The Death of a Salesman

1
The Death of a Salesman

• Requiem and Conclusion

2
Outline

• Starting Questions
• The Requiem
• Different Views of Willy Loman
• The Survivors
• Arthur Millers Tragedy and the Common Man
• Willys tragedy
• The Work of the Environment
• His Character
• Different Kinds of Success
• Critique of The American Dream
• The Play as an Example of Expressionism

3
Starting Questions

1. What do you think are the functions of Requiem?
2. Is Willy Loman a tragic hero who acts and wins
   our esteem?  Or is he a victim?  A victim of his
   own character or of a system of exploitation and
   ruthless competition?
3. How about the other Loman characters?
4. Why is this play an example of Expressionism?
5. And a critique of the American Dream?

4
Requiem formal, somber, a-temporal

• Stage Direction (the only transition from car
  crash to Requiem)
• Music a frenzy of sound ? A single cello string?
  a dead march
• Lighting leaves and daylight.
• Wall-line crossed
• Flowers put at the limit of the apron (a space
  for the past and Willys imagination).
• Characters put on mourning dresses (no
  resistance no surprise? a sense of fatality)
• Requiem a mass at which people honor and pray
  for a dead person ? Willy Seen from Different
  Perspectives
• ? //self-revelation

5
Willy and the Survivors

• Happy and Biff 1) criticisms reveal their own
  short-coming 2) confirm, idealize the part of
  Willy they themselves identify with.
• Happy
• defiant and angry, had no right to do it. We
  wouldve helped him. ? empty promise
• He had a good dream. Happy promises to maintain
  Willy's dream and his fight.
• Happy is the last one to leave the stage with
  the flute music and images of apartment
  buildings.
• Biff
• realistic "He didn't know himself.
• Forgetting that the stoop was constructed from
  stolen materials, Biff muses fondly, "there's
  more of him in that front stoop than in all the
  sales he ever made."

6
Willy and the Survivors (3)

• Charley --generous? Or over-sentimental?
• "Nobody dast blame this man. . . .
• And for a salesman, there is no rock bottom to
  the life. He dont put a bolt to a nut, he dont
  tell you the law or give you medicine. Hes a man
  way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and
  a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back
  thats an earthquake. Nobody dast blame this
  man. A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes
  with the territory. (1264)
• Charley 1) self-contradictory, both realistic
  about, and forgiving and generous to Willy.
• 2) Reveals the lack of foundation or substance to
  Willys dream and capitalism as a whole.
• (more later)

7
Willy and the Survivors (3)

• Linda
• I cant understand it.
• disagrees cannot understand Willys need of
  self-dignity.
• I cant cry.
• disapproves of him numbed after the first
  shock.
• ? And therell be nobody home. We're free and
  clear," she says to Willy, sobbingly.
• free from mortgage pressure from family
  members.

8
Arthur Millers Tragedy and the Common Man

• Background tragedy Greek tragedy
• Tragedy depicts the downfall of a noble hero or
  heroine, usually through some combination of
  hubris (pride), fate, and the will of the gods.
• The tragic hero's powerful wish to achieve some
  goal inevitably encounters limits, usually those
  of human frailty (flaws in reason, hubris,
  society), the gods (through oracles, prophets,
  fate), or nature. Aristotle says that the tragic
  hero should have a flaw and/or make some mistake
  (hamartia).
• Ending The hero need not die at the end, but he
  / she must undergo a change in fortune. In
  addition, the tragic hero may achieve some
  revelation or recognition about human fate,
  destiny, and the will of the gods. Aristotle
  quite nicely terms this sort of recognition "a
  change from ignorance to awareness of a bond of
  love or hate." (source)
• Audiences response pity and fear catharsis

9
Arthur Millers Tragedy and the Common Man

• Background tragedy Greek tragedy
• Few tragedies nowadays due to
• the paucity of heroes among us.
• the skepticism of science
• the common man is as apt a subject for tragedy
  in its highest sense as kings were.
• Reasons 1) In the light of modern psychiatry,
  the situations of Oedipus and Orestes can be
  applied to everyone in similar emotional
  situations.  
• 2) The mental processes of kings shared by the
  lowly.
• 3) tragedy of the highbred character is remote
  from common people.

(source)
10
Millers views of Modern Tragegy of the common
man

• Definition tragic feeling is evoked in us when
  we are in the presence of a character who is
  ready to lay down his life, if need be, to secure
  one thing--his sense of personal dignity. . . .
  the underlying struggle is that of the individual
  attempting to gain his rightful position in his
  society.
• The flaw his inherent unwillingness to remain
  passive in the face of what he conceives to be a
  challenge to his dignity, his image of his
  rightful status.
• Terror from this total examination of the
  "unchangeable" environment

11
Millers views of Modern Tragegy of the common
man (2)

• In the tragic view the need of man to wholly
  realize himself is the only fixed star, and
  whatever it is that hedges his nature and lowers
  it is ripe for attack and examination.
• Wrong concept of tragedy? it implies more
  optimism
• Tragedy requires a fine balance between what is
  possible and what is impossible.
• Optimism perfectibility of man

12
Modern Tragedy

• Willy circumstances personality
• Different concepts of Success
• Hope in Linda and Biff resilience and
  improvement

13
The circumstances

• Willy's family background
• Three models Father Loman, Ben and Dave
  Singleman
• The lack of a father who is around.
• Bens opportunism
• Dave Singleman a loner of the past
• American Capitalist/Industrial society and the
  American Dream
• Willy outdated. ? Yet he tries hard to maintain
  his sense of dignity.

