A QUOTATION
Remembering the Late Philip Seymour Hoffman July 23 1967 - February 2 2014
REVIEWS and a BIOGRAPHY
Some notes for understanding this play--including flashback
btyb Mrs. Hanzel
"Every man," said Mr. Miller, "has an image of himself which fails in
one way or another to correspond with reality. It's the size of the
discrepancy between illusion and reality that matters. The closer a
man gets to knowing himself, the less likely he is to trip up on his own
illusions."
Remembering the late Philip Seymour Hoffman's Willy Loman Broadway will dim its lights
Wednesday evening in memory of the Oscar-winning actor, who earned the most recent of his
three Tony nominations for Mike Nichols' 2012 revival of "Death of a Salesman."
NEW YORK -- It's rare to hear grown men choke back sobs during a play, but that's what the
emotional nakedness of Philip Seymour Hoffman's Willy Loman, a man broken by his own
hollow faith in the American Dream, elicited from the audience for the 2012 Broadway
production of Death of a Salesman.
Accepting the Tony Award for best revival of a play that year, director Mike Nichols talked
about the blood spilled on the stage every night by the remarkable ensemble of actors playing
the Loman family, which included Hoffman, Andrew Garfield, Linda Emond and Finn
Wittrock (all pictured above).
Watching the production, a wrenching sense emerged of people who had been through the
rigors of life together, in much the same way America had been battered by the Great
Recession. A number of Broadway productions have tapped into the collective hurt inflicted on
the country by the 21st century economic crisis. But arguably none has had the visceral gut
impact of this trenchant staging of Arthur Miller's 1949 masterwork.
Hoffman's death has justly sparked a wave of grief for a versatile screen talent whose career
has been cut tragically short. But his ties to the theater are no less indelible and will be felt most
acutely in the New York stage community.
When Hoffman shambled onto the Ethel Barrymore Theatre stage dragging Willy's sample
cases, he was 44, almost two decades younger than the character as written. But he had the
stature and gravitas of an actor 20 years his senior. His Willy Loman was deluded yet fearful,
blinkered yet ruminative, belligerently proud yet humiliatingly lost. It was a lacerating
performance without an ounce of vanity, which exposed the unforgiving cruelty of a society that
measures a man's value by his professional standing.
Hoffman's Broadway appearances were relatively few, but he chose discerningly, receiving a
Tony nomination for each of the three productions in which he starred.
Death of a Salesman
February 11, 1949
At the Theatre
By BROOKS ATKINSON
rthur Miller has written a superb drama. From every point of
view "Death of a Salesman," which was acted at the Morosco
last evening, is rich and memorable drama. It is so simple in style and
so inevitable in theme that is scarcely seems like a thing that has
been written and acted. For Mr. Miller has looked with compassion
into the hearts of some ordinary Americans and quietly transferred their hope and anguish to the
theatre. Under Elia Kazan's masterly direction, Lee J. Cobb gives a heroic performance, and every
member of the cast plays like a person inspired.
Two seasons ago Mr. Miller's "All My Sons" looked like the work of an honest and able
playwright. In comparison with the new drama, that seems like a contrived play now. For
"Death of a Salesman" has the flow and spontaneity of a suburban epic that may not be
intended as poetry but becomes poetry in spite of itself because Mr. Miller has drawn it out of
so many intangible sources.
It is the story of an aging salesman who has reached the end of his usefulness on the road.
There has always been something unsubstantial about his work. But suddenly the unsubstantial
aspects of it overwhelm him completely. When he was young, he looked dashing; he enjoyed
the comradeship of other people--the humor, the kidding, the business.
In his early sixties he knows his business as well as he ever did. But the unsubstantial things
have become decisive; the spring has gone from his step, the smile from his face and the
heartiness from his personality. He is through. The phantom of his life has caught up with him.
As literally as Mr. Miller can say it, dust returns to dust. Suddenly there is nothing.
This is only a little of what Mr. Miller is saying. For he conveys this elusive tragedy in terms of
simple things--the loyalty and understanding of his wife, the careless selfishness of his two
sons, the sympathetic devotion of a neighbor, the coldness of his former boss' son--the bills,
the car, the tinkering around the house. And most of all: the illusions by which he has lived-opportunities missed, wrong formulas for success, fatal misconceptions about his place in the
scheme of things.
Writing like a man who understands people, Mr. Miller has no moral precepts to offer and no
solutions of the salesman's problems. He is full of pity, but he brings no piety to it. Chronicler of
one frowsy corner of the American scene, he evokes a wraith-like tragedy out of it that spins
through the many scenes of his play and gradually envelops the audience.
As theatre "Death of a Salesman" is no less original than it is as literature. Jo Mielziner, always
equal to an occasion, has designed a skeletonized set that captures the mood of the play and
serves the actors brilliantly. Although Mr. Miller's text may be diffuse in form, Mr. Kazan has
pulled it together into a deeply moving performance.
Mr. Cobb's tragic portrait of the defeated salesman is acting of the first rank. Although it is
familiar and folksy in the details, it has something of the grand manner in the big size and the
deep tone. Mildred Dunnock gives the performance of her career as the wife and mother--plain
of speech but indomitable in spirit. The parts of the thoughtless sons are extremely well played
by Arthur Kennedy and Cameron Mitchell, who are all young, brag and bewilderment.
