SparkNotes: Death of a Salesman: Context Death of a Salesman Table of Contents Plot Overview Arthur Miller was born in New York City on October 17, 1915. His career as a playwright began while he was a student at the University of Michigan. Several of his early works won prizes, and during his senior year, the Federal Theatre Project in Detroit performed one of his works. He produced his first great success, All My Sons, in 1947. Two years later, Miller wrote Death of a Salesman, which won the Pulitzer Prize and transformed Miller into a national sensation. Many critics described Death of a Salesman as the first great American tragedy, and Miller gained eminence as a man who understood the deep essence of the United States. He published The Crucible in 1953, a searing indictment of the anti-Communist hysteria that pervaded 1950s America. He has won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award twice, and his Broken Glass (1993) won the Olivier Award for Best Play of the London Season.

Death of a Salesman, Miller’s most famous work, addresses the painful conflicts within one family, but it also tackles larger issues regarding American national values. The play examines the cost of blind faith in the American Dream. In this respect, it offers a postwar American reading of personal tragedy in the tradition of Sophocles’ Oedipus Cycle. Miller charges America with selling a false myth constructed around a capitalist materialism nurtured by the postwar economy, a materialism that obscured the personal truth and moral vision of the original American Dream described by the country’s founders. A half century after it was written, Death of a Salesman remains a powerful drama. Its indictment of fundamental American values and the American Dream of material success may seem somewhat tame in today’s age of constant national and individual self-analysis and criticism, but its challenge was quite radical for its time. After World War II, the United States faced profound and irreconcilable domestic tensions and contradictions. Although the war had ostensibly engendered an unprecedented sense of American confidence, prosperity, and security, the United States became increasingly embroiled in a tense cold war with the Soviet Union.

The propagation of myths of a peaceful, homogenous, and nauseatingly gleeful American golden age was tempered by constant anxiety about Communism, bitter racial conflict, and largely ignored economic and social stratification. Many Americans could not subscribe to the degree of social conformity and the ideological and cultural orthodoxy that a prosperous, booming, conservative suburban middle-class championed. Uneasy with this American milieu of denial and discord, a new generation of artists and writers influenced by existentialist philosophy and the hypocritical postwar condition took up arms in a battle for self-realization and expression of personal meaning. Such discontented individuals railed against capitalist success as the basis of social approval, disturbed that so many American families centered their lives around material possessions (cars, appliances, and especially the just-introduced television)—often in an attempt to keep up with their equally materialistic neighbors. The climate of the American art world had likewise long been stuck in its own rut of conformity, confusion, and disorder following the prewar climax of European Modernism and the wake of assorted -isms associated with modern art and literature.

The notions of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung regarding the role of the human subconscious in defining and accepting human existence, coupled with the existentialist concern with the individual’s responsibility for understanding one’s existence on one’s own terms, captivated the imaginations of postwar artists and writers. Perhaps the most famous and widely read dramatic work associated with existentialist philosophy is Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Miller fashioned a particularly American version of the European existentialist stance, incorporating and playing off idealistic notions of success and individuality specific to the United States. The basis for the dramatic conflict in Death of a Salesman lies in Arthur Miller’s conflicted relationship with his uncle, Manny Newman, also a salesman. Newman imagined a continuous competition between his son and Miller. Newman refused to accept failure and demanded the appearance of utmost confidence in his household. In his youth, Miller had written a short story about an unsuccessful salesman. His relationship with Manny revived his interest in the abandoned manuscript. He transformed the story into one of the most successful dramas in the history of the American stage. In expressing the emotions that Manny Newman inspired through the fictional character of Willy Loman, Miller managed to touch deep chords within the national psyche.

