Netty Nur Rahmawati
A. 320 080 037
Class A
2nd Assignment of Drama
Death of a Salesman
by Arthur Miller
Directed by Joe Dowling
A. Structural Elements of Drama
1. Character and Characterization
The characters are the focal point of Death of a Salesman. They come from twelve of Theatre’s largest character-pools - Willy Loman, Linda Loman, Biff Loman, Happy Loman, Charley, Bernard, Ben, Howard Wagner, Miss Francis, Miss Forsythe and Letta, Stanley. Willy Loman a salesman, age 63. Linda Loman, Willy’s loyal, loving wife, very carefully, delicately, with some trepidation, resigned, sensing the racing of his mind, fearfully, trembling with sorrow and joy. Her fundamental decency, integrity, loyalty and love are remarkable and unquestionable, but it must be realized that she unwittingly feeds Willy’s problem. Biff Loman, Willy’s thirty-four-year-old elder son. Happy Loman, Willy’s thirty-two-year-old younger son. Charley, Willy’s next-door neighbor. Bernard is Charley’s son and an important, successful lawyer. Jenny, Charley’s secretary. Ben, Willy’s wealthy older brother. Howard Wagner, Willy’s boss. Miss Francis, Willy’s mistress when Happy and Biff were in high school. Miss Forsythe and Letta. Two young women whom Happy and Biff meet at Frank’s Chop House. Stanley, A waiter at Frank’s Chop House.
Major Characters: 1. Willy Loman
Characters: Willy Loman, a salesman who has traveled for more than 30 years up and down the New England coast. Willy's values, "The man who makes an appearance in the business world, the man who creates personal interest, is the man who gets ahead. An insecure, self-deluded traveling salesman. Despite his desperate searching through his past, Willy does not achieve the self-realization or self-knowledge typical of the tragic hero. Willy’s failure to recognize the anguished love offered to him by his family is crucial to the climax of his torturous day, and the play presents this incapacity as the real tragedy. Despite this failure, Willy makes the most extreme sacrifice in his attempt to leave an inheritance that will allow Biff to fulfill the American Dream.
Minor Characters:2. Linda Loman
Linda Loman, Willy’s loyal, loving wife. “very carefully, delicately, with some trepidation, resigned, sensing the racing of his mind, fearfully, trembling with sorrow and joy. It is a sad and frightening truth that Linda, Willy's wife, who is so totally devoted and loyal to him, who is his pillar of strength, who will let no one speak ill of him (no matter how justified it may be), who does everything possible to make his life peaceful and happy, who knows so well how to handle him, who can anticipate almost his every mood and who prides herself on understanding him so well, in actuality knows Willy very little.
She encourages him to stay at a job he is obviously unfit for; she is unaware of his self-esteem crisis and she discourages him from starting other pursuits. Linda serve as forces of reason throughout the play. Linda is probably the most enigmatic and complex character in Death of a Salesman. Linda views freedom as an escape from debt, the reward of total ownership of the material goods that symbolize success and stability.
3. Biff Loman
Biff Loman, Willy’s thirty-four-year-old elder son. Biff led a charmed life in high school as a star football player, captain of the team, a young hero-especially compared to his friend Bernard, a good student who nevertheless lacks the charisma necessary to get ahead in the business world with scholarship prospects, good male friends, and fawning female admirers. He failed math, however, and did not have enough credits to graduate. Biff represents Willy’s vulnerable, poetic, tragic side. Fundamentally, Biff is decent, gentle and sensitive. He is extremely stubborn, with a strong independent streak.
4. Happy Loman
Happy Loman, Willy’s thirty-two-year-old younger son. Happy has lived in Biff’s shadow all of his life, but he compensates by nurturing his relentless sex drive and professional ambition. Happy represents Willy’s sense of self-importance, ambition, and blind servitude to societal expectations. He is the perennially ignored son. He has a steady job and keeps promising his parents that he’s going to settle down and get married. But in reality, he’s never going far in business and plans to sleep around with as many floozies as possible.
5. Charley
Charley, Willy’s next-door neighbor. Charley owns a successful business and his son, Bernard, is a wealthy, important lawyer. Willy is jealous of Charley’s success. Charley gives Willy money to pay his bills, and Willy reveals at one point, choking back tears, that Charley is his only friend.