Other parts are well played by Howard Smith, Thomas Chalmers, Don Keefer, Alan Hewitt and
Tom Pedi. If there were time, this report would gratefully include all the actors and fabricators
of illusion. For they all realize that for once in their lives they are participating in a rare event in
the theatre. Mr. Miller's elegy in a Brooklyn sidestreet is superb.
The Crucible January 23, 1953
By BROOKS ATKINSON
rthur Miller has written another powerful play. "The Crucible," it is called, and it opened at the Martin
Beck last evening in an equally powerful performance. Riffling back the pages of American history, he
has written the drama of the witch trials and hangings in Salem in 1692. Neither Mr. Miller nor his
audiences are unaware of certain similarities between the perversions of justice then and today.
But Mr. Miller is not pleading a case in dramatic form. For "The Crucible," despite its current
implications, is a self-contained play about a terrible period in American history. Silly
accusations of witchcraft by some mischievous girls in Puritan dress gradually take possession of
Salem. Before the play is over good people of pious nature and responsible temper are
condemning other good people to the gallows.
Having a sure instinct for dramatic form, Mr. Miller goes bluntly to essential situations. John
Proctor and his wife, farm people, are the central characters or the play. At first the idea that
Goodie Proctor is a witch is only an absurd rumor. But "The Crucible" carries the Proctors
through the whole ordeal - first vague suspicion, then the arrest, the implacable, highly wrought
trial in the church vestry, the final opportunity for John Proctor to save his neck by confessing to
something he knows is a lie, and finally the baleful roll of the drums at the foot of the gallows.
Although "The Crucible" is a powerful drama, it stands second to "Death of a Salesman" as a
work of art. Mr. Miller had had more trouble with this one, perhaps because he is too conscious
of its implications. The literary style is cruder. The early motivation is muffled in the uproar of
the opening scene, and the theme does not develop with the simple eloquence of "Death of a
Salesman."
It may be that Mr. Miller has tried to pack too much inside his drama, and that he has permitted
himself to be concerned more with the technique of the witch hunt than with its humanity. For all
its power generated on the surface, "The Crucible" is most moving in the simple, quiet scenes
between John Proctor and his wife. By the standards of "Death of a Salesman," there is too much
excitement an not enough emotion in "The Crucible."
As the director, Jed Harris has given it a driving performance in which the clashes are fierce and
clamorous. Inside Boris Aronson's gaunt, pitiless sets of rude buildings, the acting is at a high
pitch of bitterness, anger and fear. As the patriarchal deputy Governor, Walter Hampden gives
one of his most vivid performances in which righteousness and ferocity are unctuously mated.
Fred Stewart as a vindictive parson, E.G. Marshall as a parson who finally rebels at the
indiscriminate ruthlessness of the trial, Jean Adair as an aging woman of God, Madeleine
Sherwood as a malicious town hussy, John Sweeney as an old man who has the courage to fight
the court, Philip Coolidge as a sanctimonious judge - all give able performances.
As John Proctor and his wife, Arthur Kennedy and Beatrice Straight have the most attractive
roles in the drama and two or three opportunities to act them together in moments of tranquillity.
They are superb - Mr. Kennedy clear and resolute, full of fire, searching his own mind; Miss
Straight, reserved, detached, above and beyond the contention. Like all the members of the cast,
they are dressed in the chaste and lovely costumes Edith Lutyens has designed from old prints of
early Massachusetts.
After the experience of "Death of a Salesman" we probably expect Mr. Miller to write a
masterpiece every time. "The Crucible" is not of that stature and it lacks that universality. On a
lower level of dramatic history with considerable pertinence for today, it is a powerful play and a
genuine contribution to the season.
March 30, 1984
Dustin Hoffman, 'Death of Salesman'
By FRANK RICH
s Willy Loman in Arthur Miller's ''Death of a Salesman,'' Dustin Hoffman doesn't trudge
heavily to the grave - he sprints. His fist is raised and his face is cocked defiantly upwards, so
that his rimless spectacles glint in the Brooklyn moonlight. But how does one square that feisty
image with what will come after his final exit - and with what has come before? Earlier, Mr.
Hoffman's Willy has collapsed to the floor of a Broadway steakhouse, mewling and shrieking
like an abandoned baby. That moment had led to the spectacle of the actor sitting in the
straightback chair of his kitchen, crying out in rage to his elder son, Biff. ''I'm not a dime a
dozen!,'' Mr. Hoffman rants, looking and sounding so small that we fear the price quoted by Biff
may, if anything, be too high.
To reconcile these sides of Willy - the brave fighter and the whipped child - you really have no
choice but to see what Mr. Hoffman is up to at the Broadhurst. In undertaking one of our
theater's classic roles, this daring actor has pursued his own brilliant conception of the character.
Mr. Hoffman is not playing a larger-than-life protagonist but the small man described in the
script - the ''little boat looking for a harbor,'' the eternally adolescent American male who goes to
the grave without ever learning who he is. And by staking no claim to the stature of a tragic hero,
Mr. Hoffman's Willy becomes a harrowing American everyman. His bouncy final exit is the
death of a salesman, all right. Willy rides to suicide, as he rode through life, on the foolish,
empty pride of ''a smile and a shoeshine.''
