A few thoughts on Death of A Salesman

I have trouble reading plays. Unlike books which details the action, plays might have a few stage directions but the bulk of material is dialogue. As I read Death of A Salesman, I found myself getting bored, wanting to skip passages, daydreaming.

But then there were lines that were more real than living in the daily grind. I've had these conversations with my mother, my father, my siblings. These people were my family, and there I was arguing back.

This is why it's a little hard to post here what I wrote after reading Arthur Miller's play...


Emotional manipulation is Willy’s brand of madness. It is not the American Dream. The American Dream is realized by humble and sane Charley and Bernard, but Willy is not so humble or sane. He is a salesman in Arthur Miller’s play aptly titled Death of a Salesman, and being one he has a streak of showmanship akin to a ringleader at a 3-ring circus. He is the leader and the circus is reality to be manipulated at his will, showing what he wants and hiding what he doesn’t behind the tent of madness. His goal as ringleader is not to accomplish anything, particularly not the American Dream, but to run the circus indefinitely without pause or outside influence, and when this frantic pace breaks down or is threatened, he hold onto it tighter. The more control Willy looses, the more emotionally manipulative he becomes towards his family and himself.



In the first ring, stands the aging, nervous wife, Linda. She enters, powdered face, big, red lipstick smeared to a smile, a perfect clown. This show is an old one, but a favorite, and the player is skilled in the art of emotional co-dependence. “I’ll take care of you and you will love me.” Her role is to sustain Willy’s reality so that he will stay with her. “And the boys, Willy. Few men are adored by their children the way you are” (Miller 37). She tells this to Willy when his imperfections threaten to tear the show apart, when he is pointing out his age, his weight, how the boys don’t have jobs and haven’t written in a while. Linda refutes this and perpetuates the lie that their sons do adore him and would do anything for him, even though her first complaint to them is that they do not cater to him. Linda to her boys as they enter: “He’s the dearest man in the world to me, and I won’t have anyone making him feel unwanted and low and blue” (55). The audience understands the joke in this. Linda is unwanted sexually by Willy. She is lonely because of her role in being there for Willy, not herself. She is low because of her babying Willy for love. But he doesn’t love her the way a husband should. He cheats on her and allows her to spend all her energies on him instead of allowing her to be her own woman. The only payoff Linda receives is attention, which she mistakes for love, “I won’t have you mending your stockings in this house! Now throw them out!” (39). He says this not because he is ashamed he cannot afford to give his wife new things, or that he has given new stockings to his mistress. He feels shame because he is not following what he believes is his reality as a good husband. The stockings threaten to break his perception of being the perfect husband. So what does he do? He directs her to take them away, throw them out of the act. And so the lights flicker onto the second ring with Biff and Happy, a double act. Short, not the main act, only a diversion to maintain interest.


The ringleader walks down, enters the third ring, puts on a show. “Couple of weeks ago we got a letter from his wife in Africa. He died.” The light slides to the periphery as if for an entrance but no one enters. His name is Ben and only Willy can see him. The real magic of this act is not the man, but how Willy convinces himself that he is there, and how others give into it, knowing what is truth. They never claim to see Ben themselves, but know that Willy talks to himself, time-traveling, controlling where he is through the magic of memory. If they question his ability to see what others do not, or to question other insanities such as attempts at suicide in between cheery bouts of disposition, the reality will break and so will the show. When it does inevitably break through Biff’s inability to give into the character Willy has molded for him, Willy breaks. He then sees his only source of happiness through suicide which brings nothingness, not bliss. He retreats further into this madness by carrying it out until his last dramatic scene… “As the car speeds off, the music crashes down in a frenzy of sound…all stare down at the grave” (136). His last bit as ringleader; his last source of control.


It turns out that because of his need for power, Willy had none. He became so consumed crafting the reality that he wanted, he became another player in it, acting out what suited his insecurities as a husband, father, and salesmen in order to not face reality. His emotions became monsters; things to be feared and ignored. The only true control a person has in this world is over themselves. He did not have that as he used all other power that was not his to take, such as Linda’s love, and Biff and Happy’s roles as sons, to bury himself. In the end he was not the leader but a sideshow of his own madness which led him. He was the freak show, a snake eating its own tail.