this is an M.A. presentation of mine.

1. Arthur Miller
Death of a Salesman
(1949)
Canan Kaplan

2. Content
His contributions to the American
Theatre
His Biography
Death of a Salesman
(1949)
Setting and Character
Descriptions

3. Capitalism
Moral and Social Commitment and His Definition of
Tragedy
Materialism
American Dream of Success
Family
Relationships
The Changing Role of
Capitalism
Passive Female Stereotypes
Content

4. Arthur Asher Miller (1915 – February 10,
2005)
was born
in Harlem, in the
New York City
American playwright, essayist, and figure in
twentieth-century American theater
Isidore, a wealthy and respected man in
the community
Polish Jewish descent
the second of three children of
Augusta (Barnett) and Isidore
Miller

6. Arthur Asher Miller (1915 – February 10,
2005)

8. 26 plays, a novel entitled Focus (1945),
several travel journals, a collection of
short stories entitled I Don't Need You
Anymore (1967), and an autobiography
entitled Timebends: A Life (1987).
His plays generally address social
issues and center around an
individual in a social dilemma or an
individual at the mercy of society.

9. Plays
• The Golden Years (2006)
• The Man Who Had All the Luck (1944)
• All My Sons (1947)
• Death of a Salesman (1949)
• An Enemy of the People (1977)
• The Crucible (1953)
• A View from the Bridge (1955)
• After the Fall (1964)
• A Memory of Two Mondays (1954)
• Incident at Vichy (1965)
• The Price (1968)
• The Creation of the World and Other Business (1972)
• The Archbishop’s Ceiling (1976)
• The American Clock (1980)
• Playing for Time (1981)
• The Ride Down Mt. Morgan (1991)
• Broken Glass (1994)
• Mr. Peters’Connections (1999)
• Resurrection Blues (2002)
• Finishing the Picture (2004)

10. Pulitzer Prize for
Drama
Praemium Imperiale
prize in 2002
Jerusalem Prize in
2003
St. Louis Literary
Award

11. His contribution to the American
Theatre
began to achieve fame in 1947
with the production of All My
Sons
developed a kind of
(Ibsenic) critical
realism
tried to nurture critical
realism with a kind of poetic
romanticism and intensive
symbolism
adopted the ordinary man as
a hero and used him/her to
tackle big social philosophies
attempted to help
contemporary Man to look for
a lost identity, a lost self.

12. «Arthur Miller picks up the mantle of dissenter in every
phase of his dramaturgy. The post-World War II infatuation
with success was brimming with optimism, but underlying it
was a deep feeling of residual fear from the Great
Depression. Miller’s plays, at least his early successes All My
Sons (1947) and The Death of a Salesman (1949), reflect this
trepidation. Kenneth Tynan writes that what drives Miller is
“a sleepless social conscience.” Having “crossed the
thirties to the fifties, while skipping the awkward forties,”
Miller “wants art to reflect society.” . . . Miller’s
drama “refused to let its audience forget the ugly
side of recent events it seemed all too willing ‘to
sweep under the rug.’” (Krasner, A History of
Modern Drama Volume I, 281).

13. "stature" of tragedy, or even of
"tragedy". "social drama"
the term "social drama" nowadays
carries the insinuation that the work
under discussion is deliberately
didactic - "preachy" may be nearer
the spirit
associated with party-line
literature born of a
Marxist aesthetic
unfit for consumption in a
free Western democracy.

14. «Miller, influenced by Ibsen, shared with him
an upbringing in a family experiencing
financial hardship, his father having lost
everything to the 1929 Crash. Also influenced
by Clifford Odets, he took the helm as
America’s liberal dramatist and held it for as
long as the ride would last. He was a byproduct
of the “up-against-it” 1930s whose inhabitants
conveyed the rebellion against injustice and the
restoration of human dignity. In a world so
completely organized around and dominated
by power and potency, Miller observed a
society no longer susceptible to understanding
values of balance, fairness, and autonomy»
(Krasner, 281).

15. «Miller’s America is comprehensible in terms of success, avarice, and
selfishness, yet incorporates the social narratives that run up against
rupture, division, and alienation. As a consequence, morality became the
forgotten integer in the American equation. As crucial to the success of the
plays of Miller and Williams as the visual environment were the acting and
directing. Once again, the American fascination with psychology informed
the development of acting style and led to a major shift in the forties from
a technical virtuosity to a more energetic emotionalism» (Krasner, 281).

16. championed the
ideas of Stanislavsky
they were interested in
an emotionally
truthful form of acting
that emanated more
from an internal and
psychological
understanding of
character than from
external techniques.
emerged as the
leading director of the
late forties this
Americanized
naturalistic style was
melded with the
poetic realism of the
new playwrights
Characterized by
brooding portrayals,
relaxed body
language, and a
verbal style

17. Manny Newman
the idea to write a play without
transitions, where the dialogue would
flow from one scene to the next without
any apparent breaks.
Instead of using a chronological order in
which single events followed on from one
another, he wanted to create a form that
displayed the past and the present as if they
were both occurring at the same time.
what is going
on inside the
mind of the
protagonist

18. The Inside of His Head
Willy Loman
His uncle Manny
became a prototype
for Willy.
a new type of serious
play merging the forms
of realism and
expressionism to
suggest new directions
and possibilities for all
of U.S. drama.