More Help Death of a Salesman Death of a Salesman In A Nutshell Ambition. It's one of those things that can be either your best friend or your worst enemy. On one hand, ambition can motivate us to get out of bed in the morning and follow our dreams. On the other hand, ambition can keep us from recognizing our own limits, trapping us in the delusional grandeur of imagined achievements. For Willy Loman, ambition is the ultimate foe—the Darth Vader to his Luke Skywalker, the Voldemort to his Harry Potter, the Cruella to his Pongo. Death of a Salesman is a tragedy about the differences between the Loman family's dreams and the reality of their lives. The play is a scathing critique of the American Dream and of the competitive, materialistic American society of the late 1940s. The storyline features Willy Loman, an average guy who attempts to hide his averageness and failures behind increasingly delusional hallucinations as he strives to be a "success." The idea for the play first manifested itself as a short story, which author Arthur Miller initially abandoned. His interest was renewed later on however, by an uncle who was a salesman.

When the play version appeared on Broadway, it was a total hit. It won Arthur Miller the Pulitzer Prize in 1949. By this point in his career, Miller had already proven his chops with his hit play, All My Sons . However, with Death of a Salesman, Miller's career was launched into a whole new level. Death of a Salesman is widely considered even to this day to be one of the greatest American plays ever written. It's often ranked right up there with classics like Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night , Thornton Wilder's Our Town , and Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof . Like all classics, Death of a Salesman's themes still ring true today. Its harsh criticism of American capitalism may not be quite as shocking as it was when the play first premiered, but we have a feeling that every modern-day audience member knows exactly what Miller is getting at—whether you agree with him or not. Why Should I Care? Think about Michael Scott from The Office.Having trouble picturing him? Try this . Better? Great—because that’s Willy Loman in a nutshell.

He’s delusional, thinks everyone loves him, and is depressing in an "I’m manifesting everyone’s fears about obsession with material success" kind of way. But now that we’ve gotten a flashy pop-culture reference out of the way, let’s get to the bigger picture. Death of a Salesman is often considered an attack on the American Dream. Sound familiar? In 2004, surveys found one-third of Americans adamantly insisting they were not living the American Dream, with half of them saying it wasn’t even attainable for them. What has the American Dream come to mean, anyway? For Willy Loman, it was popularity and demeanor. For many of us, it’s a big-screen TV and a bimmer in the garage. The bigger question is what we’re sacrificing for this big, glittery dream. "Success" starts being a relative term. You’re only successful if you’re more successful than other people you know; your car is only sexy if it’s sexier than the one next door.

So try to read Death of a Salesman with this in mind: if the American Dream isn’t working, or if it has shifted to the point where success is no longer equated with happiness, what’s the point? Or, if you know anything about Indie rock, please apply the following Metric lyrics : "Buy this car to drive to work; drive to work to pay for this car." Death of a Salesman: Death of a Salesman Play Summary & Study Guide | CliffsNotes Bookmark this page Manage My Reading List Arthur Miller's play Death of a Salesman addresses loss of identity and a man's inability to accept change within himself and society. The play is a montage of memories, dreams, confrontations, and arguments, all of which make up the last 24 hours of Willy Loman's life. The play concludes with Willy's suicide and subsequent funeral. Miller uses the Loman family — Willy, Linda, Biff, and Happy — to construct a self-perpetuating cycle of denial, contradiction, and order versus disorder.

Willy had an affair over 15 years earlier than the real time within the play, and Miller focuses on the affair and its aftermath to reveal how individuals can be defined by a single event and their subsequent attempts to disguise or eradicate the event. For example, prior to discovering the affair, Willy's son Biff adored Willy, believed all Willy's stories, and even subscribed to Willy's philosophy that anything is possible as long as a person is "well-liked." The realization that Willy is unfaithful to Linda forces Biff to reevaluate Willy and Willy's perception of the world. Biff realizes that Willy has created a false image of himself for his family, society, and even for himself. Willy is not an invincible father or a loyal husband or a fantastically successful salesman like he wants everyone to believe. He is self-centered. He fails to appreciate his wife. And he cannot acknowledge the fact that he is only marginally successful. Hence, Willy fantasizes about lost opportunities for wealth, fame, and notoriety. Even so, it would be incorrect to state that Miller solely criticizes Willy.

