DEATH OF SALESMAN By Arthur Miller

Asri Dwi Hastari

A320080212

Class F

Death of Salesman

By Arthur Miller

A.    The Title

The title has several layers of meaning. The most blatantly obvious one is that this big "Death of a Salesman" refers to Willy Loman’s physical death. He is simply a salesman who dies. That one is pretty clear. The title also refers to the death of his salesman dream – the dream to be financially successful and a father to hotshot sons. The title also refers to Willy’s idealized way of dying; he wants a massive funeral with everyone weeping and beating their chests and so forth.

B.     The Characters

1.      Willy Loman - An insecure, self-deluded traveling salesman. Willy believes wholeheartedly in the American Dream of easy success and wealth, but he never achieves it. Nor do his sons fulfill his hope that they will succeed where he has failed. When Willy’s illusions begin to fail under the pressing realities of his life, his mental health begins to unravel. The overwhelming tensions caused by this disparity, as well as those caused by the societal imperatives that drive Willy, form the essential conflict of Death of a Salesman.

2.      Biff Loman - Willy’s thirty-four-year-old elder son. Biff led a charmed life in high school as a football star with scholarship prospects, good male friends, and fawning female admirers. He failed math, however, and did not have enough credits to graduate. Since then, his kleptomania has gotten him fired from every job that he has held. Biff represents Willy’s vulnerable, poetic, tragic side. He cannot ignore his instincts, which tell him to abandon Willy’s paralyzing dreams and move out West to work with his hands. He ultimately fails to reconcile his life with Willy’s expectations of him.

3.      Linda Loman - Willy’s loyal, loving wife. Linda suffers through Willy’s grandiose dreams and self-delusions. Occasionally, she seems to be taken in by Willy’s self-deluded hopes for future glory and success, but at other times, she seems far more realistic and less fragile than her husband. She has nurtured the family through all of Willy’s misguided attempts at success, and her emotional strength and perseverance support Willy until his collapse.

4.      Happy Loman - Willy’s thirty-two-year-old younger son. Happy has lived in Biff’s shadow all of his life, but he compensates by nurturing his relentless sex drive and professional ambition. Happy represents Willy’s sense of self-importance, ambition, and blind servitude to societal expectations. Although he works as an assistant to an assistant buyer in a department store, Happy presents himself as supremely important. Additionally, he practices bad business ethics and sleeps with the girlfriends of his.

5.      Bernard - A bookish friend of Biff and Happy who urges Biff to study in high school to no avail, however, he himself makes it as a prominent lawyer and goes to argue a case to the supreme court at the end of the play.

6.      Charley - Bernard’s father who is fairly successful and offers Willy a job which Willy refuses on the basis of pride.

C.    Synopsis

Willy Loman is a salesman, who gets no salary anymore and works with mere commission. He's 63 years old and he's tired of traveling around the country. His wife Linda understands him and loves him. His sons, Biff and Happy are visiting home. Willy has a troubled relationship with Biff. His son once loved and admired his father very much. It all changed when he found out about his father's crime, of committing adultery. Loman is losing his mind. He can be living two times at the same time. He steps from today's world into the past, mostly those joyful times of his life. He speaks with his now deceased brother Ben, who went to Africa and became a wealthy man.

D.    The Message

Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman shows us how one man's blind faith in a misconception of the American Dream becomes an obsession of accomplishment that destroys his life and nearly that of his family. It told us that if we want to get what we want and being needed by others we should work hard to get and to be that. If we just imagine and imagine or day dreaming, that won’t be come true.

E.     The Kind of Story

This story is classified as “man vs. society”, because the conflict arises because of Willy can not be proper father for his family and as a man in his society he is failed.