Even when Mr. Hoffman's follow- through falls short of his characterization - it takes a good
while to accept him as 63 years old - we're riveted by the wasted vitality of his small Willy, a
man full of fight for all the wrong battles. What's more, the star has not turned ''Death of a
Salesman'' into a vehicle. Under the balanced direction of Michael Rudman, this revival is an
exceptional ensemble effort, strongly cast throughout. John Malkovich, who plays the lost Biff,
gives a performance of such spellbinding effect that he becomes the evening's anchor. When Biff
finally forgives Willy and nestles his head lovingly on his father's chest, the whole audience
leans forward to be folded into the embrace: we know we're watching the salesman arrive,
however temporarily, at the only safe harbor he'll ever know.
But as much as we marvel at the acting in this ''Death of a Salesman,'' we also marvel at the play.
Mr. Miller's masterwork has been picked to death by critics over the last 35 years, and its
reputation has been clouded by the author's subsequent career. We know its flaws by heart - the
big secret withheld from the audience until Act II, and the symbolic old brother Ben (Louis
Zorich), forever championing the American dream in literary prose. Yet how small and academic
these quibbles look when set against the fact of the thunderous thing itself.
In ''Death of Salesman,'' Mr. Miller wrote with a fierce, liberating urgency. Even as his play
marches steadily onward to its preordained conclusion, it roams about through time and space,
connecting present miseries with past traumas and drawing blood almost everywhere it goes.
Though the author's condemnation of the American success ethic is stated baldly, it is also
woven, at times humorously, into the action. When Willy proudly speaks of owning a
refrigerator that's promoted with the ''biggest ads,'' we see that the pathological credo of being
''well liked'' requires that he consume products that have the aura of popularity, too.
Still, Mr. Rudman and his cast don't make the mistake of presenting the play as a monument of
social thought: the author's themes can take care of themselves. Like most of Mr. Miller's work,
''Death of a Salesman'' is most of all about fathers and sons. There are many father-son
relationships in the play - not just those of the Loman household, but those enmeshing Willy's
neighbors and employer. The drama's tidal pull comes from the sons' tortured attempts to
reconcile themselves to their fathers' dreams. It's not Willy's pointless death that moves us; it's
Biff's decision to go on living. Biff, the princely high school football hero turned drifter, must
find the courage both to love his father and leave him forever behind.
Mr. Hoffman's Willy takes flight late in Act I, when he first alludes to his relationship with his
own father. Recalling how his father left when he was still a child, Willy says, ''I never had a
chance to talk to him, and I still feel - kind of temporary about myself.'' As Mr. Hoffman's voice
breaks on the word ''temporary,'' his spirit cracks into aged defeat. From then on, it's a merciless
drop to the bottom of his ''strange thoughts'' - the hallucinatory memory sequences that send him
careening in and out of a lifetime of anxiety. Mr. Rudman stages these apparitional flashbacks
with bruising force; we see why Biff says that Willy is spewing out ''vomit from his mind.'' As
Mr. Hoffman stumbles through the shadowy recollections of his past, trying both to deny and
transmute the awful truth of an impoverished existence, he lurches and bobs like a strand of
broken straw tossed by a mean wind.
As we expect from this star, he has affected a new physical and vocal presence for Willy: a
baldish, silver- maned head; a shuffling walk; a brash, Brooklyn-tinged voice that well serves the
character's comic penchant for contradicting himself in nearly every sentence. But what's most
poignant about the getup may be the costume (designed by Ruth Morley). Mr. Hoffman's Willy
is a total break with the mountainous Lee J. Cobb image. He's a trim, immaculately outfitted gogetter in a three- piece suit - replete with bright matching tie and handkerchief. Is there anything
sadder than a nobody dressed for success, or an old man masquerading as his younger self? The
star seems to wilt within the self- parodistic costume throughout the evening. ''You can't eat the
orange and throw away the peel!,'' Willy pleads to the callow young boss (Jon Polito) who fires
him - and, looking at the wizened and spent Mr. Hoffman, we realize that he is indeed the peel,
tossed into the gutter. Mr. Malkovich, hulking and unsmiling, is an inversion of Mr. Hoffman's
father; he's what Willy might be if he'd ever stopped lying to himself. Anyone who saw this
remarkable young actor as the rambunctious rascal of ''True West'' may find his transformation
here as astonishing as the star's. His Biff is soft and tentative, with sullen eyes and a slow, distant
voice that seems entombed with his aborted teen-age promise; his big hands flop around
diffidently as he tries to convey his anguish to his roguish brother Happy (Stephen Lang). Once
Biff accepts who he is - and who his father is - the catharic recognition seems to break through
Mr. Malkovich (and the theater) like a raging fever. ''Help him!'' he yells as his father collapses
at the restaurant - only to melt instantly into a blurry, tearful plea of ''Help me! Help me!''
In the problematic role of the mother, Kate Reid is miraculously convincing: Whether she's
professing her love for Willy or damning Happy as a ''philandering bum,'' she somehow melds
affection with pure steel. Mr. Lang captures the vulgarity and desperate narcissism of the
younger brother, and David Chandler takes the goo out of the model boy next door. As Mr.