Instead, Miller demonstrates how one individual can create a self-perpetuating cycle that expands to include other individuals. This is certainly the case within the Loman family. Until the end of the play, Willy effectively blocks the affair out of his memory and commits himself to a life of denial. He cannot remember what happened, so naturally he does not understand why his relationship with Biff has changed. Willy wants Biff's affection and adoration as before, but instead the two constantly argue. Willy vacillates, sometimes criticizing Biff's laziness and ineptitude, other times praising his physical abilities and ambition. Linda and Happy are also drawn into the cycle of denial. Linda is aware of Willy's habit of reconstructing reality; however, she also recognizes that Willy may not be able to accept reality, as shown through his numerous suicide attempts prior to the beginning of the play. As a result, Linda chooses to protect Willy's illusions by treating them as truth, even if she must ignore reality or alienate her children in doing so. Happy is also a product of Willy's philosophy. Like Willy, he manipulates the truth to create a more favorable reality for himself.

For example, when Happy tells everyone that he is the assistant buyer, even though he is only the assistant to the assistant, he proves that he has incorporated Willy's practice of editing facts. Miller based Willy's character on his uncles, Manny Newman and Lee Balsam, who were salesmen. Miller saw his uncles as independent explorers, charting new territories across America. It is noteworthy that Miller does not disclose what type of salesman Willy is. Rather than drawing the audience's attention to "what" Willy sells, Miller chooses to focus on the fact that Willy is a "salesman." As a result, Miller expands the import of Willy's situation. Willy is an explorer — conqueror of the New England territory — and a dreamer, and this allows the audience to connect with him because everyone has aspirations, dreams, and goals. Willy's despair results from his failure to achieve his American dream of success. At one point, Willy was a moderately successful salesman opening new territory in New England, and Biff and Happy viewed him as a model father. Once Biff discovers the affair, however, he loses respect for Willy as well as his own motivation to succeed.

As Willy grows older, making sales is more difficult for him, so he attempts to draw on past success by reliving old memories. Willy loses the ability to distinguish reality from fantasy, and this behavior alienates him from others, thereby diminishing his ability to survive in the present. As the play progresses, Willy's life becomes more disordered, and he is forced to withdraw almost completely to the past, where order exists because he can reconstruct events or relive old memories. The play continues to affect audiences because it allows them to hold a mirror up to themselves. Willy's self-deprecation, sense of failure, and overwhelming regret are emotions that an audience can relate to because everyone has experienced them at one time or another. Although most do not commit suicide in the face of adversity, people connect with Willy because he is a man driven to extreme action. An audience may react with sympathy toward Willy because he believes he is left with no other alternative but to commit suicide. On the other hand, an audience may react with disgust and anger toward Willy, believing he has deserted his family and taken the easy way out.

Either way, individuals continue to react to Death of a Salesman because Willy's situation is not unique: He made a mistake — one that irrevocably changed his relationship with the people he loves most — and when all of his attempts to eradicate his mistake fail, he makes one grand attempt to correct the mistake. Willy vehemently denies Biff's claim that they are both common, ordinary people, but ironically, it is the universality of the play that makes it so enduring. Biff's statement, "I'm a dime a dozen, and so are you" is true after all. Death of a Salesman - Broadway Tickets | Broadway | Broadway.com Death of a Salesman Browse more shows you may also be interested in. Theater Philip Seymour Hoffman and Andrew Garfield star in the revival of Arthur Miller's Pulitzer Prize-winning classic. Video Read More What Is the Story of Death of a Salesman? Set in the late 1940s, Death of the Salesman follows traveling salesman Willy Loman (Philip Seymour Hoffman) as he slowly unravels.

The play explores the complicated family relationship between Willy, his wife, Linda (Linda Emond), and their adult sons, Biff (Andrew Garfield) and Happy (Finn Wittrock). In this Pulitzer Prize and Tony-winning drama, playwright Arthur Miller examines how far one man will go to provide for his family and achieve the American dream. Frequently Asked Questions about Death of a Salesman What Is Death of a Salesman Like? Mike Nichols’ beautifully staged and wonderfully acted production of Death of a Salesman utilizes the play’s original 1949 set design and musical underscoring paired with contemporary lighting and some of today’s most acclaimed actors to tell Arthur Miller's classic story of a man at the end of his rope. Is Death of a Salesman Good for Kids? Death of a Salesman is not a show for children. The play deals with death, adultery and other adult themes. Teens who have read the play in school will be riveted by this top-of-the-line production.

