Arthur Miller seemed to capture the sometimes tragic scrape of the public guy with his Death of a Salesman. Bloom suggests the potency of the mess about is puzzling but beyond dispute, deceitful more in its presentation on arena than its in black and white form. The play's endless vivacity is unquestioned.
The title, Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, element of Chelsea House Publishers’ Modern Critical Interpretations series, presents the most essential 20th-century analysis on Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman through extracts of nit-picking essays by well-known literary critics. This anthology of analysis also skin tone a midstream biography on Arthur Miller, a chronology of the author’s life, and an introductory essay in black and white by Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University.
Arthur Miller's 1949 Death of a Salesman has sold 11 million copies, and Willy Loman didn't receive all those sales on a beam and a shoeshine. This mess about is the true article--it's got the cargo on the individual condition, all packed into a date in the existence of one self-deluded, self-promoting, self-defeating soul. It's a forceful join between kitchen-sink pragmatism and ethereal abstraction, the particulars of particular solid time and total themes. As Christopher Bigsby's mildly fascinating afterword in this 50th-anniversary book points out (as does Miller in his memoir, Timebends), Willy is densely based on the playwright's sad, absurd salesman uncle, Manny. But of course Miller prepared Manny into Everyman, and gave him the name of the crime administrator Lohmann in Fritz Lang's angst-ridden 1932 Nazi parable, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse.
The tragedy of Loman the all-American visionary and loser installation eternally, on the side as on the stage. A fate of drama prepared chronicle around 1949, but none have stepped out of chronicle into the classic annals as Salesman has. Great as it was, Tennessee Williams's job can't be rejuvenated as garishly as this mess about still is, all over the world. (This book has enlightening cinema of Lee J. Cobb's 1949 and Brian Dennehy's 1999 performances.) It connects Aristotle, The Great Gatsby, On the Waterfront, David Mamet, and the model American film antihero. It even transcends its author's tragic flaw of virtuous preachiness (which undoes his snoozy The Crucible, unfortunately his most-produced play).
No have reservations you've seen Willy Loman's hearsay at least once. It's still attraction reading. --Tim Appelo
Model
Manufacturer
Penguin (Non-Classics)
Binding
Paperback
EAN
9780140481341
Numbers Of Items
1
Number Of Pages
144
ISBN
0140481346
Details
Studio
Penguin (Non-Classics)
Publisher
Penguin (Non-Classics)
Authors
Arthur Miller
Label
Penguin (Non-Classics)
Publication Date
1998
Edition
1st
Rat Race Lost, State of Denial (2008-03-31) Hopeless fathers & sons were a favorite theme of Miller. The pressure of failing aspirations. The horror of failure. Drawn between overconfidence and self-doubt. Flashbacks on scenes from a dreary life. Lies to others and oneself. Failures in job and family.
The play is one of the quintessential pieces of modern American theater. Its themes are known and have been expounded endlessly. Why is it still fresh? I have never watched it on stage nor screen. I have known it for ages, but could not find enough interest to look for a performance, nor to read it. Now LoA does it.
Looking at the reviews here on the Penguin modern classic page, I am wondering about the spread in reviews. From 5 to 1 stars all is there, with a downward slope towards the negative votes. The play has more friends than foes, but on an absolute level, the nays would sink an ordinary ship. Of course quality questions are not decided by democracy. One particularly daft observer produced a perfect inverted version of cultural Stalinism. With perfect perverted logic, he tells us that only positive depictions of the American dream are acceptable. That is completely in line with 'socialist realism': if the artist fails to enthuse about the reigning system, he is condemned.
Thanks to LoA for making me get to know the man Miller. I will definitely look for a movie version or go to a play if I find an opportunity.
Great Play! (2007-12-29) Summary:
"Death of a Salesman" is a play by Arthur Miller about an aging man named Willy Loman and his broken dreams. Willy is in his sixties, and had just been demoted from his once fruitful job as a traveling salesman. Because of his growing depression and his frequent car accidents, he had his salary taken away, and has been put on commission.