Chandler's father - and Willy's only friend - David Huddleston radiates a quiet benovolence as
expansive as his considerable girth. One must also applaud Thomas Skelton, whose lighting
imaginatively meets every shift in time and mood, and the set designer Ben Edwards, who
surrounds the shabby Loman house with malevolent apartment towers poised to swallow Willy
up.
But it's Mr. Hoffman and Mr. Malkovich who demand that our attention be paid anew to ''Death
of a Salesman.'' When their performances meet in a great, binding passion, we see the
transcendant sum of two of the American theater's most lowly, yet enduring, parts.
BIOGRAPHY
Arthur Miller (1915-2005)
American playwright who combined in his works social awareness with deep insights into
personal weaknesses of his characters'. Miller is best known for the play Death of a Salesman
(1949), or on the other hand, for his marriage to the actress Marilyn Monroe. Miller's plays
continued the realistic tradition that began in the United States in the period between the two
world wars. With Tennessee Williams, Miller was one of the best-known American playwrights
after WW II. Several of his works were filmed by such director as John Huston, Sidney Lumet
and Karel Reiz.
"Don't say he's a great man. Willy Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the
paper. He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is
happening to him. So attention must be paid. He's not to be allowed to fall into his grave like an
old dog. Attention, attention must finally paid to such a person." (from Death of a Salesman)
Arthur Miller was born in Harlem, New York City; the family
moved shortly afterwards to a six-storey building at 45110th
Street between Lenox and Fifth Avenues. His father, Isidore
Miller, was an illiterate Jewish immigrant from Poland. His
succesfull ladies-wear manufacturer and shopkeeper was
ruined in the depression. Augusta Barnett, Miller's mother,
was born in New York, but her father came from the same
Polish town as the Millers.
The sudden change in fortune had a strong influence on
Miller. "This desire to move on, to metamorphose – or
perhaps it is a talent for being contemporary – was given me
as life's inevitable and righful condition," he wrote in
Timebends: A Life (1987). The family moved to a small frame house in Brooklyn, which is said
to the model for the Brooklyn home in Death of a Salesman. Miller spent his boyhood playing
foorball and baseball, reading adventure stories, and appearing generally as a nonintellectual. "If
I had any ideology at all it was what I had learned from Hearst newspapers," he once said. After
graduating from a high school in 1932, Miller worked in automobile parts warehouse to earn
money for college. Having read Dostoevsky's novel The Brothers Karamazov Miller decided to
become a writer. To study journalism he entered the University of Michigan in 1934, where he
won awards for playwriting – one of the other awarded playwright was Tennessee Williams.
After graduating in English in 1938, Miller returned to New York. There he joined the Federal
Theatre Project, and wrote scripts for radio programs, such as Columbia Workshop (CBS) and
Cavalcade of America (NBC). Because of a football injury, he was exempt from draft. In 1940
Miller married a Catholic girl, Mary Slattery, his college sweetheart, with whom he had two
children. Miller's first play to appear on Broadway was The Man Who Had All The Luck (1944).
It closed after four performances. Three years later produced All My Sons was about a factory
owner who sells faulty aircraft parts during World War II. It won the New York Drama Critics
Circle award and two Tony Awards. In 1944 Miller toured Army camps to collect background
material for the screenplay The Story of G.I. Joe (1945). Miller's first novel, FOCUS (1945), was
about anti-Semitism.
Miller's plays often depict how families are destroyed by false values. Especially his earliest
efforts show his admiration for the classical Greek dramatists. "When I began to write," he said
in an interview, "one assumed inevitably that one was in the mainstream that began with
Aeschylus and went through about twenty-five hundred years of playwriting." (from The
Cambridge Companion to Arthur Miller, ed. by Christopher Bigsby, 1997)
Death of a Salesman brought Miller international fame, and become one of the major
achievements of modern American theatre. It relates the tragic story of a salesman named Willy
Loman, whose past and present are mingled in expressionistic scenes. Loman is not the great
success that he claims to be to his family and friends. The postwar economic boom has shaken
up his life. He is eventually fired and he begins to hallucinate about significant events from his
past. Linda, his wife, believes in the American Dream, but she also keeps her feet on the ground.
Deciding that he is worth more dead than alive, Willy kills himself in his car – hoping that the
insurance money will support his family and his son Biff could get a new start in his life. Critics
have disagreed whether his suicide is an act of cowardice or a last sacrifice on the altar of the
American Dream.
WILLY: I'm not interested in stories about the past or any crap of that kind because the woods
are burning, boys, you understand? There's a big blaze going on all around. I was fired today.
BIFF (shocked): How could you be?
WILLY: I was fired, and I'm looking for a little good news to tell your mother, because the
woman has waited and the woman has suffered. The gist of it is that I haven't got a story left in
my head, Biff. So don't give me a lecture about facts and aspects. I am not interested. Now
what've you got so say to me?