Arthur Miller Biography | American Masters | PBS Arthur Miller Biography Arthur Miller: Private Conversations on The Set of Death of a Salesman Arthur Miller Biography August 23, 2004 0 SHARES In the period immediately following the end of World War II, American theater was transformed by the work of playwright Arthur Miller. Profoundly influenced by the Depression and the war that immediately followed it, Miller tapped into a sense of dissatisfaction and unrest within the greater American psyche. His probing dramas proved to be both the conscience and redemption of the times, allowing people an honest view of the direction the country had taken. Arthur Miller was born in Manhattan in 1915 to Jewish immigrant parents. By 1928, the family had moved to Brooklyn, after their garment manufacturing business began to fail. Witnessing the societal decay of the Depression and his father’s desperation due to business failures had an enormous effect on Miller. After graduating from high school, Miller worked a number of jobs and saved up the money for college. In 1934, he enrolled in the University of Michigan and spent much of the next four years learning to write and working on a number of well-received plays.

After graduating, Miller returned to New York, where he worked as a freelance writer. In 1944, his first play, “The Man Who Had All the Luck”, opened to horrible reviews. A story about an incredibly successful man who is unhappy with that success, “The Man Who Had All The Luck” was already addressing the major themes of Miller’s later work. In 1945, Miller published a novel, FOCUS, and two years later had his first play on Broadway. “All My Sons,” a tragedy about a manufacturer who sells faulty parts to the military in order to save his business, was an instant success. Concerned with morality in the face of desperation, “All My Sons” appealed to a nation having recently gone through both a war and a depression. Only two years after the success of “All My Sons,” Miller came out with his most famous and well-respected work, “Death of a Salesman.” Dealing again with both desperation and paternal responsibility, “Death of a Salesman” focused on a failed businessman as he tries to remember and reconstruct his life. Eventually killing himself to leave his son insurance money, the salesman seems a tragic character out of Shakespeare or Dostoevsky.

Winning both a Pulitzer Prize and a Drama Critics Circle Award, the play ran for more than 700 performances. Within a short while, it had been translated into over a dozen languages and had made its author a millionaire. Overwhelmed by post-war paranoia and intolerance, Miller began work on the third of his major plays. Though it was clearly an indictment of the McCarthyism of the early 1950s, “The Crucible” was set in Salem during the witch-hunts of the late 17th century. The play, which deals with extraordinary tragedy in ordinary lives, expanded Miller’s voice and his concern for the physical and psychological wellbeing of the working class. Within three years, Miller was called before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, and convicted of contempt of Congress for not cooperating. A difficult time in his life, Miller ended a short and turbulent marriage with actress Marilyn Monroe. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, he wrote very little of note, concentrating at first on issues of guilt over the Holocaust, and later moving into comedies.

It was not until the 1991 productions of his “The Ride Down Mount Morgan” and “The Last Yankee” that Miller’s career began to see a resurgence. Both plays returned to the themes of success and failure that he had dealt with in earlier works. Concerning himself with the American dream, and the average American’s pursuit of it, Miller recognized a link between the poverty of the 1920s and the wealth of the 1980s. Encouraged by the success of these works, a number of his earlier pieces returned to the stage for revival performances. More than any other playwright working today, Arthur Miller has dedicated himself to the investigation of the moral plight of the white American working class. With a sense of realism and a strong ear for the American vernacular, Miller has created characters whose voices are an important part of the American landscape. His insight into the psychology of desperation and his ability to create stories that express the deepest meanings of struggle, have made him one of the most highly regarded and widely performed American playwrights. In his eighty-fifth year, Miller remains an active and important part of American theater.