Throughout the play, Willy recalls his life in a series of flashbacks, while we see what he has become in the present. He went from having an illustrious career where everyone loved him and he brought home a large salary, to a depressing home life and earning money off the occasional sale. His two sons Biff and Happy, were once successful athletes. Now Biff is 34 years old with no job and no high school diploma. Happy appears to be following in his fathers footsteps, making many of the same mistakes that he did. Willy can't stand to be around his wife, Linda, anymore because of his overwhelming guilt over an extramarital affair that happened several decades ago, that his son found out about.
Near the end of the play, Willy fantasizes that he is talking to his dead brother Ben, who had been an inspiration to him since he struck it rich in Alaska. Willy attempts suicide several times, once by hooking an exhaust pipe to the gas heater, and several times by purposefully driving recklessly.
When he tries to get his original job back, he gets fired by a man young enough to be his son. He tells this man, Howard Wagner, how he expected his life to turn out, and how he was let down:
"...Oh, yeah, my father lived many years in Alaska. He was an adventurous man. We've got quite a little streak of self-reliance in our family. I thought I'd go out with my older brother and try to locate him, and maybe settle in the North with the old man. And I was almost decided to go, when I met a salesman in the Parker House. His name was Dave Singleman. And he was eighty-four years old, and he'd drummed merchandise in thirty-one states. And old Dave, he'd go up to his room, y'understand, put on his green velvet slippers - I'll never forget - and pick up his phone and call the buyers, and without ever leaving his room, at the age of eighty-four, he made his living. And when I saw that, I realized that selling was the greatest career a man could want. `Cause what could be more satisfying than to be able to go, at the age of eighty-four, into twenty or thirty different cities, and pick up a phone, and be remembered and loved and helped by so many different people? Do you know? When he died - and by the way, he died the death of a salesman, in his green velvet slippers in the smoker of the New York, New Haven and Hartford, going into Boston - when he dies, hundreds of salesmen and buyers were at his funeral. Things were sad on a lotta trains for months after that. In those days there was personality in it, Howard. There was respect, and comradeship, and gratitude in it. Today, it's all cut and dried, and there's no chance for bringing friendship to bear - or personality. You see what I mean? They don't know me any more."
Later, he finds out that his son, Biff, doesn't get the job he was counting on. After a failed attempt to plant a vegetable garden, he decides that he couldn't live anymore and drives his car off a bridge.
My rating: 4/5
Commentary:
This was a good book. It had good character development and an intriguing plot. However, since I wasn't seeing the actual play, it was hard to tell what happened in some of the scenes. Anyone who likes period pieces will probably want to read this.
A Modern Tragedy (2007-09-20) "Death of a Salesman" is a modern American tragedy. Yet, it can apply equally to any society where individuals become self-obsessed, lose touch with the bigger picture and allow themselves to be deluded by dreams of riches whilst ignoring the beauty of the day to day world.
Poor Willy Loman is a very sad figure. He wallows in the past. He has grandiose dreams about himself and his two adult sons, Happy and Biff. But these dreams are not rooted in any reality. Quite simply, Willy is lost and lonely.
Arthur Miller's play is a masterpiece. Few other 20th century playwrights have been able to surgically dissect society so well. Miller's work is not for those seeking a happy ending where everything is resolved and the characters happily fade away. No, this work is brutal in comparison. Willy Loman is an anti-hero. He is hard to like. He is, however, worthy of our pity. His life, at least through his own eyes, is one of failure. But, in reality, Willy is no failure. He is simply deluded. He has swallowed the American dream to the point where its goals merely impoverish him. The dream, any dream, is what you make of it and should not be imposed upon the individual. Willy allows the dream to ruin his life. Willy is the ultimate tragic.