(from Death of a Salesman)
In 1949 Miller was named an "Outstanding Father of the Year", which manifested his success as
a famous writer. But the wheel of fortune was going down. In the 1950s Miller was subjected to
a scrutiny by a committee of the United States Congress investigating Communist influence in
the arts. The FBI read his play The Hook, about a militant union organizer, and he was denied a
passport to attend the Brussels premiere of his play The Crucible (1953). It was based on court
records and historical personages of the Salem witch trials of 1692. In Salem one could be
hanged because of ''the inflamed human imagination, the poetry of suggestion.'' The daughter of
Salem's minister falls mysteriously ill. Reverend Samuel Parris is a widower, and there is very
little good to be said for him. He believes he is persecuted wherever he goes. Rumours of
witchcraft spread throughout the people of Salem. "The times, to their eyes, must have been out
of joint, and to the common folk must have seemed as insoluble and complicated as do ours
today." The minister accuses Abigail Williams of wrongdoing, but she transforms the accusation
into plea for help: her soul has been bewitched. Young girls, led by Abigail, make accusations of
witchcraft against townspeople whom they do not like. Abigail accuses Elizabeth Proctor, the
wife of an upstanding farmer, whom she had once seduced. Elizabeth's husband John Proctor
reveals his past lechery. Elizabeth, unaware, fails to confirm his testimony. To protect him she
testifies falsely that her husband has not been intimate with Abigail. Proctor is accused of
witchcraft and condemned to death.
The Crucible, which received Antoinette Perry Award, was an allegory for the McCarthy era and
mass hysteria. Although its first Broadway production flopped, it become one of Miller's mostproduced play. Miller wrote The Crucible in the atmosphere in which the author saw "accepted
the notion that conscience was no longer a private matter but one of state administration." In the
play he expressed his faith in the ability of an individual to resist conformist pressures.
"You know, sometimes God mixes up the people. We all love somebody, the wife, the kids every man's got somebody he loves, heh? Bus sometimes... there's too much. You know? There's
too much, and it goes where it mustn't. A man works hard, he brings up a child, sometimes it's
niece, sometimes even a daughter, and he never realizes it, but through the years - there is too
much love for the daughter, there is too much love for the niece." (from A View from the
Bridge)
Elia Kazan, with whom Miller had shared an artistic vision and for a period a girlfriend, the
motion-picture actress Marilyn Monroe, named in 1952 eight former reds, who had been in the
Communist Party with him. Kazan virtually became a pariah overnight, Miller remained a hero
of the Left. Two short plays under the collective title A View from the Bridge were successfully
produced in 1955. The drama, dealing with incestuous love, jealousy and betrayal, was also an
answer to Kazan's film On the Waterfront (1954), in which the director justified his naming
names.
In 1956 Miller was awarded honorary degree at the University of Michigan but also called before
the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Miller admitted that he had attended certain
meetings, but denied that he was a Communist. He had attended among others four or five
writers's meetings sponsored by the Communist Party in 1947, supported a Peace Conference at
the Waldorf-Astoria in New York, and signed many apppeals and protests. "Marilyn's fiance
admits aiding reds," wrote the press. Refusing to offer other people's names, who had associated
with leftist or suspected Communist groups, Miller was cited for contempt of Congress, but the
ruling was reversed by the courts in 1958.
Miller – "the man who had all the luck" – married Marilyn Monroe in 1956; they divorced in
1961. At that time Marilyn was beyond saving. She died in 1962.
In the late 1950s Miller wrote nothing for the theatre. His screenplay Misfits was written with a
role for his wife. The film was directed by John Huston, starring Mongomery Clift, Clark Gable,
and Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn was always late getting to the set and used heavily drugs. The
marriage was already breaking, and Miller was feeling lonely. John Huston wrote in his book of
memoir, An Open Book, (1980): "One evening I was about to drive away from the location –
miles out in the desert – when I saw Arthur standing alone. Marilyn and her friends hadn't
offered him a ride back; they'd just left him. If I hadn't happened to see him, he would have been
stranded out there. My sympathies were more and more with him." Later Miller said that there
"should have been more long shots to remind us constantly how isolated there people were,
physically and morally." Miller's last play, Finishing the Picture, produced in 2004, depicted the
making of Misfits.
Miller was politically active throughout his life. In 1965 he was elected president of P.E.N., the
international literary organization. At the 1968 Democratic Party Convention he was a delegate
for Eugene McCarthy. In 1964 Miller returned to stage after a nine-year absence with the play
After the Fall, a strongly autobiographical work, which dealt with the questions of guilt and
innocence. The play also united Kazan and Miller, but their close friendship was over, destroyed
by the blacklist. Many critics consider that Maggie, the self-destructive central character, was
modelled on Monroe, though Miller denied this. A year after his divorce, Miller married the
Austrian photographer Inge Morath (1923-2002), whom he had met during the filming of The
Misfits. Miller co-operated with her on two books about China and Russia. After Inge Morath
died, Miller plannd to marry Agnes Barley, a 34-year-old artist. In 1985 Miller went to Turkey
with the playwright Harold Pinter. Their journey was arranged by PEN in conjunction with the
Helsinki Watch Committee. One of their guides in Istanbul was Orhan Pamuk.