READ NEXT Death of a Salesman Summary - eNotes.com Death of a Salesman Summary Trivia Death of a Salesman Summary In Death of a Salesman, Willy Loman is an aging salesman who's fired from his job. When his son Biff admits that he couldn't get a loan to start his new business, Willy commits suicide so that Biff can use the insurance money to secure his future. Death of a Salesman summary key points: Willy expresses disappointment with his son Biff, who's unable to find a job at the beginning of the play. A series of flashbacks reveals Willy’s thoughts of suicide, which his sons dispel by promising to go into business together. Despite Willy’s last wishes, his funeral is not well attended. The play ends tragically. link Link Summary of the Play Death of a Salesman is subtitled “Certain Private Conversations in Two Acts and a Requiem” and, accordingly, the acts are divided into conversations – in the present and from the past – that flow in and out of each other. The play encompasses an evening and the following day, but the action is interrupted by or mixed with flashbacks or memories of a period approximately 17 years earlier.

Act I opens in Willy Loman’s house in Brooklyn. Willy, a traveling salesman of 63, is exhausted after years of making his trips. (Even by the end of the play, we do not know what product he sells.) He has yet to reach a level of success that would allow him to stop traveling and afford the household bills that always seem to swallow his diminishing wages. We learn that Willy’s grown son, Biff, has returned to visit. And we come to know Willy’s character as he complains to his wife Linda about his disappointment in Biff’s failure to find a steady, serious job. Willy is tired, confused, and argumentative, a man who loves his son and has tried to infuse him with a salesman’s enthusiastic optimism and self-confidence. In the rest of Act I, through various flashbacks that might also be Willy’s memories, we become familiar with the salesman’s philosophy of success that has guided Willy to his current less-than-successful state.

Compared with his neighbor Charley and Charley’s son Bernard, Willy and his sons Biff and Hap are athletic, rather than studious; in Willy’s mind, a likable personality is more important for success than academic grades. Willy endorses Biff’s cheating at school; and, we learn, Willy himself cheated on his wife by having an extramarital affair with a woman in Boston. Linda informs Biff and Hap she has discovered that Willy has secretly started to contemplate suicide. The evening of Act I winds down as Biff and Hap attempt to cheer up Willy by promising to go into business together. In Act II, which encompasses the day following the evening of Act I, Willy asks his boss for a new, non-traveling job. Instead of being rewarded for years of service, Willy is fired because he has not been able to sell enough. Bewildered, he asks his friend Charley for another of many loans and, while doing so, meets Bernard, now a successful lawyer.

In the evening, Willy joins Biff and Hap at a restaurant and eventually tells them his bad news; unable to depress a father who wants good news at the end of a terrible day, Biff fails to tell Willy that he did not get the loan that would have made it possible for Hap and him to start a business together. The scene then changes to years earlier, when Biff comes to Boston just after flunking math, which has endangered his chances for college by preventing him from graduating high school. Biff there discovers Willy is having an affair. In the present, when Biff and Hap return to the house, their mother reproaches them for abandoning Willy in the restaurant. Delusional, Willy is planting a garden in the dark and having an imaginary conversation with his elder brother Ben, who made a fortune in diamonds as a young man. Biff tries to explain the ungranted loan to Willy, as well as his decision to leave so as not to disappoint Willy ever again. Willy believes Biff has been unsuccessful out of spite for him, but when Biff begins to cry, Willy sees Biff’s love for him.

Inspired by this realization, but obviously disoriented, Willy sneaks away that night and kills himself in a car accident, thinking his life insurance money will give Biff a new start and that a well-attended funeral will prove his own popularity. In a very short third act that Miller calls a “Requiem,” we see that almost no one has attended the funeral. Although Hap defends Willy’s “good dream,” Biff is subdued and Linda weeps as she asks Willy’s grave why he did such a thing. Estimated Reading Time The entire play is about 130 pages, but because of the spaces between characters’ lines it will read faster than a novel. An average student, reading about 25-30 pages an hour, will need 4-5 hours to read the play. If you do not have enough time to read it all at once, the best plan might be two sittings – Act I, then Act II and the short “Requiem” – of about two hours each. Arthur Miller did not divide his play into scenes within each act. Instead, the action is continuous, even when flashbacks occur.

