Реферат: The Tragedy Of One Man Essay Research

The Tragedy Of One Man Essay, Research Paper

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Jason Koch

1302 A

Schonberg

November 15, 1995

The Tragedy of One Man

Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman can be seen as an eulogy of a dreamer, which depicts one man’s tragic life and death as he tries to bring his family into grace. Miller does, however, also uses this play to express underlying themes and ideas. Reading Death of a Salesman from the starting point of a Marxist results in the perception that miller uses his play as a means to demonstrate the effects of a changing capitalist society. On the other hand, a psychological reading of Death of a Salesman allows the play to be seen as one mans flight from shame and his own weakened self image. The Marxist perspective is a viable reading of this drama but it does not truly define it as a tragedy. To better understand this piece of literature as a tragedy one should observe the psychological reading which depicts the tragedy of one man.

Many people wonder if Willy is really responsible for his own death, or is he, as Luke Carrol put it in the Herald Tribune, ” a pathetic little man caught in an undertow that’s too strong for him.” Willy Loman is bewildered by a capitalist system which drives it’s men into frantic, all consuming dreams of success, doomed not only by their grandiosity but also their inherent contradictoriness.

Willy’s dreams of success are rooted in the concept of the “American Dream”, which is the

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idea that this is a land of unlimited opportunity in which any ragamuffin can attain riches and any mother’s son can become president (Hadomi 159). This concept of success is personified by two characters in the play: David Singleman and Ben Loman. The first an old sales man, David Singleman, who could travel anywhere and place many order by phone in his hotel room. And when this man died at the age of eighty-four people came from all over to attend his funeral. This is the type of man Willy aspires to become and this is why he chose sales as his occupation. Ben, Willy’s older brother, is another symbol of the ruthless success Willy tries to reach in his life. “There was the only man I ever met ” Willy says, “Who knew all the answers”(Meyer 1734). Willy has treasured up the memory of Ben until it is more real to him than any of the people in his life. The character of Ben materializes again and again in the play as Willy savors his favorite brag: “When I was seven-teen I walked into the jungle and when I was twenty-one I walked out. and by God I was rich”(Meyer 1732).

The statement ,”Rich”, echoes throughout the play as Willy is railroaded by a capitalist system as he strives to reach his dreams. Willy Loman desperately want to believe that he has succeeded, that he is “well liked”and a great salesman. But at the age of sixty- three and nearing retirement, Willy is seen as a man who gave all of his life to a business, only to be thrown in the scrap-heap and as a house holder whose pattern of life was interwoven with installment plans with which he could hardly catch up.

In another time, Willy Loman might have been a happy carpenter. He can put up a ceiling which his brother-in-law, Charley, lauds as a “piece a work”. Dreaming of a rustic retirement, Willy hopes to build guest houses on his yearned-for country land for Biff and Happy: “Cause I got so many fine tools, all I’d need would be a little lumber and some peace of mind”(Meyer 1743). On

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the morning of the day which ends with his suicide, he admires his own house: “All the cement, the lumber, the reconstruction put in this house. There ain’t a crack to be found in it any more”(Meyer 1744). Belittling Charlie, Willy says, “A man who can’t handle tools is not a man”(Meyer 1730).

But it is important to note that carpentry is no more his work in the world than it is Charley’s. Willy marches in Karl Marx’s army of alienated labor, performing work that is “not personal to him, is not part of his nature ; therefore he does not fulfill himself in work, but actually denies himself…It satisfies no spontaneous urges, but is only a means for satisfication of wants that have nothing to do with work”(Koon 65). Willy’s allienation, however, is perhaps more excruciating than even Marx could have imagined. Business civilization tells Willy that selling is a task as whole and complex as that of any artisan, but the products of Willy’s labor are never concrete and observable. The cabinet maker can contemplate the finished cabinet; even the assembly line worker can reap the benefits of his labor. But Willy can never know the real value of his salesman’s skills because many factors -his costumer’s unique needs and his merchandise’s quality among them-contribute to his success or failure. The immediate financial rewards of Willy’s work are barely sufficient to provide his family with the necessities and scant comforts of lower middle class life, and the final rewards he anticipates, wealth and eminence, are never insight. Willy never receives any of these rewards because of the changing capitalistic society in which he lives.