6. Bernard
Bernard is Charley’s son and an important, successful lawyer. Although Willy used to mock Bernard for studying hard, Bernard always loved Willy’s sons dearly and regarded Biff as a hero. Bernard’s success is difficult for Willy to accept because his own sons’ lives do not measure up. Bernard is the son of Charley, Willy's only friend and supporter outside of his family. As a young man he is quiet, dependable, pensive, and a top student; as an adult Bernard remains sensitive and genuine, and displays the intelligence, self-confidence, and perception that have helped him become a successful attorney.
7. Jenny
Jenny, Charley’s secretary.
8. Ben
Ben, Willy’s wealthy older brother. Ben has recently died and appears only in Willy’s “daydreams.” Willy regards Ben as a symbol of the success that he so desperately craves for himself and his sons.
9. Howard Wagner
Howard Wagner, Willy’s boss. Howard inherited the company from his father, whom Willy regarded as “a masterful man” and “a prince.” Though much younger than Willy, Howard treats Willy with condescension and eventually fires him, despite Willy’s wounded assertions that he named Howard at his birth.
10. Miss Francis
Miss Francis, Willy’s mistress when Happy and Biff were in high school. The Woman’s attention and admiration boost Willy’s fragile ego. When Biff catches Willy in his hotel room with The Woman, he loses faith in his father, and his dream of passing math and going to college dies.
11. Miss Forsythe and Letta
Miss Forsythe and Letta. Two young women whom Happy and Biff meet at Frank’s Chop House. It seems likely that Miss Forsythe and Letta are prostitutes, judging from Happy’s repeated comments about their moral character and the fact that they are “on call.”
12. Stanley
Stanley, A waiter at Frank’s Chop House. Stanley and Happy seem to be friends, or at least acquaintances, and they banter about and ogle Miss Forsythe together before Biff and Willy arrive at the restaurant.
2. Setting
The major setting is the Loman house in New York City, a modest home surrounded by vague and slightly ominous taller buildings. Downstairs in the kitchen, Willy has drifted into a reverie about the past. At the restaurant, Biff tells Happy that Bill Oliver didn't even recognize him-there will be no loan (The American West, Alaska, and the African Jungle).
These regions represent the potential of instinct to Biff and Willy. Willy’s father found success in Alaska and his brother, Ben, became rich in Africa; these exotic locales, especially when compared to Willy’s banal Brooklyn neighborhood, crystallize how Willy’s obsession with the commercial world of the city has trapped him in an unpleasant reality. Whereas Alaska and the African jungle symbolize Willy’s failure, the American West, on the other hand, symbolizes Biff’s potential. Biff realizes that he has been content only when working on farms, out in the open.
It is important to note that much of the play’s action takes place in Willy’s home. In the past, the Brooklyn neighborhood in which the Lomans live was nicely removed from the bustle of New York City. There was space within the neighborhood for expansion and for a garden.
3. Plot
The story is told through a complex montage of scenes interlocking the present with past events - memories, imagined moments, and flashbacks from the life of Willy Loman. At 63, Willy Loman, a traveling salesman all his life, is becoming increasingly worried about his ability to make ends meet. Although his house is nearly paid for, and his sons are on their own, lately each sales trip is more exhausting and less satisfying. He feels drained and is losing his grip on his own existence: “I’m tired to the death” he tells his wife, Linda.
Willy Loman is a traveling salesman at the end of his career. The beginning of the play sees him returning home to his wife Linda after nearly crashing his car. Biff and Happy, their adult sons, are on a rare trip home. The brothers and Linda discuss Willy – Linda defends him and attacks her sons for their treatment of him. She tells them that Willy is trying to kill himself. Biff tries to placate Willy’s anger when he overhears them discussing him by telling Willy that he will go and see an old employer, Oliver, and ask for a job. This escalates into a plan for the brothers to set up in business together. Willy is delighted and the whole family is sucked into this daydream.
Death of a Salesman takes place in and around the Brooklyn house of Willy Loman, a salesman who has traveled for more than 30 years up and down the New England coast. The action is confined within a 24-hour period, from Monday night to late Tuesday evening, much of it reflecting the tragic turmoil of Willy’s mind. A requiem concludes the play, an epilogue at the funeral of the salesman.