Therefore, for the purposes of this study guide, the acts have been divided into parts, each covering about 15 pages of the play. Time and Subjectivity in Death of a Salesman One of the remarkable things about Arthur Miller's play is the way he has managed to show past and present as well as reality and subjectivity all in a single stage set. Most plays and movies are in the present tense. What we see onstage or on the screen is happening now. The scripts are even written in the present tense, unlike most novels and short stories. Movies have conditioned audiences to understanding some cinematic "vocabulary," including the meaning of "flashbacks." An actor is gazing out the window or into a pool of water and then the camera creates a "slow dissolve" or an "oil dissolve" and we know we are back in the past--but the past is still rendered as the present. It is hard to escape from the present tense in drama. (An interesting French film that tries hard to escape the iron grip of the present tense is Last Year at Marienbad.) Arthur Miller has created an impressionistic set in which different locations represent the present and the past.

The audience is to understand that whatever is supposed to be taking place in the past is occurring as the present in Willy's "imaginings." The scenes that take place in what Miller calls the "city scenes," which occur in the present tense in the same part of the stage setting. In the case of the city scenes, they are occurring in the past but in a different location away from the Loman home. It would seem that Miller intended almost everything that occurs on the forestage to be taking place in Willy's "imaginings." Miller depicts past and present, reality and subjectivity. Here is an excerpt from his detailed description of this single impressionistic stage setting. Before the house lies an apron, curving beyond the forestage into the orchestra. This forward area serves as the back yard as well as the locale of all Willy's imaginings and of his city scenes. Whenever the action is in the present the actors observe the imaginary wall-lines, entering the house only through its door at the left. But in the scenes of the past these boundaries are broken, and characters enter or leave a room by stepping "through" a wall onto the forestage.

Willy's encounters with his brother Ben would take place on the forestage, as would his meeting with Howard. So too would his memories of the days when Biff was a high-school football hero. The audience quickly catches on to the avant-garde stagecraft devices and succumbs to the illusions of being in the past, present, or inside Willy's imagination in a sort of never-never land. For the sake of comparison, Shakespeare never tried to show the past as the present. He would simply have one of the characters describe a past event in dialogue. Miller's play is a good example of modernism in theater because of its impressionistic staging as well as its intentional and radical flouting of Aristotle's unities and the ancient Greek philosopher's dictum that a tragedy had to deal with the downfall of a Very Important Person. More Content: Summary (hide) link Link Death of a Salesman, widely regarded as Arthur Miller’s best and most important play, chronicles the downfall and suicide of Willy Loman, a ceaselessly struggling New England salesman driven by dreams of success far greater than he can achieve. Almost a classical tragedy in its form, Death of a Salesman has provoked much controversy due to the unheroic nature of its protagonist.

Although the play, like its Greek forebears, conveys a sense of the inevitability of fate, Willy himself possesses no greatness in either achievement or status. Willy’s sheer commonness, rather, gives the play its power. In Death of a Salesman, Miller shows that tragedy comes not only to the great but also to the small. On its most fundamental level, Death of a Salesman depicts the disintegration of Willy’s personality as he desperately searches for the moment in his memory when his world began to unravel. The play’s action is driven primarily by Willy’s volcanic relationship with grown son Biff, who is every inch the failure that his father is. Willy’s grandiose dreams of happiness and material success conflict with the reality of his failures as a salesman, as a husband to his wife Linda, and as a father to his two boys, Biff and Happy. The alternation between present action and presentations of Willy’s delusional “memories” forms the play’s thematic center.

