and worked with the Federal Theatre Project until it was abolished; he then ended up on welfare” (Bloom 10). His life and struggles especially early on appear to be mirrored in his most noteworthy work Death of a Salesman. “The Great Depression was a central experience of the playwright’s youth, and his concern with the American economic system testifies to its abiding effect on him” (Porter 75). Willy Lowman had repeated economic fears as a businessman. He wanted success, but the social and economic environment around him fed into his fear. “The economic system works like fate-inexorably, impersonally-and it determines their identities, their status and their destiny” (Porter 83). Anyone’s identity that was defined during this trying time in history would have a fear of the unknown future. Will I make it? Will they hire me? Is there war around the corner?
The most important success of Arthur Miller’s tragic theme is implied directly through dramatic satire depicted by the main character, Willy Lowman throughout the play. Willy Lowman spends his life pursuing the American dream as a salesman by supporting his family. Lowman, himself in comparison to Miller’s actual life share a common likeness of the pursuit of happiness. Arthur Miller places the reader into the immersed reality of Willy Lowman, thus allowing a close intimate look into his past and present life through his conscious thoughts. Again we see Miller’s linked association to the Willy Lowman character based on personal experience. “To Willy, everything is possible, and even if he can’t find the secret to the American Dream of material wealth that he is obviously searching for, some connection somewhere is likely to turn up if one is well liked and keeps looking” (Martin 4). Constant fluctuation between the past and the present throughout the play can be confusing, but Arthur Miller may have intentionally done this in order to put the reader even more in tune with Willy Lowman’s discombobulated mental state. Willy Loman’s thoughts and perceptions of reality battling life prove this because he never could put a finger on what he himself was trying to personally accomplish.
Ultimately, Arthur Miller’s bi-polar like fears of the future are portrayed in a clear psychological manner in the Willy Lowman character. This character and the play itself are more than just a psychological mannerism of self justification. Catchphrases such as “choose to confuse” or “lie to get by” are merely no way to go through life, but Willy was drowning in these generic slogans of lying through self denial. This interpretive analysis provides any of us as the audience to psychologically relate to Willy Lowman on a personal level. The suicide at the ending of the play opens a window to the passing on of successes, but also points out that the problems are not over because of the infinite circle of life.
Works Cited
Bloom, Harold. Bloom’s Guides Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. Philadelphia : Chelsea House Publishers, 1984.
Martin, Robert A. Twentieh Century Views . Englewood Cliffs,NJ: Prentice Hall Inc. , 1982.
Porter, Thomas. “The Mills of the Gods:Economics in the Plays of Arhtur Miller .” Martin, Robert. Arthur Miller New Perspectives . Englewood Cliffs : Prentice Hall Inc., 1982. 75.
