Name : Tyas Purwaningsih
NIM : A320080254
Class : F
DRAMA
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Characters :
Willy Loman
Linda Loman
Biff Loman
Happy Loman
Bernard
The Woman
Charley
Uncle Ben
Howard Wagner
Jenny
Stanley
Letta
Miss Forsythe
Characterization :
Willy Loman
Willy is a 63 year old travelling salesman at the end of his career. He is finding it increasingly difficult to do his job and is trying to come to terms with his sense of failure in his working and family life. He is especially saddened by his stormy relationship with Biff. Willy is an ambitious dreamer who is unable to face the truth of his real situation. He regularly lies to himself and those around him. He is contemplating suicide.
Linda Loman
Linda is Willy’s devoted wife, the one person who always supports him. She feels he has been mistreated by his company and by his sons. She indulges Willy despite his poor treatment of her but she is very strong when dealing with her sons. She is desperately trying to save her husband who she knows is trying to commit suicide.
Biff Loman
Biff, the Lomans’ eldest son, was a star high school athlete with a scholarship, but he did not attend college after failing maths and finding out about Willy’s affair. Since then, he has been drifting; stealing from every job he has had and at the age of 34 is without a career, base or family. Biff is angry with Willy for betraying Linda and the family by having an affair, and because he refuses to face up to reality. However, he still worries about what his father thinks of him.
Happy Loman
Happy is the younger son. He works as a buyer in a department store and lives in his own apartment in the city. Outwardly a success, Happy is a womanizer, has accepted bribes and exaggerates his success at work. Happy seeks recognition from his parents but is overshadowed initially by Biff.
Bernard
Bernard is a childhood friend of Biff’s whom Willy ridiculed as a child for being ‘anaemic’ and ‘not well liked’. Bernard has become a successful lawyer and Willy respects his success, judging Biff against him as a failure.
The Woman
She is an assistant in a Boston company who Willy had an affair with. She is a shadowy memory in Willy’s mind.
Charley
An old friend and neighbour of the Lomans’, Charley is a successful businessman. Although Willy is resentful of his success and refuses to accept the job Charley offers him, Charley is a good friend to Willy and gives him money.
Uncle Ben
Ben is Willy’s older brother who has recently died. He was a wealthy businessman and represents the success Willy wishes he could have had. He regularly appears to Willy in his hallucinations and memories of the past.
Howard Wagner
He is the son of Frank Wagner, Willy’s old boss and now the head of the Wagner Company for whom Willy works. Howard fires Willy because of his erratic behavior.
Minor Characters:
Jenny Charley’s secretary
Stanley The waiter in Frank’s Chop House.
Letta A call girl Happy picks up in the Chop House
Miss Forsythe Letta’s friend, another call girl.
Plot :
In Death of a Salesman, this style is most obvious in the use of ‘flashbacks’ or ‘dream sequences’.
At the beginning of the play, Miller first of all provides an anchor in reality. He presents a series of events that are accepted by the audience as the objective reality of the play i.e. those sections of the play that take place in the present. We understand them as objective reality because we see various different characters’ perceptions of the events – for example, Willy’s breakdown is discussed by the boys and Linda, Jenny the secretary talks to Bernard before Willy enters.
However, the play also shows the internal turmoil and psychological breakdown that Willy is experiencing by presenting what is going on in Willy’s head. Sometimes this takes the form of the acting out of Willy’s past experiences, sometimes in the appearance of Ben or The Woman in Willy’s ‘present’.
This style means that while the audience can share the nightmare experience of Willy’s breakdown with him, we never lose touch with the real events even though Willy perceives reality in a distorted way.