In the 1990s Miller wrote such plays as The Ride Down Mount Morgan (prod. 1991) and The
Last Yankee (prod. 1993), but in an interview he stated that "It happens to be a very bad
historical moment for playwriting, because the theater is getting more and more difficult to find
actors for, since television pays so much and the movies even more than that. If you're young,
you'll probably be writing about young people, and that's easier -- you can find young actors -but you can't readily find mature actors." ('We're Probably in an Art That Is -- Not Dying' , The
New York Times, January 17, 1993) In 2002 Miller was honored with Spain's prestigious
Principe de Asturias Prize for Literature, making him the first U.S. recipient of the award. Miller
died of heart failure at home in Roxbury, Connecticut, on February 10, 2005.
Notes for Arthur Miller's play Death of a Salesman
BEFORE YOU READ THE PLAY CONSIDER:
This Hypothetical Scenario
You are a senior at Clockwork High School. Clockwork High asks every student to pay a
$750 activity fee whether the student participates in a sport or activity or not.
When you first came to Clockwork High your goal was to be a player on the highly
regarded basketball team. The basketball team at Clockwork is extremely competitive and
you did not make the team in your freshman year. The coach however let you play with the
team and you came early to every practice and stayed late to help clean up.
You thought about playing baseball in the spring but you found out that the coach
liked his players to play in a non-school spring league to hone their skills and show their
dedication, so you forgot about baseball and played in the basketball spring leagues. You
worked hard all summer and went to a basketball camp. In sophomore year you made the
team as the second string point guard and back-up shooting guard.
Again you came early to practice and stayed late, played in the spring and went to
basketball camp. In junior year your body and your skill formed the perfect mesh. You
became the starting point guard and had an All-State year, scoring more points and making
more assists than any other guard in your conference. In the final playoff game of the year
you drove toward the basket but your foot went one way any your body went the other
twisting your knee until you heard a pop. Season over.
Rehabilitation of the knee goes well and you work harder than ever to gain your
strength back, but the knee remains weak and you have lost your once heralded speed. When
senior year begins you can still play well, but you can’t be the starting guard. The coach
comes to you and tells you that while you and the other guards are about equal in talent,
they are a freshman and a sophomore and he has decided to cut you. The younger players
need experience, they will play next year, and you won’t get much better during this, your
last season. You have played your last competitive game of basketball and didn’t know it.
Other teams, like baseball, don’t want seniors joining their team for the first time since it
throws off the team chemistry and causes resentment.
How do you feel about what has happened and the decisions that have been made by
your coach?
Motifs and Themes
"Kid"
Watch how often the the idea of "Kid," and "Boy," and "When are you going to grow up?" is tossed
around in the play. Biff, talking to Hap about himself, says that he sees himself as just a boy. "I'm
like a boy. I'm not married. I'm not in business, I just--I'm like a boy." Willy warns Biff not to use
the word "Gee" because "Gee" is a boy's word (The next morning, Willy will say "Gee whiz" to
Linda). Later in the play, Howard will call Willy "Kid." This patronizing attitude must add to
Willy's own insecurity. He seems sensitive to slights of this kind and therefore might use it as a
kind of warning to Biff or maybe he uses it as an unconscious attack, the kind where the victim
becomes the victimizer. This insecurity about his immaturity (even at the age of 63) is highlighted
by how angry Willy gets when Charley asks him in Act II, "When are you going to grow up?"
Poetry
Arthur Miller's language can be problematic for some people. There are lines that just don't ring
true or seem realistic. Linda talks about what she finds behind the fuse box: "And behind the fuse
box--it happened to fall out--was a length of rubber pipe--just short." What is this supposed to
be? What is Willy supposed to do with this rubber pipe that would kill him, breathe in gas? The
moment he became unconscious, the pipe would fall out of his mouth. The fact is that it does not
matter. It is the image of the rubber pipe and the gas that counts. The image expresses the
concept of suicide and that is all Miller needs for the audience to understand.
Another example of unrealistic or stylized language is the lies that the members of the family tell
each other about their past or even their present situations. These lies don't hold up under the
least bit scrutiny, even for these people. It is not the actual lies that they tell, but the image that
they convey. The boys and Willy tell lies. That is the important concept for the audience to gather
in. When the playwright tries to give an impression of reality rather than reality itself, it is a
matter of style and thus is considered "stylized." You will notice this in some movies and
television shows. Sometimes the scenery or the language is obviously fake or unreal. Didn't the
director notice? Of course she did. Look at the television shows Hercules or Xena: Warrior
Princess. Their costumes and language are way too modern for the time they are supposed to
inhabit, but the show still conveys enough about the setting for the audience to get the idea that
it happens sometime in the mythical past. The directors are showing a bit of style in their
presentation. Other examples of stylized settings are the films Moulin Rouge and the modern
Romeo + Juliet directed by Baz Luhrman.
Just as the scenery in Death of a Salesman is designed so that there is only enough of the house to
give the image of a dwelling that exists under the dominance of the apartment buildings, the
dialogue is written so that there is just enough story to give a hint of the major events in the lives
of the Loman family. The play is not meant to be reality. It is meant to convey an image or view of
reality. In the same way Pablo Picasso paints pictures that are not realistic yet comment on the
reality of our lives, so does Miller create a world that that cannot exist in reality but casts an
image that exposes truths about reality.