14
Personality

• Blind Cannot face his own and his son
  shortcomings, nor their conflicts
• Cares a lot about the empty appearance and social
  connections
• Dignified cannot walk away, continues to fight
  for his position cannot bend himself to work for
  Charley.
• A loving father ? reconciles with Biff when he
  finds that Biff loves him.  

15
Kinds of Success (1)

• In the business world
• Charleys money in the pocket growing
  up/becoming a man or adult
• Bernards passing the test (? education)
  lawyer playing tennis one friend with a tennis
  court at home
• Howard owns a company, with a variety of
  playthings (camera, handsaw, a recorder for only
  150 dollars, children and wife recorded).
• Ben go to far away places e.g. the West,
  Alaska, Africa for gold and diamonds

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Kinds of Success (2)

• Willys both success in the biz world and on
  the field
• The physical
• Winning the football game
• building things e.g. what Willy does to his
  house--as Biff describes it in the Requiem
• 2. Business world
• well-liked
• Earning money to pay for the mortgage
• 3. Pride and Idealism ? Mythic dimension Biff as
  Adonis, Hercules
• 4. Family togetherness.

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Critique of the American Dream

• Americans dream of success
• which should be easy and quick as long as
  you work hard
• ? Ben easy and quick success
• Materialism Idealism money the world of
  Nature
• ? Willy and Biff their dreams of working on a
  ranch and planting.
• Male aggression expansionism
• ? Women as target of possession, access to power
  and revenge (e.g. Willy and Happy)
• ? wives supportive but without subjectivity

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Expressionism

• an artistic style in which the artist attempts to
  depict not objective reality but rather the
  subjective emotions and responses that objects
  and events arouse in him.
• Methods through distortion, exaggeration,
  primitivism, and fantasy and through the vivid,
  jarring, violent, or dynamic application of
  formal elements (e.g. stage directions).
• one of the main currents of art in the later
  19th and the 20th centuries, and its qualities of
  highly subjective, personal, spontaneous
  self-expression are typical of a wide range of
  modern artists and art movements.(source)

19
Symbols re. Willys Dream A Review

• Willys house vs. apartment buildings, etc. e.g.
  the first stage direction 
• Properties and Possessions
• Football and the sneakers with U. of V on them.
• the house and the mortgage, Things Fridge, car,
  vacuum cleaner that are broken/falling apart
• Linda's stockings
• Tennis
• of power and status wire recorder and pen
• Nature and The West
• Seeds/plants/trees light of green leaves
• Working with tools/one's hands e.g. Willy's
  argument with Charley towards the end of Act I
  A man who can't handle tools is not a man." 
  "hammer a nail"
• Roads -- being on the road  Cars/boats/trains
  e.g. Willy's Red Chevvy Willy compared to
  "alittle boat looking for a harbor" by Linda
  Ben's taking the train.

20
In painting EDVARD MUNCHs Scream

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Symbols in stage direction

• flute Willy's father beginning of act 1, when
  Ben appears,
• Willys theme (1255)
• Other kinds of music--e.g.
• jarring trumpet note (1249),
• Ben's theme (1236)
• the end of act II (1263)
• End of Requiema noble and elegiac ending.

22
Essay Questions Find a Focus Yourself

• The Lomans Dreams
• I. Willy
• What is(are) his dream(s) and why does he fail to
  accomplish it (them)? Are you sympathetic with
  him?
• What roles do the Woman, Linda and Ben play in
  his pursuit of dream? Does Linda have a dream at
  the end?
• Is he a complete failure, a case of senile
  incompetence, or does he gain any self-knowledge,
  self-confirmation, and retain his sense of
  dignity? Is he a hero?
• II. Happy and Biff
• What are their dreams? Do they fail?
• Why does Biff steal, and Happy womanize?
• How do they respond to their father differently?

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Essay Questions

• B. The Lomans Dreams in the Capitalist Society
• 1) How do Charley and Bernard serve as a foil to
  Willy and Biff?
• Why does Willy refuse to work for Charley?
• 2) What roles do Howard and Bill Oliver play as
  representatives of the business world?
• 3) Jobs What does being a salesman mean? How
  is it different from being a shipping clerk or a
  lawyer?

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Essay Questions

• C. Expressionism in Stage Directions and Symbols
• How do flashbacks happen in the play? What are
  their functions?
• Besides cars, flute and rubber tube, what
  symbolic meanings do the recorder, silk stockings
  and the fountain pen have? Please categorize
  these different objects (and many others in the
  play) and then discuss their symbolic meanings.