05/11. Wed. Arthur Miller. Death of a Salesman (1646-1711).
Notes on Arthur Miller's The Death of a Salesman
ACT ONE
You can gain a lot of understanding just from Arthur Miller's stage directions. The opening melody is pastoral, while the scene that opens up before us is in Brooklyn. I believe it was Henry David Thoreau who said that most people lead lives of quiet desperation, and the way this set is designed seems bent upon opening up Willy Loman's middle-class household to scrutiny: the dream will not be mocked, but it will be exposed, put on display. "An air of the dream clings to the place, a dream rising out of reality." And then there's the kitchen, which is a real kitchen in the middle of the stage. Everything is stripped down to its bare essentials, there is nowhere for fraud to hide. The American dream, I think it's fair to say, is contradictory as it is rendered in this play: is both a pastoral ideal and a tale of advances wrought by never-ending ambition. This insight begins to open up when we hear the characterization of Linda Loman, who idolizes her husband and "admires him, as though his mercurial nature, his temper, his massive dreams and little cruelties, served her only as sharp reminders of the turbulent longings within him, longings which she shares but lacks the temperament to utter and follow to their end." I don't mean to take away from her dignity because she is a very dignified character in her way, but that sounds an awful lot like Stockholm syndrome, where the victim comes to identify with the aggressor. Perhaps that is putting things a little too harshly, but there is at least a hint of it.
1646-47. The first thing we see after the house itself, is Willy Loman. And the description of him as profoundly realistic: he is dead tired. Exhaustion is simply a fact of life for this hard-working man. And he is rather old, an old 60. Willie unburdens himself to Linda about nearly getting into an automobile accident, so entranced was he, he says, by the beautiful scenery. This is a man riven by contradictions – he sees himself as an urban salesman, but he loves the countryside.
1648-49. Willie spends much time complaining how "lost" his son Biff has become – isn't that he doesn't work hard, it's that he's just going nowhere. Willie is quite contradictory in the way he speaks about Biff. He also complains about the growth of the population – which is an odd argument to make for a city-based salesman. But there you have it. Having just seen the Dustin Hoffman version of this play, I must say a great deal probably depends on how the actor chooses to play Willy Loman: his treatment of Linda is at times very unkind and peremptory, but Hoffman starts right out with a version of Willy who is almost senile in his cruelty and explosiveness. You could play him more quietly than that. It's an actor's choice.
1650-51. Willie keeps referring to an idealized past, one in which his wonderful sons were always polishing the new car, and so forth. Back in 1928, they had a fine Chevy, and ominously, Willy tells Linda, "I could have sworn I was driving that Chevy today." His mind really does tend to wander time frames, and he has become confused about who and where he is. The stage directions by Miller are interesting – they are very explicit in describing the inner lives of the characters themselves. Happy is on the surface contented and exudes animal sexuality, but at the same time he is confused. His seeming content comes only from the fact that "he has never allowed himself to turn his face toward defeat." The older son Biff is perhaps closer to the old man, since while he has lost his self-assurance, "his dreams are stronger and less acceptable" than are those of his brother. The older brother then asks an ominous question, "Why does Dad mock me all the time?" He senses that his father has never approved of him, never really been proud of him. And both brothers are of course worried about their father's confusion.
1652-53. The older brother explains that he has been working for a while on a farm, and he really enjoys doing that. He has tried to become what his father was, but he is not cut out for it. So he summons up a simulacrum of his father's ambition, and comes back home. Feeling that he has wasted his life up to this point. That he has never grown up. The younger brother is really in a quandary as well: on the surface, he is more successful, but he is also lonely and is beginning to realize that even if he steps up the ladder, he probably won't get to enjoy what he finds there. Successful, ambitious people had really better love their jobs because they spend most of their time working. And Happy does not enjoy the business work he is doing. In truth, both of these young men have something of their father's love of the countryside and would just as well spend their time there. But that option is not really available to them, given who their father is. Happy is quite the man for the ladies, but that doesn't make him any happier. It's really just what I've heard called "genital gymnastics." In a word, competition.
1654-55. Willie enters, and it is clear that he is talking to his sons in a different time, a time when they were much younger and perhaps more amenable to his direction and advice. He thinks Biff is still in school. And I think the stage directions have the two sons appear in that younger form, almost as ghosts sprung from Willy's imagination. What we are seeing is what Willy is fantasizing at this moment, not the grown up men now in the house.