Take a Second Look (2007-09-19) I wasn't terribly impressed with "Death of a Salesman" while I read it. The play simply didn't live up to its acclaim, its noble status in American literature. I've heard Salesman referenced countless times over my life, all 22 years of it. Salesman was written in 1949, a post-war era that supported the belief that starting anew was possible and wishes do come true. My first impression of the play was that it attempted to shatter the ubiquitous belief of an American dream, making it merely a quixotic fantasy. But after rereading certain passages and thinking about it for this review, I saw how very human its message is and how it is actually an incredibly despairing masterpiece that throws a new light at the idea behind the American dream. Through the utterly destroyed and distraught protagonist, Willy Loman, Miller represents the demise of the American dream and suggests the need to reassess such a unrealistic dream.
Loman is a revised, twentieth-century version of the classic tragic character. He does not display the typical chivalrous characteristics that many literary tragic characters do, such as Beowulf and Oedipus Rex. Loman, in fact, is pathetic and repugnant. As an older aged, crazy, and impoverished character, Loman isn't close to the traditional heroic figure. He cheats on his wife; builds up impratical hopes for his two sons; and makes imprudent business and life decisions. Such characteristics are sinful and generally not seen in the traditional tragic literary figure. But these traits are also very real and humanistic. Miller deftly jumps from the present to the past and back again, slowly "peeling the onion" (as Grass would call it) of the true Loman. This peeling process reveals what went wrong and what should've been avoided to prevent this most tragic ending. It appears that Miller is suggesting that seemingly innocuous decisions can--and do--destroy the American dream.
Such a bleak perspective on the American dream shouldn't come as a surprise to the reader/viewer. The late 1940s was a period of transition: America was forced to adjust from the war-driven, ration crazed society to a very corporate-driven, forced-fed consumer culture. Post-war America was full of tenuous hopes to climb the corporate ladder and to acclimate to a life of plenty, i.e. family members and money. For an ordinary, hard-working American, like Loman, this proved to be too much. Despite the play having a backdrop in the 1920s and '30s, it takes place in the late '40s, in the very much consumer focused society. It is fitting that the land of plenty left Loman and his family with nothing.
The play is very much alive today as it was nearly sixty years ago. Do read it. I'm going to try to see the play the next time it comes to town.
Questions for life's inventory (2007-07-30) Poor Willie; he's just as much a victim of capitalism as the people he's screwed in business all those years. Long before American business became the global conspiracy of recent years (Enron, Haliburton,), business rested on the efforts of the little guy who thought big. Willy Loman is just such a man: in fact, he's the poster boy for the dark side of the corporate psyche in America, from 1949 (when the play had its first production) right up to today. Loathed by his colleagues, avoided by his family (Biff and Happy, his sons, leave him hallucinating in a public toilet), and haunted by his life (which is portrayed in flashback episodes generated within his own troubled mind)--
willy finds himself asking, "Why?" Trying to answer this question leads him through psychosis to eventual suicide . Only Linda, his long-suffering wife, pays him homage: "Willy Loman was a Good Man...," she says over his grave near the end of the play. I can only imagine that universities across the country began developing classes in business ethics soon after this play hit Broadway. ( Ken Lay and Dennis Kozlowsi, for, example, must have missed the play altogether, and it's obvious they cut their ethics class). But, you DO get the feeling that Willy started out as Linda sees him, a good and honorable man. His slide through capitalism has left him critically wounded. When I first saw this play performed on television, Lee J. Cobb played Willy like a wounded bear; he reminded me of some of the business people I knew, both friends and family; so, when I read the play later, I was blown away by it again, amazed that Miller could get it so right. This play should be required reading in all ethics classes. Anyone who reads the play will never feel the same about American business again. It begs the big question: When it comes time to take our own life's inventory, as Willy has, will we look back with pride and a sense of accomplishment? Or will we find ourselves sidestepped and alone, lost to despair? Arthur Miller poses some of life's key questions in this wrenchingly powerful play. It's up to each of us to answer them for ourselves.
US
Europe
UK
Canada