20. Setting and Character
Descriptions
Willy is presented as
living in a
claustrophobic urban
setting that is indicative
of the harsh life that he
has chosen.
Miller’s lengthy
setting and character
descriptions
contribute much to an
understanding of the
play.

23. «As Miller says, Willy is functioning in a double consciousness of “two
logics” – past and present – which “often collide.” He is, Miller explains,
“literally at that terrible moment when the voice of the past is no longer
distant but quite as loud as the voice of the present,” adding that “There is no
flashback in this play but only a mobile concurrency of past and present, and
this, again, because in his desperation to justify his life Willy Loman has
destroyed the boundaries between now and then” (Krasner, 285).

24. Faint pastoral melody played on a flute recalls both
Willy’s father who played such an instrument and the
pastoral dream that may have suited Willy’s nature better
than the harsh world of business that he chose.

25. Emphasis on the
refrigerator in the kitchen
and a silver athletic trophy
above Willy’s bed
represent the only
achievements in Willy’s
life
The refrigerator, we later
learn, is on the verge of
breaking down, and the
trophy was won by Willy’s
oldest son, Biff

26. He plants seeds just as he plants false hopes. Both
will die and never come to fruition because the
house has become enclosed by the city and because
his dreams are unrealistic in the harsh, competitive
society that these apartments represent.

27. The front porch, constructed out of stolen lumber,
is indicative of how their lives, as well as their
house, have been built on something false.

28. Willy does not fit into the modern
world of machinery; likewise, the
values that he espouses, where deals
are made with a smile and a
handshake, are those of a bygone age.
Willy’s uneasy relationship with
machinery such as his car, his
refrigerator, and Howard’s recording
machine.

29. Writing in a style that scholar Brenda
Murphy has coined subjective
realism, Death of a Salesman
carefully blends a realistic picture of
a salesman’s home and life in the
post-Depression years with the
subjective thoughts that are going
through its central protagonist’s head.

30. The play’s clever use of time that allows the
audience to view both past and present occurring
at the same moment on the same stage set fully
captured the concept of simultaneity for which
Miller had been striving.

31. Willy’s waking–dream sequences that recall past
moments in time, the increasingly evident
symbolism of various stage effects (lighting and
sound), and the play’s subtle protest against
accepted social expectations also satisfy the
requirements of an expressionistic work.

32. «Miller valorizes his protagonist, saying, “Like any traveling man,” Willy
had “a kind of intrepid valor that withstood the inevitable putdowns, the
scoreless attempts to sell.” Salesmen, Miller explains, “lived like artists, like
actors whose product is first of all themselves, forever imagining triumphs
in a world that either ignores them or denies their presence altogether. But
just often enough to keep the game going one of them makes it and swings
to the moon on a thread of dreams unwinding out of himself” (Krasner,
289).

33. Death of a Salesman can be read as an
illustration of the historical economic
interests and forces operating on U.S.
society from the turn of the century to
when the play was written.
This was a period of major
changes in the economic
structure of the United States.
Willy witnessed the pioneers’
sense of hope and possibility at
the beginning of the new
millennium, a time when his
father and brother both left home
to embrace such possibilities to
the full.

34. Willy saw a renewed sense of vigor in the
U.S. economy that probably created much of
the hope that he places in the prospects of
his sons.
Wall Street Crash marked the start of the Great
Depression.

35. forces of CAPITALISM and materialism came to the
fore and technology made its greatest inroad into the
lives of everyday people.

36. The Lomans are depicted as
social failures in their
inability to make money
and live happily and
comfortably, but the deeper
question asked by the play
is whether this failure
is because of their
own inadequacies or
caused by society’s
unrealistic standards
of success?

37. «Miller’s attraction to Marxism provided an explanation of how the world works through the
economic analysis of social class relations and the mechanization of the human being.
According to Marx, “by the subordination of man to the machine or by the extreme
division of labour” people “are effaced by their labour; [...] the pendulum of the clock has
become as accurate a measure of the relative activity of two workers as it is of the speed
of two locomotives. Therefore, we should not say that one man’s hour is worth another
man’s hour, but rather that one man during an hour is worth just as much as another
man during an hour. Time is everything, man is nothing; he is, at the most, time’s

38. WILLY: Biff Loman is lost. In the greatest country in
the world a young man with such—personal
attractiveness, gets lost. And such a hard worker.
There’s one thing about Biff— he’s not lazy.
LINDA: Never.
WILLY: [with pity and resolve]: I’ll see him in the
morning; I’ll have a nice talk with him. I’ll get him a
job selling. He could be big in no time. (Act 1)

39. WILLY: There’s more people! That’s what’s
ruining this country! The competition is
maddening! Smell the stink from that apartment
house! And the one on the other side… How can
they whip cheese? (Act 1)

40. Miller’s strong sense of
moral and social
commitment runs
throughout the play.
Miller wanted to write a social drama
that confronted the problems of an
ordinary man in a conscienceless,
capitalistic social system.
he wanted that same
play to be a modern
tragedy that
adapted older tragic
theories to allow for
a common man as
tragic protagonist.