1656-57. As the imaginary conversation continues, Charley puts in his first imaginary appearance. The man is not liked, says Willy. Neither is imaginary Bernard well-liked – he isn't well liked because he confronts Willy with a primal moment: one that would have forced him to face the fact that his eldest son cannot measure up to his expectations. He's just about to flunk math. The only thing that matters, says Willy, is to be liked – that's the secret handshake of business life. Not grade you got in school.
1658-59. And the conversation from the past continues with Linda being informed just how much money Willy has earned in Providence Rhode Island, in Boston and other places. But by the bottom of 1658, we are back to the present: bills need to be paid, and Willy isn't doing so well anymore. The kitchen is the locus of reality, of the sad present, the place where will he now realizes his "boys" seem to be always laughing at him, and he doesn't know why. Increasingly, as a salesman he is failing and cannot even keep his temper. He is becoming fat and sensitive about that.
1660-61. As Willy compliments his wife for once, THE WOMAN is now seen. This is another flashback to Willy's adulterous liaison. When he says, "I'll make it all up to you, Linda," he seems to be talking about his affair, that there's no way for Linda to know what's going on in his head. Another flashback to when happy and this Biff were younger and in school, and a mention of brother Ben. Ben is a ghostly presence, he is the smiling Heart of Darkness in the play, the ruthless capitalist ideal hidden beneath the tidy suit. And already Willy is in competition with this shadowy presence. He really should've gone to Alaska like Ben and earned his fortune there. He should've been a successful, self-made man by imitating Ben. There's also a mention that the elder son has a problem with stealing things – he has had that problem since childhood.
1662-63. Charley offers Willy a job, but it's obvious that's humiliating to this man who sees himself as a successful salesman. Willy's relationship to Charley depends on his being able to insult the man, to see him as less of a man than he is. At this point, the self-assured uncle Ben enters at the front of the stage, and the directions tell us that uncle Ben is utterly self-assured – he knows who he is and he knows he is a success. Willie points out that Uncle Ben recently passed away and the implication is that the man had not even been in communication with him for a long time. Nevertheless, Willy idolizes his brother. For him, this ghost represents the fearless pursuit of the American dream – he's a rugged individualist who won't take no for an answer from destiny.
1664-65. Well it turns out that Ben went to Africa. One wonders if anything Willy says about Ben is true – the fellow is the stuff of pure myth. Made all of his money in diamonds, etc. Willie doesn't seem to remember much about his own father, either. "All I remember is a man with a big beard," he admits to the imaginary Ben.
1666-67. The conversation with Ben is very revealing here – Willy admits that he misses his absent father, and wishes that Ben would stay even a few days. So much of his psyche is patterned after being the strong father he can only imagine, the one who left him or died when he was very young. Willie says that he feels "kind of temporary about myself," a very interesting phrase. Brother Ben tells him that he "walked into the jungle" at the tender age of 17, and the rest, we are to understand, is capitalist history. And with that we are confusedly back to the present, with Linda and Biff worryingly discussing Willy's conduct.
1668-69. Linda explains that Willy is always at his worst and most confused when his sons return home. Fights always break out amongst them. On 1669 especially, we come across one of those moments where the language becomes formal, heightened in its intensity. This moment occurs in the midst of a heated argument between Linda and the young men: "I don't say he's a great man. Willy Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper. He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. He's not to be allowed to fall into his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must be finally paid to such a person." Willy isn't crazy, she's trying to say – he's just tired and in need of loving affection. No one knows him anymore, and the contacts that are the lifeblood of a salesman had deserted him. Linda knows exactly what's going on – she knows he's not making any money and that he has to borrow money from Charley. She bitterly reproaches her sons for their derogatory characterization of him.
1670-71. The eldest son isn't buying any of it, and he still calls his father "a fake." As for the car accidents Willy keeps getting into, he might as well forget his dream of leaving the insurance money to his family – the insurance company is on to the fact that his accidents don't seem like accidents at all. There was a witness at one of them who said she thought Willy deliberately tried to drive off a bridge. This is where they really confront the fact that Willy is "dying," as Linda puts it. He has reached the end of his rope. In addition to the car accidents, Linda knows that Willy has put a length of rubber pipe behind the fuse pipe where the gas is. So he is planning to asphyxiate himself. He is pretty much reached the stage that William Styron describes in his book Darkness Visible, the point at which a person cannot enter a room without looking at all the objects as means of self-destruction. The eldest son is moved by this at last.
