Death of a Salesman

Arthur Miller was born in 1915 in New York. He grew up during the Great Depression, which is said to have profoundly affected him.  His father, who had run a garment manufacture, went bankrupt, which, according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica "demonstrated to the young Miller the insecurity of modern existence". After graduating from high school, he started working and saved up money to go to university. He got a B.A. from the University of Michigan in 1938. While at university he also wrote plays, but his first big success was a novel about anti-Semitism Focus, published in 1945. The play All My Sons (1947) was his first big hit. It won a Tony Award and that's also when he started collaborating with the director Elia Kazan. His next play Death of a Salesman (1949) established his reputation as a major American playwright. It opened in New York in 1949, directed by Kazan. It won a Pulitzer Prize and a Drama Critics Circle Award and was later adapted for the cinema and television. It is a tragedy about what Arthur Miller called a "common man". In a New York Times article published in 1949, A. Miller wrote : "I believe that the common man is as apt a subject for tragedy in its highest sense as kings were."

His play The Crucible (1953) is set in Salem and deals with the witch-hunts that took place there in the 17th century. It is in fact an "indictment of the McCarthyism of the early 1950s" (P.B.S.). It also won a Tony award and has been adapted several times for cinema and television. In 1956, Miller himself was called before the House Committee on Un-American activities. He refused to cooperate and was convicted of contempt of Congress. However, he appealed and won. This was a difficult time in his life. In 1956 he had married the famous Hollywood actress Marilyn Monroe. He wrote a screenplay for her called The Misfits. The film, directed by John Huston, starred Clark Gable and was released in 1961, the year Miller and Monroe got divorced.

He wrote several other plays, among which A View from the Bridge, After the Fall, Incident at Vichy. A collection of his short stories was published in 1967 and his autobiography Timebends in 1987. 

He died in 2005 in Connecticut. In his Guardian obituary he is described as "one of the greatest playwrights of the 20th century, whose work explored the dilemmas of the American dream".

VOCABULARY

garment : vêtement
to go bankrupt : faire faillite
B.A : Bachelor's degree (diplôme universitaire)
a hit : un succès
a playwright : dramaturge
a witch-hunt : chasse aux sorcières
an indictment : condamnation
convicted : reconnu coupable
contempt : mépris, outrage
to appeal : faire appel
among which : parmi lesquels

Thanks to the stage directions at the beginning of the play we know that "The action takes place in Willy Loman’s house and yard and in various places he visits in the New York and Boston of today." The main character, Willy Loman, who works as a travelling salesman, "is past sixty years of age". He comes home to his wife Linda, who "more than loves him, she admires him". Willy explains that he could not bring himself to drive to New England where he is "vital", so he came home, exhausted and profoundly depressed.

His sons Happy and Biff are there too. Both are also dissatisfied with their lives. Biff tells his brother "all I've done is to waste my life" and when he asks his brother if he is content, Happy replies "Hell, no !" He goes on to explain that even though he has got everything he wanted : an apartment, a car, women, he suffers from loneliness.

The scene then shifts to the past at a time when Willy and his sons were much younger. We learn about their dreams for the future : Willy is certain that some day he will have his own business and his sons will do well for themselves too. Yet when his wife arrives, he reveals that in fact the job is not going well. We also learn that he has had an affair. Linda warns Willy that Biff is in trouble at school and with the neighbourhood girls. Will, however, replies that Biff has got "spirit, personality". He is blind to his son's flaws.

Charley, a neighbour, comes over to play cards with Willy who keeps thinking about the past and mistaking him for his brother Ben.  
Meanwhile, Linda tells her sons that their father hardly makes any money and that he is suicidal.

At the beginning of act two, Willy seems to be in good spirits. He is determined to talk to his boss and ask him for another job, where he doesn't need to travel. Howard, his boss decides to fire him. Willy then borrows money from his friend Charley, who offers him a job. Willy refuses and then recalls the past, when Biff found out his father was having an affair and called him "a fake". The scene then shifts to the present with Willy and Biff arguing violently and then making their peace. Willy realises that "Biff—he likes me!"
The play ends with Willy driving away and then we see everyone standing around his grave.

Quotations about Death of a Salesman

Miller has said of Willy Loman that ‘‘he cannot bear reality, and since he can’t do much to change it, he keeps changing his ideas of it.’’ 

Miller also said that his play was about "the paradoxes of being alive in a technological civilization.’’ (Theater Essays). 
It is ‘‘a story about violence within the family,’’ about ‘‘the suppression of the individual by placing him below the imperious needs of . . . society.’’ (Theater Essays)

It is ‘‘a play about a man who kills himself because he isn’t liked.’’ (Conversations)

It expresses ‘‘all those feelings of a society falling to pieces which I had’’ (Theater Essays)

A critic in The Guardian explained that "Miller’s play is about a man with a fragile grasp of reality who easily confuses past and present."

In his introduction to the play, Christopher Bigsby wrote that "Death of a Salesman is not an attack on American values. It is, however, an exploration of the betrayal of those values and the cost of this in human terms […] It is a faith in the supremacy of the material over the spiritual."

VOCABULARY

stage directions : didascalies
exhausted : épuisé
to waste : gâcher
to shift : passer, changer
an affair : une liaison
to warn : prévenir
a flaw : défaut
hardly : à peine
to borrow : emprunter
a fake : hypocrite, un faux-cul
a grave : une tombe
to bear : supporter
a fragile grasp of reality : il n'est pas en prise avec la réalité 
betrayal : trahison
faith : la foi