Henretty Jr. 1 Michael B. Henretty Jr. Professor Kozee ENGL 1102 Online Class May 3, 2022 A Dime A Dozen: Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman and Family Expectations In the climax of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, Biff Loman says to his father “I’m not bringing home any prizes anymore, and you’re going to stop waiting for me to bring them home!” (Miller 61). This line, more than any other, gets to the heart of one of the most wellreceived plays of all time. First performed in 1949, Death of a Salesman is a timeless classic that still holds up to this day. The play has attracted many Hollywood stars: Dustin Hoffman, Brian Dennehy, and John Malkovich are just a few big names to have had roles in various productions of the play. Miller tells a story that runs deep. It is complex yet relatable, tragic yet captivating, and, at times, gut-wrenching yet compassionate. It is a story that involves the lies and misdeeds of a family, mental illness, and a wife and mother trying to hold it all together. Death of a Salesman is not about the American Dream; rather, it is about the faulty notion that one must live up to family expectations to be successful, and how those expectations can tear a family apart. Have a seat, listen to this sales pitch, and you will see why this play is not “…a dime a dozen!” (Miller 61). At first glance it is easy to see why many believe that Death of a Salesman is about the American dream. The idea of making your way in business and striking it rich, along with having a home full of the best appliances, and a driveway with a flashy car are common throughlines in the play. Willy’s boss, Howard, is shown to be successful by having an expensive new recording machine. His brother Ben repeatedly speaks of going into the jungle and coming out rich, a clear Henretty Jr. 2 metaphor for going into the business world and coming out on top. The further into the play you get however, the more you see it is really a story of familial expectations. The riff between Willy and his oldest son Biff is only widened by Willy’s constant derogatory comments about, and to, Biff for not making something of himself in the business world even though Biff knows he would be far happier living life in the west, working farms and ranches. We see how Happy tells exaggerated stories and outright lies to make his father believe he is living up to the expectations that Willy has set. We also see that Willy believes he has not lived up to his brother's expectations by not following him to Alaska when he had the opportunity, and instead stayed behind in New York, thus missing out on the riches that Ben had come to gain. Yet, at the same time, Ben skirted expectations and became wealthy because of it. In a 2016 article in PsyArt Daniel Thomieres points out “Ben does not make the mistake Willy would have made. He has an identity of his own because he makes choices. He accordingly does not imitate his father and he heads for an unknown continent, Africa…and he becomes rich” (Thomieres ). Such expectations drive the story throughout the play. In the opening scene, when Willy and Linda are speaking about Biff, Willy says: How can he find himself on a farm? Is that a life? A farmhand? In the beginning, when he was young, I thought, well, a young man, it’s good for him to tramp around, take a lot of different jobs. But it’s more than ten years now and he has yet to make thirty-five dollars a week! (Miller 3). These lines give us the first glimpse into the expectations Willy has for Biff regardless of what Biff actually wants in life. These expectations drive Biff to constantly question his identity and continually gives up on his own dreams in order to please his father. Terry Thompson writes of Biff in the Midwest Quarterly “The residual guilt he feels from his father’s nagging insistence Henretty Jr. 3 upon corporate glory and urban money always pulls Biff back to New York City, a place which he detests and does not want to be” (Thompson). The pressure of the expectations put upon Biff by Willy just adds to the strained relationship between the two. We learn that the root of Biff’s contempt for his father comes from his learning that Willy had been unfaithful to Linda; yet he still wants to please his father, to live up to the expectations Willy has for him. It is only in the climax of the play that Biff begins to realize that he can be his own man, and that his father needs to except it. Fred Ribkoff writes in an article of Modern Drama from the year 2000, “It is the confrontation with feelings of shame that enables Biff to find himself, separate his sense of identity from that of his father, and empathize with his father. Moreover, it is the denial of such feelings that cripples Willy and the rest of the Loman family” (Ribkoff). The climactic confrontation between the two men leads some to believe that Willy himself has come to understand Biff better, and that he finally understands the love Biff has for him, which is what Willy always wanted. However, this conclusion can be seen to be decidedly wrong when Willy decides to go through with killing himself so that Biff can use the 20,000 dollars in insurance money to use as seed money for a business. In the end, Willy’s expectations for Biff never actually change at all. The only real change is that Biff no longer believes he needs to live up to his father’s expectations and can be his own man. It is understandable that many relate Death of a Salesman to be about the American dream when in reality it is about family expectations, why having to live up to those expectations to be successful is a faulty notion, and how those expectations can cause more harm than good. What makes this play so relatable is that we all have experienced the pressure of trying to live up Henretty Jr. 4 to someone else’s expectations, and we all tend to have expectations of others, especially our own children. Works Cited Miller, Arthur. "Death of a Salesman." n.d. Azactorracademy.com. 22 March 2022. <https://azactorsacademy.com/uploads/plays/death_of_a_salesman.pdf>. Ribkoff, Fred. "Shame, Guilt, Empathy, and the Search for Identitiy in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman." Modern Drama 43.1 (Spring 2000): 48-55. Thomieres , Daniel. "All is not Gold: Fatherhood and Identity in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman." PsyArt 20 (2016): 1-23. Thompson, Terry W. ""All I Want Is Out There": the Wild West Subtext in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman." Midwest Quarterly 59.3 (Spring 2018): 331-342.
