American Literature

Can happiness be equated to economic success Devotees of the American Dream think so. However, it appears that the very same devotees of the dream must be trained in the philosophy of Horace Walpole to make a success of the pursuit.  The world is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel,  says Walpole and the emotional Willy Loman with his emotional need to be the perfect father, perfect husband and perfect salesman. Willy s father who unemotionally abandoned his family in pursuit of his dream perhaps succeeded and Ben, Willy s brother, following on his footsteps made it rich overnight.

So, does that make Willy a modern tragic hero Authur Miller certainly called him that. He does not have the tragic stance of a Macbeth or a Lear. He is a small time, 63-year-old salesman at the end of his career who is back where he started, living on commissions. However, like Macbeth and Lear, he has large ambitions and is in pursuit of the dream of the era the American Dream. He surrounds himself with the best refrigerators, cars and modern gadgets. He wants to make it economically big for himself and his family.

Tragically, like Macbeth and Lear, he finds that he is pursuing an illusion. The gadgets are expensive to maintain and the plumbing in the house is constantly malfunctioning and everything demands attention and money drains out of his pockets faster than he can earn it. The losing game he is engaged in is highlighted and the past unfolds in snapshots and Willy s truthful recollections are distorted by his wishful thinking and Willy is overwhelmingly aware that in America success is equated to economic success and people like Willy have no right to dream.

It is clear that the socio-historical context of the play has a major role to play in the tragedy of Willy Loman. The context is the post war America and America had not suffered as much as Europe. There  was a smell in the air of a New American Empire in the making, if only because Europe was dying or dead  and Miller wanted  to set before them, new captains and the so smugly confident kings, the corpse of a believer  (Time Bends 187).  Willy Loman, a believer, is destroyed by the capitalism that pervades the new world. Miller calls this  the pseudo life that thought to touch the clouds by standing on top of the refrigerator, waving a paid up mortgage at the mood, victorious at last  (Time Bends 184). Therefore, though Willy is angry about the repairs he has to make, he is proud of his possessions and the new kind of cheese that Linda buys. He admires the spirit that prompted his brother Ben to walk into the jungle at 17 to emerge wealthy at 21 without thought to the fact that some kind of colonial oppression must have been used to achieve the dream of untold wealth. Parallels are subtly made when Willy runs after dreams and encourages his sons to steal building materials and Ben is impressed with the act. Exploitation and corruption are regarded as necessary adjuncts to economic success.

Interestingly, a close reading of the Death of a Salesman reveals that it juxtaposes two conflicting ideologies the cult of the personality and the profit motive.  Willy is an idealist. He is brought up to believe in the homespun myth of his father and brother making it big in life. The father is a fierce individualist who pulled himself up by the bootstraps to success and the brother is a man who seemed to be magically guided into the African jungles where diamonds are to be found. The belief fosters the American dream in Willy Loman and prompts him to equate economic success with happiness.

However, the cult of the personality forces Willy into a false and comfortable conviction that all he needs to do to achieve his ends is to smile and shake hands. He tells his son  Be liked and you will never want  (Death 21). This then, becomes the cause of his greatest struggle as he realizes that he is fat and foolish to look at. He tells Linda  I m fat. I m very   foolish to look at, Linda. I didn t tell you, but Christmas time I happened to be calling on F. H. Stewarts, and a salesman I know, as I was going in to see the buyer I heard him say something about   walrus. And I   I cracked him right across the face. I won t take that. I simply will not take that. But they do laugh at me. I know that  (Death 24).

Adding to Willy s discomfort is the amoral view of business that is prevalent in his world. Efficiency is god and profit is a religion. After all, in the American dream, good economics is the parameter of success. After all,  business is business  (Death 57).  This ideology is an extension of the mechanistic view of the world and individuals are regarded as soulless entities who must contribute to profit making efficiently if they must operate in the business world. Willy lives and dies blind to the reality of his situation.

