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Economics17 min read
Death of a Salesman
by Arthur Miller
A Play About the Success and Disappointments of the American Dream
Published: May 24, 2023
4.3 (56 ratings)
Book Summary
This is a comprehensive summary of “Death of a Salesman” by Arthur Miller. The book explores a play about the success and disappointments of the american dream.
what’s in it for me? a modern classic about the illusion of the american dream.#
Introduction
arthur miller death of a salesman
death of a salesman is not a funny play.
it's not an action-packed, adrenaline-inducing romp.
there aren't any magnificent sets, props, or visuals.
in its two short acts, the most exotic setting is a hotel room in boston.
so, why did this play win the pulitzer prize, sell 11 million copies, and spawn 10 film adaptations?
arthur miller's most enduring work accomplished these things precisely because of how ordinary it is.
the lohman family isn't fabulously wealthy or talented.
they're normal people with normal flaws and weaknesses, living in a normal house.
this heightens the tragedy of the play and, therefore, its power to move us.
we're able to relate to these characters, and so we can understand how modern american culture poisons the mind of willie lohman and breaks the hearts of his family.
to say death of a salesman honors ordinary people and places isn't to say that it's boring or pedestrian.
as the play progresses, we drift through dreamlike scenes where past and present, truth and lies, and fantasy and reality all merge, mirroring the progressive disorientation of willie's mind.
the illusions that he constructs to cling onto his twisted notions of the american dream begin to unravel, and the psychological foundations of his life transform into quicksand.
willie has a choice.
accept the reality of his life or plunge deeper into delusion.
just how that choice unfolds will be revealed in the course of this chapter.
along the way, we'll also sketch out the main narrative of the play while explaining its significant themes and talking points.
part 1.
part 1: “i’m tired to the death”#
i'm tired to the death willie lohman, a 63-year-old traveling salesman, arrives home from a business trip exhausted and disheveled.
his wife, linda, is clearly concerned.
willie admits that he kept falling into a daze while driving, almost careening into an embankment.
linda reminds him of when he accidentally drove off a bridge and into a river.
from the outset, willie's psychological state is constantly called into question.
he's agitated, unreliable, and contradicts himself.
his two adult sons, biff and happy, are visiting.
that morning, willie berated biff for his laziness and inability to hold down a steady job.
now, he asserts that biff isn't lazy in the slightest.
happy is more successful than biff, but is distressed that its father has begun talking to himself.
mostly, willie has conversations with an imaginary biff, as if his son were actually in the room with him.
they reveal willie's anger and disappointment in how biff has chosen to live his life, flitting between menial jobs and drifting from place to place.
there's a chasm between biff's adulthood and the values willie tried to instill in him as a child.
these values are also the ones that willie lives by.
in fact, they obsessively dominate his life and lie at the very heart of miller's play.
the salesman believes in a twisted version of the american dream where ambition and confidence and being well-liked will lead to fabulous success and material wealth.
with a modest house and a modest car, we can clearly see that willie hasn't achieved the fame and fortune that his interpretation of the american dream promised.
what's more, we already see his unsteady mental state and his willingness to reinterpret reality to suit the moment.
this tension between willie's unrealistic aspirations and his actual existence is the driving force behind the entire play and will lead us to its tragic ending.
part 2.
part 2: “i’ll knock ’em dead next week”#
i'll knock em dead next week.
we're now thrust into the first of willie's many daydreams, flashbacks, and imaginary escapes.
this is a common motif that the play uses.
it's fluid in how it deals with time and recreates willie's fantasies and hallucinations on stage, just like it does with the real scenes.
this helps highlight the hazy, dreamlike consciousness of willie.
we begin to question what's real and what's not.
in this flashback, biff and happy are children again, helping to wash their father's car.
even here, willie's negative qualities shine through plain as day.
happy desperately seeks his father's attention, but willie favors biff, and even laughs away his favorite son's theft of a football.
he's also deeply jealous of the success of his neighbor charlie.
remember, for willie, success is everything.
he mutters to himself that he'll soon start an even larger company than his neighbor because he's more well-liked.
vigor is better, the approval of others is paramount, and being a self-made man is everything.
this is willie lohman's american dream.
reality starts to seep into willie's flashback.
we're half in the present, half in the past.
while still in a trance-like state, he tells linda that he made $1,200 on his most recent business trip.
linda questions him, though, and he quickly buckles.
he actually only made $70, which barely covers the family's bills, but he's adamant that he would have broken sales records if three stores hadn't been closed for an inventory check.
he'll knock him dead next week, he proclaims.
abruptly, we're pulled into a daydream.
willie is sitting in a boston hotel room with his mistress, watching her try on new stockings he's gifted her.
all of a sudden, we're back in the present day, in the lohman household.
willie sees linda mending a pair of stockings, just like the ones he gave to his mistress, in a confused mixture of anger, guilt, and humiliation.
after all, mending stockings provides embarrassing evidence that willie hasn't achieved his american dream.
he starts shouting at his wife.
quick as a flash, we're inside willie's hallucinations again.
he's being haunted by the ghosts of his past.
this time, it's his brother ben, who achieved everything willie couldn't by venturing out and finding his fortune in an african diamond mine at the age of 21.
ben is a cool, calm, and confident figure, the complete opposite of the erratic willie.
he tells willie how their father traveled to alaska to sell flutes during the gold rush.
we realize that willie doesn't just live under the oppressive weight of his own ambition and fantasy.
he also lives in the shadow of his father and brother, who achieved their masculine, entrepreneurial american dreams.
part 3: “i don’t want you to represent us”#
part 3.
i don't want you to represent us the final scene of the first act is critical.