As Death of a Salesman opens, Willy Loman returns home “tired to death”(Meyer 1714)in reveries about the beautiful countryside and the past, he’s been driving off the road; and now he wants a cheese sandwich. But Linda’s suggestion that he try a new American type cheese-”it’s whipped”(Meyer 1716)-irritates Willy: “Why do you get American when I like Swiss?”(Meyer 1716). His anger at being contradicted unleashes an indictment of modern industrialized America: Koch 4

“The street is lined with cars There’s not a breath of fresh air in the neighborhood. The grass don’t grow anymore, you can’t raise a carrot in the backyard”(Meyer 1716). But just as Willy defines the conflict between nature and industry, he pauses and simply wonders: “How can they whip cheese?”(meyer 1716).

The clash between the old agurain ideal and capitalistic enterprise is well documented in Death of Salesman (Koon 82). The son a pioneer inventor and the slave of the industrialized world, Willy Loman epitomizes the victim of a changing capitalistic society. Miller eludes to this even in the character’s name Loman, which pronounced correctly reveals the words Lo-man. Death of a Salesman engages the audiences conflicting attitudes toward this changing society: Fear of the new and unfamiliar; marvel at the progress; and the need ,finally, to accommodate technology to cultural mythologies by subordinating it personally (Koon 52).

This is evident in the Howards office who is Willy’s boss. In this scene Willy is going to ask to work in NewYork but instead of getting his office job he is fired. Willy has now lost every thing: his years of service, his pride and his salary because he is no longer as productive as he once was. This scene not only marks a tragic point in Willy’s life it also gives proof of the changes that occur in a capitalist system. Willy’s termination goes along with the “out with the old and in with the new theory of such a system. Howard now finds Willy useless to him just like his old hobbies and like these hobbies he must replace Willy with something better and more effective.

As Willy sees his world crumble before him his only action is to celebrate the success of David Singleman. Willy epitomizes Singleman in an unexpectedly eloquent passage:

Do you know? When he died-and by the way he died the death of a salesman, in his green velvet slippers in the smoker of the New York, New Haven and Hartford going to Boston-

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when he died, hundreds of salesman and buyers where at his funeral…In those days there was

a personality in it, Howard. There was respect, and Comradeship, and gratitude in it(Meyer 1748).

This passage eludes to Willy’s conflict with the changing Capitalistic society. The business has changed it has left his kind behind, and now he does not know how to perform his job. He once thought you could succeed on the merits of personality alone but now he wonders if he is too talkative. Willy now wonders if he ever possessed the qualities of a successful salesman.

Willy the apparent victim of Capitalism-He will kill himself in a car wreck-shows us how we must integrate a changing society and personality in order to survive. This is one reason why, Linda insists, “attention must finally be paid to such a person”(Meyer 1736). But perhaps the most fitting lines of the play were spoken by Willy’s friend Charley: “Nobody dast blame this man. For a salesman there is no rock-bottom to life. He don’t put a bolt to a nut, he don’t tell you law or give medicine.. A salesman has got to dream, boy, it comes with the territory”(Meyer 1778). And just as Charley stated the territory is to blame for Willy’s tragic end because he never had a chance to succeed in this capitalistic society.

Willy Loman the tragic hero Miller’s Death of a Salesman , powerfully illustrates self psychology principles governing shame and the possibilities of self restoration. The character seems to be in descent physical health, but the play illustrates that he is suffering some episodes of mental incoherence and distortion. Willy has begun to run his car off the road and often forgets his destination. However, Willy’s mental health is not only distorted, but also the play displays the character as having hallmark symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder (Welleck 241). This disorder is defined as a disorder in which the individual shows as exaggerated sense of self

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