The societal attitudes explored in the play are very real. Willy, embodying the plight of every man, becomes a kind of Marxist model. He confirms the view that life is a struggle towards freedom from oppression. Willy is a man to whom things happen and who responds with bewilderment and a desperate clinging to his old faith (Hagopian 35). His fate, therefore, reaches tragic proportions as the life condition suppresses his natural emotional being and perverts the outflow of love and creative energy. He would perhaps have been happier as a carpenter or a mason, but societal pressure blinds him to his natural instincts and he gives it up in pursuit of his dream. Once caught up in the dream, he is very conscious of his station in society and has an overwhelming desire to die.  He cannot know his wife, his sons or the people who surround him for what they are. The plays technique thus forces the audience to become Willy Lomans  for the whole duration of the play, to sympathize with his predicament in a way they could not do in real life (Parker 101).   Happy Loman following on his father s footsteps perpetuates the predicament and he will continue the cycle trying to vindicate that stand taken by his father.

What is the alternative world view Ben offers to take Willy under his wing and to share his strengths with him. Ben s philosophy is a selfish one. He seems to hold the view that it is impossible to save yourself and your loved ones together. Like his father, he abandons the family to pursue his dream. He is held up as a success story throughout the play.

Biff s self discovery at the end of the play demonstrates an alternate way of struggle. Biff shows self-awareness and is the wanderer who returns home only to be conscious of the stupidity of the dream his father holds and the reality that is. The self-awareness blossoms into self-realization as he breaks away from the dream and assigns greater meaning to life than profit making. He tells Willy Pop Im a dime a dozen and so are you (Death 98).

Both Ben and Biff provide an alternate to the world of Willy Loman. However, fundamentally, Willy Loman is unwilling to abandon his family and is content with the stability of his existence and has a conviction about the dreams he nurtures. He thinks he can make his millions in the city.  This is not to say that he is not conscious that Ben has a more exploitative power than he will ever have.  He is also conscious that he has no pioneering spirit, no jungle to tame and the city itself  - represented by the Charley s of the world - offers very little power.  Over the course of his lifetime he also comes to realize that the stability that he finds with Linda is also inherently unstable. She pins all her hopes on false dreams like Willy and supports him in his belief that the dreams will come true. She is the archetypal wife bolstered by society to dream the dreams of her husband and unwittingly participates in his destruction. Willy Loman has no way out of his situation other than suicide.

When Linda says that attention needs to be paid to such a person as Willy, she is underlining one of the major themes of the play - moral responsibility of a society that created a person like Willy. Willy has personally contributed to society. He has been a responsible parent, has raised two children and has been working loyally for a company for 33 years. Yet he ends up feeling betrayed.  Miller sees this as the tragedy of the common man. In his play  Tragedy of the Common Man  published after the Death of the Salesman, Miller points out  the 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. From Orestes to Hamlet, Medea to Macbeth, the underlying struggle is that of an individual attempting to gain his  rightful  position in his society  ( Tragedy and the Common Man  4).

Another pervading theme in the play is the search for material pleasures versus the search for love. All Willy wants is that everyone must like him. This desire runs through the play and is seen as a desire for personal dignity when Willy is insulted and reacts to it or is expected to react to it in instances such as when Charley offers him a job he overhears someone call him a walrus, when Howard suggests that he takes a break or Linda removes the tubing in case Willy feels insulted. Biff s reconciliation with his father at the end of the play is also touching because it restores Willy s self esteem and he says  Biff he likes me

The juxtaposition between human emotion and social criticism needed a special kind of form for elucidation and this was achieved by Miller in the form and structure of his play the Death of a Salesman.   The Death of a Salesman  matches the strong intellectual content with strong visual imagery.  Everything in the play exists in the now. There is no past and no future. He lives his past in the present and dreams of his future now.  The reader is given all his glimpses into Willy s character by his frequent forays into past memories and his reactions to the present situations. The structure lends itself to the tragedy as the different facets of the personality are juxtaposed simultaneously. For instance, Willy flirts with his mistress and immediately orders his wife to stop darning her sock and to throw it away. His guilt and his desire conflict and the viewer has a clear understanding of the character of Willy and the forces that inexorably draw him to his doom.

The Death of a Salesman is a play par excellence.  It is a tragedy that is closer to every ones homes as each man identifies with Willy and his lot. The play becomes all the more poignant for that. At the end of the play, people are left wondering about the relevance of the  American dream  the morality of capitalism and the social mores that suppress the dignity of man and destroy his faith in his own self and in the values that created his world. The depressing truth that is driven home is that the pioneering spirit of Ben or the self-realization of Biff is not for everyone.