Analyzing Death of a Salesman, Research Paper Example

One of the most startling aspects of Arthur Miller’s play Death of Salesman is the way in which the work combines realism and surrealism. The play is meant to portray an average American family in an average town in America in the 1940’s.This is the specific realism of the play. The surrealistic elements of the play are played out against the realistic backdrop with flashbacks, hallucinations, fantasies, dreams, and life events cast together in such a way as to be virtually indistinguishable. Miller uses the surrealistic elements of the play, ironically enough, in an exactly opposite way thematically. That is to say that in the play the realistic elements of 1940’s American life are revealed to be a façade and an illusion where the “fantasy” elements of the play actually communicate the realistic underpinnings of American life. In a general sense, the realistic elements of the play portray the fantasy of the American Dream and the fantasy elements reveal the ugly reality beneath.

This is not to say that Loman’s fantasies and hallucinations never stand as places of retreat of self-defense against the meagerness and existential pointlessness of his existence. However, the retreat into fantasy on close inspection actually marks Loman’s attempts to understand the reality of his life. By contrast his ambitions in life for himself and for his family are a construct meant to distract him from the reality of the broken relationships and dehumanizing experience that lie at the heart of American materialism. The mixing of real and surreal elements with this ironic expression is the heart of the play’s tension. This is obvious from the very beginning of the play in the way that the set is constructed. The notes to the play read:

“The entire setting is wholly or, in some places, partially transparent. The roof-line of the house is one-dimensional; under and over it we see the apartment buildings. 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. ” (Bentley 634).

The use of such a long quote from the stage directions is necessary here because these directions indicate the way that Miller intends to use surrealism throughout the rest of the story. He intends to first integrate it into the very fabric of the play and then additionally to use surrealistic elements as an extension of Willy’s character development. This is a crucial feature of the play. Without understanding the dynamic between the real and surrealistic elements of the play, the reader or viewer is liable to simply believe that Willy is crazy and that Miller is a lazy writer who can’t construct a linear plot. Quite the opposite is, in fact the case. The story is linear and it is, in fact, a work that holds strongly to the traditional elements of tragedy, including plotting. What is radically different about Death of a Salesman is the way the play redefined the imagery and space of theater.

Once we understand that the theater is to be viewed as an extension of Willy’s personality, his inner-dreams, memories, and imaginings two unimportant things are accomplished: first, we the audience begin to sympathize with Willy and identify with him and second, we are more willing to suspend our disbelief in the face of surrealistic scenes and nuances. The play is actually riddled with surrealism, including the dialogue, scene progressions and characters. For example, the character who is identified simply as “the Woman” in the play is a surrealistic element that expresses an important message about the dehumanization of sexuality in American culture. When Willy is with the woman he is indulging in an aspect of the American Dream that is seldom publically discussed but is ramapant in public imagery and custom. Men are socialized in America to view woman as sexual objects. This is necessary for advertising and sales to work the way that they are expected to work by the big-money powers in our country. So, for example, in the description of the scene with the Woman, Miller includes a snatch of music, while the characters move, as though choreographed through a sexually charged scene. Miller writes: “THE WOMAN enters, laughing. WILLYfollows her. She is in a black slip; he is buttoning his shirt. Raw, sensuous music accompanies their speech” (Bentley 710). The surrealistic element of this scene is also conveyed through the interplay between the words that are spoken and the music.

The surrealistic devices are woven so tightly into individual scenes that they might go virtually unnoticed by the majority of observers. For example, Miller frequently makes use of archetypal imagery in dialogue. This results in forming surrealistic images in the mind of the viewer or reader because these mythological or archetypal images seem to be temporarily projected over the scenes of modern life that are being acted out in the play. For example, in the following lines, Willy evokes the image of Hercules and ties the image of this mythological hero to the banal ambitions of middle-class America: . “Like a young god. Hercules–something like that. And the sun, the sun all around him…Right up from the field, with the representatives of three colleges standing by? And the buyers I brought, and the cheers when he came out” (Bentley 676). The pathetic stature of his dialogue in contrast with the heroic stature of Hercules is surrealistic in that it shows how the archetypes of the unconscious intrude on our daily lives. In an ironic world such as the one Willy and, by implication most Americans, inhabit the myths of the mind become confused with the ordinary persona. This results in an alternating sense of self-importance and a sense of absolute powerlessness. This is exactly the position that Willy struggles with throughout the play.

The surrealistic devices in the play are extensive enough that they can rightly be considered the heart of the play. However, they are welded so tightly to realistic elements that it is almost unnecessary and unadvisable to try to distinguish one from the other. There is a very important message behind the play’s use of surrealism and that purpose is no less than examine the modern American mind in its entirety. The play is meant to show what happens specifically to a person who is brought up in American culture with American values. The result is something tragic and brutal. It is a result that is founded on the fragmenting of a person and beating them down so that they suffer from the low self-esteem and ego-mania that plague Willy. This means of course that an even deeper message is shown through the fusing of realism and surrealism throughout the play. This message is that fusing the fragments of American life into a cohesive whole is the path to healing the society and culture.

In this sense, the play is not only a classical tragedy, but an idealistic expression of optimism. The fantasies and dreams that Willy experiences are the attempt of his “higher self” to communicate the path to wholeness and reconciliation in his life. That he fails is necessary from the perspective of classical tragedy. His hamartia or fatal flaw is that he believes in America. Instead, according to the surrealistic expression s of the play, he should have listened to his higher consciousness which is conveyed through the imagination.

Works Cited

Bentley, Eric, ed. The Play: A Critical Anthology. New York: Prentice Hall, 1951.