41. Willy is heroic because he strives to
be free and to make his mark in
society, despite the odds against him.
Willy had accepted at face value
overpublicized ideas of material
success and therein lays his
tragedy, for he will kill himself in
his pursuit of such a dream. His
downfall and final defeat illustrate
not only the failure of a man but
also the failure of a way of life.

42. American dream of success and
how success is interpreted by
society.
People like the Lomans are doomed to
try for success but fail, with all the
resulting guilt that such failure brings.
Ben and Howard display an
ability to make money that deems
them successful but at the cost of
their own moral integrity.
Charley and Bernard, on the
other hand, are successful,
but they do not allow their
desire for wealth to run their
lives.

43. BEN: Principally diamond mines.
LINDA: Diamond mines!
BEN: Yes, my dear. But I‘ve only a few
minutes—
WILLY: No! Boys! Boys! [Young Biff and Happy
appear] Listen to this. This is your Uncle Ben, a
great man! Tell my boys, Ben!
BEN: Why, boys, when I was seventeen I walked
into jungle and when I was twenty-one I walked
out. [He laughs] and by God I was rich!
WILLY [To the boys]: You see what I been
talking about? The greatest things can happen!
(Act 1)

44. «Death of a Salesman presents a rich matrix of
enabling fables that define the myth of the American
dream. . . . Willy Loman values - initiative, hard work,
family, freedom, consumerism, economic salvation,
competition, the frontier, self-sufficiency, public
recognition, personal fulfillment, and so on - animate
American cultural poetics. The Founding Fathers
predicated that every citizen possesses an inalienable
right to the unfettered pursuit of the American Dream.
No wonder Benjamin Franklin's practical 1757 essay on
how to achieve Salvation, The Way to Wealth (whose
title would have prompted Willy Loman to buy a
copy), attracted the common working person. Although
Willy Loman, inspired by a mythologized Dave
Singleman and a desire to build a future for his boys
through hard work, endorses such values, it is an
endorsement foisted upon him less by personal choice
than by a malevolent universe whose hostility mocks
his every pursuit» (Bigsby, Cambridge Companion to
Arthur Miller, 63).

45. The Changing Role of
Capitalism

46. WILLY: You and Hap and I, and I’ll show you all the towns. America
is full of beautiful towns and fine, upstanding people. And they know
me, boys, they know me up and down New England. The finest
people. And when I bring you fellas up, there’ll be open sesame for all
of us, ‘cause one thing, boys: I have friends. I can park my car in any
street in New England, and the cops protect it like their own. This
summer, heh? (Act 1)

47. WILLY: What’s the mystery? The
man knew what he wanted and
went out and got it! Walked into a
jungle, and comes out, the age of
twenty-one, and he’s rich! The
world is an oyster, but you don’t
crack it open on a mattress! (Act 1)

48. Materialism
BIFF: Why? You’re making money, aren’t you?
HAPPY [moving about with energy, expressiveness]: All I can do now is
wait for the merchandise manager to die. And suppose I get to be
merchandise manager? He’s a good friend of mine, and he just built a
terrific estate on Long Island. And he lived there about two months and
sold it, and now he’s building another one. He can’t enjoy it once it’s
finished. And I know that’s just what I’d do. I don’t know what the hell
I’m workin’ for. Sometimes I sit in my apartment—all alone. And I think
of the rent I’m paying. And it’s crazy. But then, it’s what I always wanted.
My own apartment, a car, plenty of women, and still, goddamnit, I’m
lonely. (Act 1)

49. FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS
Fathers and Sons?

50. Passive Female Stereotypes
Women have been marginalized and appear as loyal wives, like Linda,
or easy women, like The Woman, Miss Forsythe, and Letta; or they have
been silenced and hardly are featured at all, such as Willy’s mother, Ben’s
wife, or Charley’s wife.
Although Willy calls Linda his “foundation and support,” as
indeed she is, he shows little respect or regard for her in the way
that we see him treat her.

51. Thank you for listening!

52. Works Cited
• Bigsby, Christopher. Cambridge Companion
to Arthur Miller. Cambridge University
Press, 2006. Online.
• Krasner, David. A History of Modern Drama
vol.1. Sussex: Blackwell Publishing, 2012.
Print.
• Miller, Arthur, 1915-2005. Death Of a
Salesman. New York :Penguin Books, 1996.
Print.

53. Work Consultant
• Abbotson, Susan. Critical Companion to Arthur
Miller. A Literary Reference to His Life and Work.
New York: Infobase Publishing, 2007. Online.
• Bloom, Harold. Bloom’s Modern Critical Views:
Arthur Miller. New York: Bloom’s Literary
Criticism, 2007. Online.
• Brater, Enouch. Arthur Miller’s America: Theater
and Culture in a Time of Change. United States of
America: The University of Michagan Press, 2008.
Online.
• Carson, Neil. Macmillan Modern Dramatists: Arthur
Miller. London: The Macmillan Press, 1982. Online.