Willy’s memory is populated by figures who idealize success, most notably his brother Ben, who became rich, Dave Singleman, a fabulously successful and well-liked salesman, and the woman in Boston with whom Willy has had an affair. Countering those empty fantasies are the realities of Howard, Willy’s unsympathetic boss; Charley, Willy’s best friend and neighbor (who gives Willy the money he needs to pay his bills), Charley’s successful son Bernard, and of course Biff, who refuses to accept Willy’s delusions. “We never told the truth for ten minutes in this house!” Biff says at one point. Willy cannot accept the piercing truth of Biff’s description: “You were never anything but a hard-working drummer who landed in the ash can like all the rest of them!” Rather, Willy commits suicide by crashing his car. The play’s final tragic irony comes out in the play’s last scene: Although Willy strove all his life to be well-liked and remembered, his funeral is attended only by his close family and friends. Neither he nor they are finally free, but only alone.

link Link Very late one night, having that morning set out on a sales trip to Portland, Maine, Willy Loman returns to his Brooklyn home because he repeatedly drove his car off the side of the road. Now sixty-three years old, Willy has worked as a traveling salesman for the Wagner Company for more than thirty years. Of late, his sales have declined because his old customers are dying or retiring. The company takes away his salary to make him work on straight commission. His wife, Linda, comforts Willy when he returns and encourages him to ask Howard Wagner for a position in the New York office, where he will not have to travel and can once again earn a guaranteed salary. Upstairs in their old bedroom, Willy’s sons, Biff and Happy, reminisce about their happier times as adolescents and talk about how disappointing their lives are. At thirty-four years of age, Biff has held many different kinds of jobs since leaving high school, and he feels that he is not progressing toward anything. He was a high school football star but did not win a college scholarship because he failed a mathematics course and refused to make up the credits to graduate at summer school.

Biff has just returned home from working on a farm in Texas, and that morning Willy already begins criticizing him about his failure to make money and to find a prestigious profession. Biff’s younger brother, Happy, remains in New York City, working in a low-level sales position and spending most of his time seducing women. As they talk, Biff and Happy decide they can be successful and much happier if they go into business together. While Biff and Happy talk upstairs, Willy sits in the kitchen and talks loudly to himself, reliving moments from his past: Biff preparing for an important football game, Biff and Happy cleaning the family car, Willy’s own joy in working with his hands on projects around the house, and his afternoons in a hotel room with a woman on one of his sales trips to Boston. Eventually, Willy’s neighbor, Charley, comes over from next door. As Charley and Willy talk and play cards, Willy imagines that he is talking to his older brother, Ben, who once invited Willy to join him in Alaska to make his fortune. After Charley returns home, Willy moves outside, still caught up in his imagined conversation.

Linda comes back downstairs and tells Biff and Happy of her fear that Willy is planning to kill himself; she had discovered a piece of rubber hose connected to a gas pipe in the basement. When Willy comes back into the house, the conversation turns to the dreams Willy has of Biff becoming a successful salesman and an entrepreneur. At Willy’s urging, the family agrees that the next morning Biff should see Bill Oliver, one of his former bosses, and ask for a loan to start a sporting goods business. The next morning, Willy goes to his own boss, Wagner, to ask for a position in the New York office. Instead of getting a new position, however, he is fired from his job. Willy leaves Wagner’s office and goes to Charley’s office to ask for a loan to pay his bills. There he encounters Charley’s son, Bernard, a boyhood friend of Biff and Happy and now a successful lawyer arguing cases in front of the Supreme Court. Willy asks how Bernard managed to succeed when Biff and Happy failed, but Bernard asks why Biff, after flunking mathematics, never went to summer school so as to graduate from high school.

Happy goes to a local restaurant to arrange a dinner to celebrate Biff’s successful meeting with Mr. Oliver, but when Biff arrives he reports that Mr. Oliver did not remember him and that, in his anger, Biff impulsively stole Mr. Oliver’s fountain pen. When, however, he hears his father’s news that he was fired, Biff lies about his meeting with Mr. Oliver and, to console his father, describes it as a success. Happy arranges for two women to join them at the restaurant. When Willy goes to the washroom, Biff and Happy leave the restaurant with the two women and abandon their father. In the washroom, Willy has a flashback and remembers the time, right after Biff flunked his mathematics course, when Biff came to Boston on a surprise visit and caught Willy with another woman in his hotel room. It was this discovery that kept Biff from going to summer school and from graduating from high school. After leaving the restaurant, Willy decides on the way home that the best way he can provide for his wife and sons is to commit suicide, so that the life insurance settlement of twenty thousand dollars would come to them after his death.