1672-73. Willie reenters and enters into a bitter competition with his sons over who is the better businessman. They begin to discuss going into business in the sporting goods line, something that at least the athlete Biff should understand. And Willy is happy to hear them talking that way, happy that maybe now they will achieve the dream he has always had for them. Turns out that Biff is going to see Bill Oliver about a prospect. Willy's dream is of course cut from the cloth of American capitalist ideology – his personal dream, his individual dream, seems to be very closely modeled on the most unrealistic dream set forth by that ideology. Total success, knock them dead, come out on top of the competitive pile and you'll be happy.
1674-75. Willie goes to bed happy, firmly believing that now his son Biff is going to make good. He is at last going to live up to Willy's expectations that he will become something extraordinary, just like the old man. And he plans to ask Howard, his boss, to let him work in New York rather than traveling all the time now. This first act ends with the eldest son removing the rubber tubing from the heater, something he does with horror.
ACT TWO
I don't have time to do extensive notes at the moment for this act, but needless to say it is one long series of humiliations for Willy. First there is the humiliating conversation between him and his boss Howard from 1678-83, a conversation in the course of which he is fired and which is followed by an imaginary dialogue with Ben. Ben offers him a job in Alaska looking after timberland.
And then on 1686-88, Bernard – the grown-up Bernard – confronts him with a riddle: what happened all those years ago? Why didn't his eldest son make up that F grade in math by going to summer school? The answer is an ugly one of course – it is because Biff was crushed when he learned of his father's adulterous behavior with The Woman. It happened after he went.
Hard upon that comes the conversation with Charley on 1688 and following, and again Charley offers Willy a job he won't take. He will not work for Charley, no matter what.
Following that incident, there is the restaurant confrontation between Willie and his eldest son about that meeting with Bill Oliver today. Biff is forced to correct the record for Willy – he was never a true salesman but rather a sales clerk for this man. And he stole the fellow's pen on top of that out of anxiety and resentment. And again The Woman puts in an imaginary appearance, setting the stage for Biff's long-ago discovery of the two of them together. This discovery begins on 1699 and runs through 1701. And then we return to the present unhappy scene in the restaurant; Willy's sons have deserted him, and now he realizes it. The waiter won't even take his tip money out of respect, but it's humiliating all the same.
By 1702, Linda is out of all patience with her children, and orders them out of the house. But parental authority isn't what it used to be in this home, and in fact it never was what it used to be. The argument continues between the mother and her children. The eldest son wants to confront Willy even as he admits his own failings.
Meanwhile by 1704, things have gone very far indeed – Willy is having an imaginary conversation with Ben about that $20,000 which would come in so handy for the family. In other words, he's psyching himself up to commit suicide. That $20,000 is as solid as a diamond, thinks Willy, and frankly, Ben is disposed to agree, ruthless bastard that he is. Remarkable proposition! is Ben's final word on the matter.
1705, Biff is trying to get through to Willy, trying to explain that he's just not cut out for the plans his father had made for him. But that only succeeds in making Willy angry and confused. He charges his eldest son with abandonment and accuses him of acting only out of spite. The young man confronts him with the rubber hose, with the truth about his lamentable present. Biff's self-analysis is noteworthy – his father had led him to believe he should not take orders from anyone, that he should be impatient to get to the top of the heap. Perhaps then, stealing pens and other things was a way of taking control, of seizing what others would not immediately grant. The final terrible admission is simply "I'm a dime a dozen, and so are you!" And furthermore, "I am not a leader of men, Willy, and neither are you." And so on in that vein, which brings down something very like a father's curse on his head, but then a moment of great tenderness between them: "That boy – that boy is going to be magnificent!" But Willy is probably by now thinking of the son he knew in the past.
On 1708, following up on this tender moment, Ben makes another appearance, telling Willy, "The jungle is dark but full of diamonds, Willy." The jungle is the night into which Willy disappears, and his final car accident.
The Requiem affords two things: further humiliation because we find that Willy's funeral has been sparsely attended, but perhaps more important is the occurrence of one last attempt to understand him on the part of Charley and Linda. In suitably formal language, Charley justifies the choice of profession Willy made: "You don't understand: Willy was a salesman. And for a salesman, there is no rock-bottom to the life." As for Linda, she tries to talk to the departed man, explaining to them that she has finally paid off their house, but now that they are free and clear, the house is empty. Perhaps that means that the insurance money came through after all, but what does it matter by now? The word "free" is savagely ironic as well.
