Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Note on the text
- Introduction
- 1 The Michigan plays
- 2 The Golden Years, The Half-Bridge, Boro Hall Nocturne
- 3 The radio plays
- 4 The Man Who Had All the Luck
- 5 Focus
- 6 All My Sons
- 7 Death of a Salesman
- 8 Arthur Miller: time-traveller
- 9 An Enemy of the People
- 10 The Crucible
- 11 A Memory of Two Mondays
- 12 A View from the Bridge
- 13 Tragedy
- 14 The Misfits
- 15 After the Fall
- 16 Incident at Vichy
- 17 The Price
- 18 The Creation of the World and Other Business
- 19 The Archbishop's Ceiling
- 20 Playing for Time
- 21 The shearing point
- 22 The American Clock
- 23 The one-act plays: Two-Way Mirror, and Danger: Memory!
- 24 The Ride Down Mount Morgan
- 25 The Last Yankee
- 26 Broken Glass
- 27 Mr Peters' Connections
- 28 Resurrection Blues
- 29 Finishing the Picture
- 30 Fiction
- 31 Arthur Miller as a Jewish writer
- Notes
- Index
7 - Death of a Salesman
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 November 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Note on the text
- Introduction
- 1 The Michigan plays
- 2 The Golden Years, The Half-Bridge, Boro Hall Nocturne
- 3 The radio plays
- 4 The Man Who Had All the Luck
- 5 Focus
- 6 All My Sons
- 7 Death of a Salesman
- 8 Arthur Miller: time-traveller
- 9 An Enemy of the People
- 10 The Crucible
- 11 A Memory of Two Mondays
- 12 A View from the Bridge
- 13 Tragedy
- 14 The Misfits
- 15 After the Fall
- 16 Incident at Vichy
- 17 The Price
- 18 The Creation of the World and Other Business
- 19 The Archbishop's Ceiling
- 20 Playing for Time
- 21 The shearing point
- 22 The American Clock
- 23 The one-act plays: Two-Way Mirror, and Danger: Memory!
- 24 The Ride Down Mount Morgan
- 25 The Last Yankee
- 26 Broken Glass
- 27 Mr Peters' Connections
- 28 Resurrection Blues
- 29 Finishing the Picture
- 30 Fiction
- 31 Arthur Miller as a Jewish writer
- Notes
- Index
Summary
The idea for Death of a Salesman had long been in Miller's mind. At seventeen he had written a story called ‘In Memoriam’, in which a Jewish salesman goes to his death. At university he jotted down some ideas about a man called Willy Loman and then again, immediately after university, wrote a striking stream-of-consciousness story, never published, about a salesman whose hopes have come to nothing and who goes to his death under the wheels of a subway car.
Though he would explain the play's origin by reference to a family member whose extravagant plans for his sons came to nothing, there is a more personal genesis for this play about a believer in the American dream who struggles with a knowledge of his failure. The play is not about Miller's father but one incident had brought home to him what it was to be a believer confronted with daily evidence of his own incapacities. When the family business had collapsed, Isadore Miller struggled to keep his dignity, starting new companies, looking for business. One day he was forced to borrow money for the subway from his son. It was a critical moment in their relationship as it was also a sudden and personal reminder of where America had failed so many of those who believed in the inevitability of success in a country which presented itself as specially blessed.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Arthur MillerA Critical Study, pp. 100 - 123Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004