Act One
Willy and Linda
o
Willy, seemingly out of no where, asks, "How do they whip cheese?" While this might
appear to be a random remark, it is important to note that the playwright has only two or
three hours to reveal the important facts in this family's life. Nothing can be wasted with
such a task. Therefore nothing should be random, but rather all of the dialogue should be
calculated to reveal. If you are aware that you have a great play in front of you, your task is
to figure out what is the purpose of each minute of the play. In the case of the whipped
cheese, Tom B., Class of '04, points out that it indicates Willy's surprise at change. Willy is
amazed at changes in people, technology, home and neighborhood. This will be a major
theme during the play. Here in the first act, Willy bemoans the change in the
neighborhood and how the elm trees that were in the lot next door were cut down to put
up an apartment building. Now he feels boxed in and indeed the script indicates that the
buildings surrounding the Loman home loom over them just as Willy feels that the society
he doesn't fit into looms over him..
Happy and Biff in the room together:
o
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Biff talks to Happy about coming out West with him. For a time, Happy is enthralled with
the idea. "That's what I dream about, Biff." Happy abruptly kills the dream that makes him
happy by asking about the kind of money a person could make out West. The dream that
makes him happy, Happy won't pursue. The dream about money and possessions that
offers no satisfaction for him, is the only one Happy pursues.
Happy talks about women and reduces them to objects. "I get that anytime I want, Biff.
Whenever I feel disgusted." With what is Happy disgusted? Later he says to Biff that he
wants somebody with "resistance." What does he want her to resist? Who is it that Happy
really does not like?
Willy's memory with the boys:
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Why does Happy continually tell his father he is losing weight?
What is Willy's reaction to Biff's "borrowing" the football?
How do the boys treat Willy?
Why does Willy think Bernard will fail and Biff will succeed?
What kind of future does Biff have before him at this point?
Why, as Willy tells his boys, will Charley not succeed?
Willy's memory with Linda:
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How does Willy's attitude change with Linda? Has he been as successful as he has
indicated to the boys?
How does Linda feel about him?
How does Willy feel about his appearance?
What does Willy envy about Charley? What does this say about what he has told the boys?
Willy displays a tremendous amount of self doubt. Why do you think he values being
"well-liked"?
Who is the woman in the hotel room? Give several reasons for Willy to be there with her.
Why does Willy get mad about Linda mending stockings?
Ben:
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How old was Willy when Ben left? Did Willy ever have a chance to go off with Ben?
What was Ben's reason for setting off for Alaska? Why should Willy feel he lacks a role
model for fatherhood?
What did Willy's father do? Why is Willy a salesman?
Willy asks Ben what Willy should teach them. What is Ben's answer?
Linda speaks to the boys:
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During this scene Linda shows pure, unconditional love for Willy.
Linda knows who her sons have become. She is not fooled, though she loves them.
Linda tells the boys that Willy has been trying to kill himself.
"There's a rubber pipe, just short." Don't be concerned with how the pipe works. It is a
symbol of his desire for death.
Linda takes it away, but she puts it back. Why does she put it back?
Biff speaks to Linda (with Happy in the room):
o
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"He threw me out of the house." Have you guessed why Willy and Biff are in such great
conflict?
"Because we don't belong in this nuthouse of a city! We should be mixing cement on some
open plain, or -- or carpenters." Biff is displaying the self knowledge that he just can't
seem to hang on to. Willy, who built the ceiling in the kitchen, the porch, and did the
work on the house, should have been a carpenter.
Act Two
Howard's Office:
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What does the tape recorder represent? Is it a symbol for anything?
Dave Singleman is the salesman who at the age of eighty-four made his living. It is this
image that convinced Willy to follow the career of sales. Willy is helped by his background
where his father did the same thing when he was a boy.
It is Dave Singleman who died the death of a salesman. What was that?
"You can't eat the orange and throw the peel away--a man is not a piece of fruit!" Can
anyone make a case for this being the central quote of the play?
I want all of my students to remember this quote. Workers, people, are not commodities.
They are not meant to be used up and then disposed of. When you are the person in
charge, the owner of a great company or an officer in a small one, when you are the
foreman or the boss, please remember that, while you have the responsibility of the
company to think of, you are an advocate for humanity. This is one of the most
important roles you will ever have, so remember to fill it with all your wisdom and
compassion.
o
What does it mean for Howard to repeatedly call Willy, "Kid"?
Willy Meets with Bernard:
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How has Willy's opinion of Bernard changed?
Willy asks Bernard, "What happened?" So answer the question, what happened?
Bernard relates that Biff had gone to find Willy in New England. When Biff came back,
Bernard knew that Biff had given up his life. What happened in Boston?
Is this revelation about Willy and Biff significant enough to motivate or initiate all of the
subsequent action in their lives? This is an important question for you.
At the Restaurant:
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Biff realizes the truth about his life. He was a shipping clerk for Bill Oliver. Oliver never
knew who he was. Everything that Biff told himself was a lie .
Why does Biff steal the fountain pen? (Please note that the value of a good fountain pen
would have been significant.)
Willy repeats his refrain: "The woods are burning." What does this mean to him?
In this family lies feel better than truth. (Remember The Matrix. Do you want the blue pill
or the red pill?)
Biff pleads with Happy: "Help him. Help him. Help me. Help me." Why does Biff link these
two ideas?
Happy says to the girls: "That's not my father. That's just some guy I know." What does
this tell you?