Happy and Biff return home from their dates with the two women and are greeted by Linda’s reprimand for abandoning Willy at the restaurant. Biff responds angrily, accusing Willy and Happy of not facing the reality of their ordinary lives. He claims that he finally understands himself and will go back to farming and working with his hands, outdoors, where he is genuinely happy. This emotional confrontation ends with Biff crying on his father’s shoulder. Moved by his son’s display of affection, Willy leaves the house and drives the car to his death. In the play’s last scene, in the cemetery after Willy’s funeral, Linda talks to Willy over his grave and reflects on the irony that he killed himself just as they finished paying for their house. link Link More effectively than any other American drama, Death of a Salesman probes the nature of the American Dream and its promise of success. America was established as a new Eden, a place where one could transform the wilderness into a paradise of riches. The American myth created the pioneer hero who moved with ease to greener pastures. One side of Willy Loman is firmly grounded in this myth.

Willy’s father was a traveling man who got rich peddling gadgets in South Dakota and then headed for Alaska. Willy’s brother Ben is a true adventurer who walks into the jungles of Africa at seventeen and comes out rich. Ben, who is constantly on the move, shunning civilization and its laws, is the self-reliant hero of the American myth who conquers the wilderness and makes his fortune. As a salesman, Willy also sees himself as an adventurer who opens up new territories in New England—once the original frontier. The play focuses on a longing for the lost Eden. Willy admires the scenery on his trips to New England. He longs to smell the lilacs and wisteria that once grew in his suburban idyll, now overshadowed by dingy apartment buildings. He wants to build a house in the country where he can raise chickens and grow things. In the end, this American Adam is reduced to the tragic figure of a down-and-out salesman planting lettuce in a barren garden in the dead of night as he deteriorates mentally and contemplates suicide. The theme of the Edenic garden coincides with the theme of the outdoorsman and the Western myth of open spaces.

Willy is not only a gardener who, like Henry David Thoreau, wants to remain close to nature; he is also a man who can chop down branches, build porches, and remodel ceilings. His sons long to leave cramped offices and go swimming. Biff wants to go west to raise horses or to be a carpenter. Willy holds onto two other American myths. The myth of “having it made” is embodied in Dave Singleman, who at eighty-four can sit back and make sales from his hotel room. Dave is the popular hero whose funeral attracts throngs of his loyal customers. Dave projects the image of the man who has “made it” in the system and who can make money effortlessly. The second American myth to which Willy subscribes is the “get rich quick” scheme. Like Ben, he hopes to find diamonds. He encourages his sons to establish a million-dollar sporting goods business with no capital and little experience. Willy has based his notion of success on popularity and appearances, but Willy himself does not make a good appearance. Both he and his sons are out of place in a competitive world. The business world is changing; old promises are worthless. When Willy is no longer productive, he is fired.

In the end, he “sells” his life for a twenty-thousand-dollar insurance policy in order to stake his son’s fortune. His death becomes merely another “get rich quick” scheme. Charley and Bernard, Willy’s neighbors, prove that success can be achieved, but for Willy Loman, who has absorbed too many American Dreams, the system inevitably becomes destructive. In 1949, Death of a Salesman won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize. The play ran for 742 performances. In 1966, a television production played to seventeen million people. In 1975, it was successfully produced at the Circle in the Square theater with George C. Scott in the lead, and in 1984, it played Broadway again with Dustin Hoffman in the lead. In 1985, Hoffman was featured in another television production of the play. Death of a Salesman has been produced around the world. In his book “Salesman” in Beijing (1984), Miller documents an unprecedented Chinese production. The play still appears in most college anthologies and continues to be taught as an American classic.

Question: Who wrote the play "Death of a Salesman"?
Answer: Arthur Miller