Did The Salesman Deserve To Die?

          

          I’ve heard about this play ever since I’ve read the play The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams. Now that I have watched the Arthur Miller's play Death of a Salesman (1966) starring Lee J. Cobb, I cannot wait to share my thoughts. Firstly, I would like to comment on the stunning performance by Lee J. Cobb as Willy Loman, the protagonist, the delusional salesman. I had previously watched him in the film 12 Angry Men (please watch it, you’ll thank me later) and here too he does a great job in depicting emotions that I feel I would have never realized had I read the play.

 The link to the play on YouTube:

 https://youtu.be/Y7lGIUzUKOE?si=wmecuYXAsknxNt8X

       I shall try not to spoil it too much for you as I give you a brief summary of the play. The play introduces us to an ageing salesman, Willy Loman who has just returned from New York to his middle-class apartment in Boston. His two sons haven’t found much success in business as he hoped for, and his degrading mental health is cause for concern in the family. His much successful brother, Ben, is his ever-prevailing hope for the reality of the American Dream, although he is slowly being forgotten as the men of his age have already retired or are dead. He recollects instances of the past where his son seemed to have a bright future in soccer, all while losing his sanity until a point where Linda suspects him of having suicidal motives.

 

     Now the play mocks the very idea of the American Dream itself. We see Willy, initially in a state of pride and hopefulness as he speaks about the ways of business. However, the reader then faces the slap of reality which Willy never seems to accept, the reality that the ‘dream is long dead’. Now the little piece of writing brilliance is that all the characters represent different parts and thoughts of that dream. We have Ben, who “walked into the jungle at 17 and came out rich in 21”. However he chose to leave the city to go to Alaska, while Willy believed in his own land of dreams. Then we have the character of Charlie, perhaps the voice of the audience asking, “Why must everyone like you”, pointing out the utter delusional state of mind he lives in. We also have Linda, the wife worried about his husbands’ sanity as she tries to reclaim his husband through love considering him to be a “little boat looking for a harbour”.

 

   The death of the salesman should have been one where businessmen and acquaintances should have come from far and wide, with cars with strange number plates to attend his funeral. However, he is alone, his funeral attended only by his family and Charlie, Willy’s only friend. This scene is such a payoff and wraps off the idea of the irony of the delusion of the dream. While one son belittles his father’s dream, the other is determined to prove his father right, to prove the world wrong, to show that his death was not in vain. The cycle continues…

 

       To be perfectly candid with you dear reader, I would not recommend watching this play, or a reading of it, since well, it is a disappointing tragedy. At the end of the play, you would just give off a sigh, probably saying, ‘it is what it is’. As Charlie says “nobody d’ast blame this man”, no one can really find fault with Willy for having hopes in his dream to achieve big. He had failed as a father, a husband and even failed himself, unable to achieve his dreams. There is no true resolution, just a painful reality of the middle-class American household.

    

      Who killed the salesman? Was it society? Was it age? Or was it the fallacy of his dream, which he saw many attain but not himself? Was being a salesman the pinnacle of life? Does money, fame, and friends make you successful? Well, there is no real answer, except the ones we make for ourselves. Personally, I could only feel pity for Willy with his abrasive attitude towards his family, his falling composure and his arrogance not to accept his faults and seek help from those who truly cared for him.

   At the end of the day dear reader, the real dilemma would be, what if there is no dream, what about the people who failed, do they deserve to live? Or does failure mean the end of life? Did Willy really had to die of shame? When he was fired from his job, did that erase his identity, that now he was a nobody without his title as a salesman?

 

Let me know your thoughts…