we find willie shouting on his front lawn, and his deranged cries wake linda and biff.
linda reveals to biff that willie lost his guaranteed salary recently.
he now works only on commission.
what's more, willie borrows $50 per week from charlie, the successful neighbor he is poisonously jealous of, and tells linda that it's his salary.
but she knows better.
she also knows the truth about willie's rude accidents.
they're actually suicide attempts.
she even found a rubber hose in the garage from when he attempted to hang himself.
biff tries to help willie out of his confused state, but willie grows angrier and declares he's a big-shot salesman.
happy tells willie that he and biff are thinking of going into business together and that biff plans to ask an old employer for a loan.
the thought of his two sons fulfilling the american dream and becoming successful businessmen frightens willie up, and the family goes to bed.
before they fall asleep, linda pressures willie to ask his boss, howard, for a non-traveling sales job.
when willie arrives at his office the next morning, however, everything goes wrong.
he cuts a fawning and subservient figure, desperately trying to impress his boss, who has no patience for him.
when willie asks for a non-traveling job, howard says there aren't any vacancies.
despairing, willie explains his family's financial situation in painful detail, practically begging howard to change his mind.
but the boss is unmoved by willie's plight and then fires him on the spot after he begins frantically shouting.
howard tells willie that he doesn't want him to represent us.
after the false dawn of happy and biff's business venture, which seemed to perk willie up, things are now quickly unraveling for the salesman.
part four.
part 4: “i don’t want your goddam job”#
i don't want your job.
willie is still physically in howard's office, but his anguished mind has transported him to other places and times.
after another visit from ben's ghost, where the successful younger brother asks willie to manage a logging mill he has purchased, we flow into a memory involving biff, happy, and their childhood friend, bernard.
it's clear that both happy and bernard look up to biff.
they even argue over who should be allowed to carry biff's football helmet.
back in the lohman household, an adult bernard stops by.
he is a successful and humble lawyer.
he's arguing a case in the supreme court later, but doesn't mention it.
willie, full of pomp and grandeur, boasts to bernard that biff is working on a big business deal in town.
almost breaking down, willie asks bernard why biff's life went so terribly wrong.
bernard explains that biff was never the same after he visited willie in boston.
when he asks willie what happened there, willie flies into a rage and deflects the question.
next, willie visits his successful neighbor, charlie, to collect his weekly loan.
after learning that willie unsuccessfully asked his boss for a non-traveling job, charlie reminds willie that he'd offered him this type of job and willie refused.
blinded by pride and jealousy, willie again refuses charlie's offer, breaks down, and admits that his boss fired him today.
he confesses that he always thought the key to success was being well-liked.
and charlie asks, who liked j.p. morgan?
willie leaves the office in tears.
in the next scene, we find biff and happy in a restaurant.
biff's in shock.
he just waited six hours to see his old boss and ask about a loan for his and happy's business idea.
when they finally met, though, his boss didn't even remember biff.
somehow, willie's lies, fantasies, and exaggerations about biff had led his son to believe that he'd been a successful salesman for his old employer.
but in reality, biff had just been a lowly shipping clerk.
he left the meeting without a penny.
willie arrives at the restaurant shouting that he'd just been fired.
he puts pressure on his sons, telling them he needs some good news for linda.
despite this, biff tries to tell his father the truth about the loan.
willie flies into a delirious rage, ranting about how biff had been a failure in math as a child.
happy and biff leave willie in the restaurant.
suddenly, we're again inside willie's daydream flashbacks, in the boston hotel room with willie and his mistress.
there's a knock on the door, and it's biff.
willie tries to spin a feeble web of lies about how the woman is a customer staying in the hotel room next to his, but biff sees through the facade and sits, crying on his suitcase.
now we know what changed biff from a popular, sporty, promising child into an aimless drifter.
part 5.
a dime a dozen we're now at the climax of the play, and it's all high drama from here on out.
part 5: “a dime a dozen”#
Conclusion
when biff and happy return to the lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely home, their mother flies into a rage at them for abandoning their sick father in a restaurant.
how could they be so callous, so cruel?
this is typical of linda throughout the play.
she is a deep reservoir of patience and loves her husband unconditionally.
it's this unconditional love that makes willie's fantasies and delusions so tragic.
his family would love him no matter how unsuccessful he is, but he simply can't accept the reality of his life and his failure to live up to the american dream.
outside in the garden, willie is hallucinating again.
he's having an imaginary conversation with his brother ben.
he's talking excitedly about a guaranteed $20,000 business deal.
ben is more skeptical and says that biff would hate him for it.
at this moment, we're jerked back into reality.
biff is confronting willie in the garden, and they have a fierce argument.
biff says he's leaving and won't speak to his father again.
willie asserts that biff is failing in life and is blaming those failures on him.
biff snaps and admits that he can't hold down a steady job because he's a compulsive thief.
when he disappeared for three months, he was actually in prison for stealing a suit.
biff blames his father for indoctrinating him with ideas of self-importance and success, which has made it impossible for him to take orders.
willie is still trying to get his family to prop up his house of cards, but when his sons tell him again, this time in front of linda, that their business loan won't materialize, the fabrication collapses.
biff tries to get willie to accept how normal and everyday their lives are, how the lowman's aren't meant for great things, how they're a dime a dozen.
but it's no use reasoning with willie, and the argument is left unresolved.
that night, half asleep, they hear willie's car roar into life and speed away.
he's off to secure the $20,000 business deal he was discussing with ben's ghost.
of course, it's not really a deal.
willie is committing suicide, once and for all, so that his family can collect his life insurance premium.
in the end, willie loman's searching for the american dream achieved nothing in life, but the death of a salesman.
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