At the end of the Act, however, Biff discovers the length of tubing that Willy has hidden so he can use it to commit suicide. Willy Loman, an aging salesman, struggles to avoid facing the failures of his past and the emptiness of the values by which he has lived and raised his two sons. Willy Loman has led a life consisting of sixty years of failure. Loman's wife supports him, but he soon begins to lose his grip on reality and slips between the past and the present, frantically trying to find where he went wrong.
4. Style
Grammatical Structure (in Narration and Dialogues)
☺ Standard.
Sentence Construction (in Narration and Dialogues)
☺Long and Short.
The play is mostly told from the point of view of the main protagonist, Willy, and it shows previous parts of Willy's life in his time shifts, sometimes during a present day scene. It does this by having a scene begin in the present time, and adding characters onto the stage whom only Willy can see and hear, representing characters and conversations from other times and places. Many dramatic techniques are also used to represent these time shifts.
The play's structure resembles a stream of consciousness account: Willy drifts between his living room, downstage, to the apron and flashbacks of an idyllic past, and also to fantasized conversations with Ben. When we are in the present the characters abide by the rules of the set, entering only through the stage door to the left; however, when we visit Willy's "past" these rules are removed, with characters openly moving through walls.
5. Point of View
The author of this short story, Arthur Miller is non – participant. Because, he doesn’t introduce him self as a character.
6. Theme
The theme that appropriate with this drama story is The Promise of The American Dream of Salesman.
Ø This drama shows that Willy as a major character was believes the wholeheartedly in what he considers the promise of the American Dream—that a “well liked” and “personally attractive” man in business will indubitably and deservedly acquire the material comforts offered by modern American life.
Ø Willy’s blind faith in his stunted version of the American Dream leads to his rapid psychological decline when he is unable to accept the disparity between the dream and his own life.
Ø We must more rewarding understanding of the American Dream that identifies hard work without complaint as the key to success. I mean people in the world also.
Many of the symbols used in Death of a Salesman have specifically American connotations. The play opens with reference to cars. Car is an American symbol of individual mobility, freedom and social status. But Miller uses it in a negative and ironic manner. In the very beginning of the play Willy comes home exhausted with driving. His exhaustion with driving symbolizes his tiredness from life. The car is going out of control. This symbolism gets its final intensity in the climax of the play when Willy drives his car out of the house into darkness and death.
B. B. Conclussion
The play cannot attain the stature of a genuine tragedy because of its extreme social awareness nor can it be a social drama because it is fitting to call it a social tragedy and it is. Social tragedy is a modern kind of tragedy in which the conflict between the central protagonist and society is depicted and the protagonist becomes the victim of society’s ill-treatment. Arthur Miller in his drama Death of a Salesman depicts the conflict within the family and the conflict between protagonist and the society. He is misfit in the capitalist society. He is the victim of a social injustice and this social injustice causes his tragedy. Willy Loman, the protagonist, has been working in a company for almost thirsty-six years. He introduces the firm in many cities. He often says to his colleagues that he is a vital man for the firm. It is only due to Willy's effort that the firm has been introduced in many cities of America.
Willy Loman kills himself at the end of the play. But well before the conclusion, it becomes clear that the protagonist is bent upon self-destruction. His decision to kill himself for the $20,000 insurance money comes as no surprise; the event is blatantly foreshadowed throughout much of the dialogue. Still in his daydream of fifteen years ago, Willy brags to Linda that he made $1200 in sales that week. Linda quickly figures his commission at over $200. Willy then hedges his estimation. Under questioning, he admits that he grossed only $200. The $70 commission is barely adequate to cover the family’s expenses. In a rare moment of lucidity and self-criticism, Willy moans that he cannot move ahead because people do not seem to like him. Linda tells him that he is successful enough. Willy complains that he talks and jokes too much. He explains that Charley earns respect because he is a man of few words.
Willy realizes that he is not a vital man at all for the firm and speaks the beautiful line, a satire on capitalistic society, that these capitalistic profiteers eat the fruit and throw the peels away. To conclude we can rightly say that “Death of a Salesman” is a modern social tragedy in which conflict between man and society has been depicted. Willy Loman, the protagonist, becomes the victim of social injustice which compels him to commit suicide. So, this drama story is is classified as “man versus society”.