Setting :
Setting of place : In a house and in a class
Setting of time : The fluidity between past and present
Theme :
Reality and Illusion
The gap between reality and illusion is blurred in the play; in the structure, in Willy’s mind and in the minds of the other characters. Willy is a dreamer and dreams of a success that it is not possible for him to achieve. He constantly exaggerates his success: (‘I averaged a hundred and seventy dollars a week in the year of 1928’) and is totally unrealistic about what Biff will be able to achieve too. Willy’s inability to face the truth of his situation, that he is merely ‘a dime a dozen’, rubs off on his sons. Happy exaggerates how successful he is and Biff only realises in Oliver’s office that he has been lying to himself for years about his position in the company: “I realized what a ridiculous lie my whole life has been. We’ve been talking in a dream for fifteen years. I was a shipping clerk.”
Biff is the only one who realises how this blurring of reality has destroyed them all. His aim becomes to make Willy and the family face the truth which they have been avoiding, the truth of who they are: “The man don’t know who we are!… We never told the truth for ten minutes in this house.”
The blurring of reality and illusion is carried through into the structure.
The American Dream
The American Dream is the capitalist belief that if you work hard enough you can be a success in America. However, the success that the dream aspires to is based on money and power. In Willy’s mind it is also linked with being “well-liked”. Biff realises that being true to you is a more important success.
Howard’s treatment of Willy shows how destructive the pursuit of this dream can be. He lays Willy off when he can no longer generate money for the company which enrages Willy: “You can’t eat the orange and throw the peel away – a man is not a piece of fruit.”
Willy’s adherance to the dream means that he buys status symbols on credit that he cannot afford to keep the payments up on. It is ironic then that Willy’s funeral is on the day that the last mortgage payment is made.
Family
In the play, each generation has a responsibility to the other that they cannot fulfill. Biff and Happy are shaped by Willy’s sins. In Happy’s case, he is destined to perpetuate Willy’s values and strive for material success, where Biff has been destroyed totally by Willy’s betrayal of the family through the affair and the fact that Willy never discouraged him from stealing. On the other hand, Biff and Happy have the opportunity to save Willy by becoming “successful” in his eyes and supporting him and Linda in their old age. However they are not able to do this because of the way they have been raised. Biff is attempting to break this cycle of destruction in the family.
Nature and Physical Pursuits
In the play, the alternative to the corruption of urban capitalism is physical or natural pursuits. Biff talks about working with horses or cattle on ranches as his calling. Happy knows he can ‘outbox, outrun and outlift anybody in that store’ and Willy ‘was a happy man with a batch of cement’. The ‘Loman Brothers’ would sell sporting goods and Willy should have gone to the wilds of Alaska. The suggestion is that the true nature of all three of these men would be in physical pursuits and in a rural setting. However, Willy’s dependance on ‘the dream’ means they cannot follow their true calling.
Style :
Realism
Realism was an artistic movement that began in 19th century France. The realists sought to accurately portray everyday characters, situations and dilemmas. Realist drama was a careful observation of human characteristics and the language attempted to be as close as possible to natural conversation. Contemporary costuming and three – dimensional sets were used so as to create a ‘lifelike’ stage picture. The plays were usually critiques of social problems.
Expressionism
A reaction to Realism, the Expressionist movement began in the early 1900s. Expressionist dramatists were concerned with presenting the inner psychological reality of a character, a subjective vision of the world as opposed to an objective representation as Realism wanted to do. They were, as American Expressionist playwright Elmer Rice claimed, “... getting beneath reality, displaying more than reality, replacing reality with something more expressive.”
Conclusion :
What happens to an ordinarily uneducated man in an unjust competitive society in which men are victimized by false gods. His fate is not tragic. There is nothing of the superhuman or providential or destined in this play. Everyone fails in a waste of misplaced energy.
Man vs. Society :
Willy is constantly striving to find the gimmick or the key to winning over clients and becoming a true success. He worries incessantly about how he is perceived by others, and blames his lack of success on a variety of superficial personal traits, such as his weight, the fact that people "don't take him seriously," his clothing, and the fact that he tends to talk too much. All of these concerns are shared by many people.
