Death of a Salesman (Penguin Plays)
by Arthur Miller
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Book Summary Information
Author: Arthur MillerEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1998-10-06
ISBN: 0140481346
Number of pages: 144
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Book Reviews of Death of a Salesman (Penguin Plays)
Book Review: A Salesman's Suicide
Summary: 5 Stars
When Arthur Miller wrote his play, Death of a Salesman, he knew that he was creating a story that would be applied to every generation. In reading a tragedy drama like, Death of a Salesman, life is put into a tense perspective where the reader may eventually and subconsciously come to evaluate their own past. The story plot deals with issues that many Americans face every day. Issues like: adultery, and stealing, lying, debt, promiscuous behavior, depression and suicide. Miller's play is meant to keep the audience on an emotional roller coaster while following salesman, Willy Lowman, through "the best of times" and "the worst of times" (Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities).Miller plays out the story of a typical New York salesman, through a character called Willy Lowman. Mr. Lowman travels all over New England, trying very diligently to sell his products. He seems to have the perfect American life. He has a house, a working automobile, two healthy sons and a gentle-spirited wife. Yet, when you look closer into the life of Willy Lowman, you can see that he had past hurts that he never dealt with in childhood, and as a result, his life at present is falling apart.
Willy was the son of a flute maker who had gone to Africa to exhume diamonds. He had been too young to go along then, but his brother, Ben, had gone. Willy grows up and his father dies, but his brother offers him a job in an auspicious diamond mine. Being offended that his father and brother had left him behind, Willy resumes his post as a salesman. All through his later life, Willy Lowman lies to himself and everyone he loves. He goes from place to place, trying to convince the buyers to purchase his products, while being careful to be friendly and amiable.
Willy begins to age and starts to feel that he is worthless and unloved by friends and family. This prompts an affair with "the woman", who seduces him with words of admiration and devotion. Knowing he has a wife at home, Willy feels a bit suspicious one day when a knock comes to the door of his Boston hotel room. He opens the door to his eldest son, Biff, who then finds out about his father's affair and his life of lies. This causes Biff not to pursue any career, but to essentially quite life. Feeling quite hopeless in his future, Willy turns to the past to supply him with joy. He reenacts scenes from his "golden days" aloud in public places without realization of it.
Willy Lowman then becomes incompetent as a salesman, so he borrows fifty dollars from his neighbor, Charley, every week, which puts him into an extreme debt, both literally and emotionally. As Willy ages, he sees that his sons are now in their mid-thirties and still living at home with deadly habits of promiscuity and stealing. He becomes angry and acts out his memory plays even more frequently.
When his sons try to make good by selling an idea to an important sportsman, Willy goes into an emotional high. However, he the comes crashing down into a deeper depression when it doesn't work out and he feels Biff doesn't love him and never did. He plans out his suicide so that a 20,000 insurance policy would go to Biff and that he could see that millions of people adored him by coming to his funeral. The funeral day comes and only five people attend his funeral. Willy Lowman dies the death of a Salesman, alone and essentially forgotten.
To the reader, Death of a Salesman, is a form of parable that serves to remind them of their unresolved pasts and their debt to all of the people who have genuinely loved them in their lifetime. In essence, the character of Willy Lowman, shows Miller's audience that family is the most important thing that one can possibly own. Wealth, possessions, worldly success, and social importance are only a whisking wind that passes faster than they can blink. Family is what gives love, support and importance when life is at it's worst. Yet, family members will disappoint you because they are not perfect. However, God "will never leave you nor forsake you", He will be there when times are good and when times are bad. He will never let His children die...the spiritual death of a salesman.
I recommend this play highly for two specific reasons. First, it fills the reader with emotion. What that emotion may be it based upon the reader. It could be anger at Willy for not raising his children well, it may be joy in the possibility that Biff and Harold are going to make their parents wealthy, or it may even be sorrow after Willy commits suicide. Still, whatever the feeling might be, it will be present in every reader. Secondly, the story guides the reader into seeing what is really important in life. It shows that material things pass away and that a "good name is better than riches", which Willy did not try to obtain in his lifetime. Over all, Death of a Salesman, remains one of my personal favorites.
Summary of Death of a Salesman (Penguin Plays)
The tragedy of a typical American--a salesman who at the age of sixty-three is faced with what he cannot face; defeat and disillusionment.Arthur Miller's 1949 Death of a Salesman has sold 11 million copies, and Willy Loman didn't make all those sales on a smile and a shoeshine. This play is the genuine article--it's got the goods on the human condition, all packed into a day in the life of one self-deluded, self-promoting, self-defeating soul. It's a sturdy bridge between kitchen-sink realism and spectral abstraction, the facts of particular hard times and universal themes. As Christopher Bigsby's mildly interesting afterword in this 50th-anniversary edition points out (as does Miller in his memoir, Timebends), Willy is closely based on the playwright's sad, absurd salesman uncle, Manny. But of course Miller made Manny into Everyman, and gave him the name of the crime commissioner Lohmann in Fritz Lang's angst-ridden 1932 Nazi parable, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse.
The tragedy of Loman the all-American dreamer and loser works eternally, on the page as on the stage. A lot of plays made history around 1949, but none have stepped out of history into the classic canon as Salesman has. Great as it was, Tennessee Williams's work can't be revived as vividly as this play still is, all over the world. (This edition has edifying pictures of Lee J. Cobb's 1949 and Brian Dennehy's 1999 performances.) It connects Aristotle, The Great Gatsby, On the Waterfront, David Mamet, and the archetypal American movie antihero. It even transcends its author's tragic flaw of pious preachiness (which undoes his snoozy The Crucible, unfortunately his most-produced play).
No doubt you've seen Willy Loman's story at least once. It's still worth reading. --Tim Appelo
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