At Home:
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Linda has finally had it with her boys.
Biff, in his climactic speech, tries to get Willy to understand that what is destroying them
is the dream. "I saw the things that I love in this world. The work and the food and time to
sit and smoke. . . . Why am I trying to become what I don't want to be? What am I doing
in an office, making a contemptuous, begging fool of myself, when all I want is out there,
waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am!" Why is it important for a person to
accept who he really is? For another take on this theme, see the movie On the Waterfront.
To Ben:
Who does Ben represent? What is he a symbol for?
The following article helps explain the flashback technique.
February 6, 1949
Arthur Miller Grew in Brooklyn
By MURRAY SCHUMACH
Such a commonplace, Mr. Miller explained the other night at a hotel here, is the theme of "Death of a
Salesman." The motif is the growth of illusion until it destroys the individual and leaves the children to
whom he transmitted it incapable of dealing with reality. "Every man," said Mr. Miller, "has an image of
himself which fails in one way or another to correspond with reality. It's the size of the discrepancy
between illusion and reality that matters. The closer a man gets to knowing himself, the less likely he is to
trip up on his own illusions."
Elaborating on this theme, he forgot temporarily the fatigue of rehearsal revisions and pre-opening
tensions that had scooped deep hollows from his high cheekbones to jutting jaw. His New Yorkese
became more pronounced with increasing enthusiasm.
Then, matter-of-factly, Mr. Miller turned to an analysis of the play's technique. The tragedy has two
concurrent themes that are maneuvered by flashbacks until they collide in climax. Generally speaking,
one theme delves into the past of the salesman, tracing his development and that of his family. The other
theme handles the present.
"This was the play where I decided not to be hampered by the iron vise of plot," he said. "I've always
been impatient with naturalism on the stage. But I knew I had to master naturalism before I tried anything
else. 'All My Sons' was in that category. The pattern I used for 'Death of a Salesman' gives me more
leeway for honest investigation and makes the people seem more lifelike. Of course, I think this play has
more roundness of truth and handles a great many more aspects of people. I guess it has more pity and
less judgment than there was in 'All My Sons.'"
Suddenly he stopped talking and his gaunt face became boyish as he grinned almost sheepishly. It is a
slow, wide grin that usually accompanies his proud comments on his two children, his wife's mastery of
the family exchequer or the behavior of his new convertible. He slid deep into his chair, stretched his long
legs over another chair and closed his eyes.
"Dammit, " he muttered wearily, "I hate living in hotels."
Mr. Miller dislikes living anywhere that cuts him off from the life of the average family. That is why his
home is in Brooklyn and why each year he spends a few weeks working in a factory. "Anyone who
doesn't know what it means to stand in one place eight hours a day," he said, "doesn't know what it's all
about. It's the only way you can learn what makes men go into a gin mill after work and start fighting.
You don't learn about those things in Sardi's."
Virtually everything Mr. Miller put into "Death of a Salesman" came from the writer's experiences or
observations. The one-family house Jo Mielziner used for a set is the model of countless such homes in
Brooklyn where Mr. Miller grew up after moving to Flatbush from Harlem as a boy. The salesman was
modeled on the fast-talking specimens he had seen so often because his father made coats. He know how
an adolescent can behave as a football hero because he played end at Abraham Lincoln High School in
Brooklyn until his knees were banged up so badly he couldn't get into the Army.
Mr. Miller's acquaintances, who judge him by his intense face and writings, are surprised to learn he is
not a born bookworm and that he spent his boyhood and most of his adolescence ignoring books for
sports. The change came suddenly in his senior year at high school, when he read Dostoievsky's "The
Idiot" and decided he had to be a writer. Thereafter, though he held tiring jobs as a truck driver, waiter,
crewman and a tanker, he used his spare time to read.
His first play, a three-acter, was written at the University of Michigan in a week and won for him a $500
prize. That award, plus the confidence of a fellow student, Mary Slattery, whom he later married,
convinced him his writing should take the form of plays. He stuck to this idea fairly steadily, though there
were years when his wife's salary as a secretary brought more income than his radio play scripts.
Only once did Mr. Miller lose faith. That was in 1944 after his first Broadway play, "The Man Who Had
All the Luck," flopped. He decided to try a novel and came up with "Focus." While this taut study of
domestic anti-Semitism and fascism was selling 90,000 copies Mr. Miller turned out "All My Sons," a
tale that had been kicking around in the back of his head.
Mr. Miller's pieces invariably fatten in his skull for a while before he begins writing. He is not of the
notebook school of writing. Nor does he subscribe to the theory that a man should get behind a typewriter
for a set number of hours every day, even if unaware of any ideas. In the case of "Death of a Salesman"
the idea came one day "the way marble comes in a solid block if you hit it right." But once under way he
works from 9 A.M. to 1 P.M. every day with a couple of more hours of production in the evening "that I
usually throw away the next morning."
Regardless of Broadway's reception of his play, Mr. Miller is sure of two things. He'll head for his
Connecticut retreat and relax in manual labor. And he'll continue to resist Hollywood: "I didn't go to
Hollywood when I was poor," he says, "why should I do it now?"
Mr. and Mrs. Miller left the apartment late yesterday for an undisclosed destination.