Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller Analysis
Read the Book or Summary first, then read my analysis
Credits of summary https://www.litcharts.com/lit/death-of-a-salesman/summary -
{Willy Loman, a traveling salesman, returns home to Brooklyn early from a sales trip. At the age of 63, he has lost his salary and is working only on commission, and on this trip has failed to sell anything. His son Biff, who has been laboring on farms and ranches throughout the West for more than a decade, has recently arrived home to figure out a new direction for his life. Willy thinks Biff has not lived up to his potential. But as Biff reveals to his younger brother Happy — an assistant to the assistant buyer at a department store — he feels more fulfilled by outdoor work than by his earlier attempts to work in an office.
Alone in his kitchen, Willy remembers an earlier return from a business trip, when Biff and Happy were young boys and looked up to him as a hero. He contrasts himself and his sons with his next door neighbor Charley, a successful businessman, and Charley’s son Bernard, a serious student. Charley and Bernard, in his view, lack the natural charisma that the Loman men possess, which Willy believes is the real determinant of success. But under the questioning of his wife Linda, Willy admits that his commission from the trip was so small that they will hardly be able to pay all their bills, and that he is full of self-doubt. Even as Linda reassures him, he hears the laughter of The Woman, his mistress in Boston.
Charley comes over to see if Willy is okay. While they are playing cards, Willy begins talking with the recently deceased figure of his brother Ben, who left home at the age of seventeen and made a diamond fortune in Africa and Alaska. Charley offers Willy a job but Willy refuses out of pride, even though he has been borrowing money from Charley every week to cover household expenses. Full of regrets, Willy compares himself to Ben and their equally adventurous, mysterious father, who abandoned them when they were young. He wanders into his back yard, trying to see the stars.
Linda discusses Willy’s deteriorating mental state with the boys. She reveals that he has tried to commit suicide, both in a car crash and by inhaling gas through a rubber hose on the heater. Biff, chagrined, agrees to stay home and try to borrow money from his previous employer, Bill Oliver, in order to start a sporting goods business with Happy, which will please their father. Willy is thrilled about this idea, and gives Biff some conflicting, incoherent advice about how to ask for the loan.
The next morning, at Linda’s urging, Willy goes to his boss Howard Wagner and asks for a job in the New York office, close to home. Though Willy has been with the company longer than Howard has been alive, Howard refuses Willy’s request. Willy continues to beg Howard, with increasing urgency, until Howard suspends Willy from work. Willy, humiliated, goes to borrow money from Charley at his office. There he encounters Bernard, who is now a successful lawyer, while the greatest thing Willy’s son Biff ever achieved was playing high school football.
Biff and Happy have made arrangements to meet Willy for dinner at Frank’s Chop House. Before Willy arrives, Biff confesses to Happy that Oliver gave him the cold shoulder when he tried to ask for the loan, and he responded by stealing Oliver’s pen. Happy advises him to lie to Willy in order to keep his hope alive. Willy sits down at the table and immediately confesses that he has been fired, so Biff had better give him some good news to bring home to Linda. Biff and Willy argue, as distressing memories from the past overwhelm Willy. Willy staggers to the washroom and recalls the end of Biff’s high school career, when Biff failed a math course and went to Boston in order to tell his father. He found Willy in a hotel room with The Woman, and became so disillusioned about his former hero that he abandoned his dreams for college and following in Willy’s footsteps. As Willy is lost in this reverie, Biff and Happy leave the restaurant with two call girls.
When Biff and Happy return home, Linda is furious at them for abandoning their father. Biff, ashamed of his behavior, finds Willy in the back yard. He is trying to plant seeds in the middle of the night, and conversing with the ghost of his brother Ben about a plan to leave his family with $20,000 in life insurance money. Biff announces that he is finally going to be true to himself, that neither he nor Willy will ever be great men, and that Willy should accept this and give up his distorted version of the American Dream. Biff is moved to tears at the end of this argument, which deepens Willy’s resolve to kill himself out of love for his son and family. He drives away to his death.
Only his family, Charley, and Bernard attend Willy’s funeral. Biff is adamant that Willy died for nothing, while Charley elegizes Willy as a salesman who, by necessity, had nothing to trade on but his dreams. Linda says goodbye to Willy, telling him that the house has been paid off — that they are finally free of their obligations — but now there will be nobody to live in it.}
Analysis
We are introduced to Willy Loman in the first act as he crashes his car on his way home from an unsuccessful sales meet. We often see his mental delusions multiple times throughout the play, his depleting mental condition. He often drifts into imaginary conversations with people from past. He also shows a sort of overly positive attitude towards future/ like a false childhood dream of all things being good/ like heaven on earth; as he often idealizes “The American dream”. This over optimism is often seen in people who are going through a rough period of time for quite some while, their depressing present reality forcing them to believe in a non- existent false future where all their problems just vanish without any major effort from their side.
This is shown as result of multiple things getting out of hand for Willy- His Financial incompetence as compared to his dead brother’s success (Willy’s constantly reminded of his own failure thru ben’s success when they were young), his son Biff being unsuccessful & their constant battles with each other, guilt of his infidelity. Willy secretly regrets on missing out opportunities that would have made him more successful / happy in the present.
Willy’s mind slides back and forth between present and past constantly — even in between conversations — mostly he is taken back to happy, optimistic memories of past that promise a good future (What should have been). I contemplate that his car crashes were an unfortunate consequence of his subconscious mind being depressed and unable to come to terms with his present reality; his conscious mind constantly deludes him with visions of a good future or the perfect past. Here’s another trait of a person whose reality has been depressing for so long that their mind in order to preserve itself creates fake scenarios, they have to be overly optimistic either glorifying past too much or fantasizing about future, otherwise the mind will fall apart. Another thing I noticed was that there’s a common notion in people that have similar thinking that “they deserve good things” this feeling of being entitled to something but not being given, shows that they can’t accept the fact that that’s not how the world works, they are in denial that the world is an unfair/unjust place. It doesn’t matter what we think we deserve, or how we have been wronged and how if this would/wouldn’t have happened we would have been happy/successful. Thanklessness of people and feeling entitled but mistreated is the main thought here.
My main fascination here is with how our mind copes up with our reality. Sadness and Chaos in life are menacing forces that our mind tries its best to avoid. Instead of accepting grief/mistakes/blunders/imperfections like one should to start dealing with them and being free from them, the Lomans exhibit what usually is done i.e. Fantasizing about perfect future, where we didn’t make those past mistakes and where our present miseries are no longer bothering us. Now this is fine if these fantasies are not farfetched & created to give a ray of hope/ a pint of light in a dark tunnel, But to the degree it is stretched in our society & in every human being, is very dangerous.
Throughout the play I was in awe of Arthur Miller’s use of death and suicide and the showcase of mental health of Willy. How when a conversation between him and his sons goes wrong he resides to planting seeds in his backyard as if that’ll make the conflict go away. Showcasing sort of a coping mechanism to deal with his out-of-his-hands situation, The futile attempt to regain control of anything in his life just to have a sense of control, even though it provides no clarity but is just a numbing attempt to distract himself from his degrading life events.
The entire Loman family functions under the illusions of happiness and pending success.
Although in the end even these are not enough to save him, as it takes his life. Even then the theme continues as we see his elder son understanding that his father made mistakes and that he has to chose a path for himself, his younger son still glorifying him as a “no.1 man” and striving to be like him; in a way blaming the society and his brother for such unfortunate demise. His wife being in shock of his death tells him that they finally are debt free and things have started to get better; which is the irony that the thing he longed for his whole life, is closer to his family after his death.
