Death of a Salesman

Author: Arthur Miller

Year Published: 1951
Publisher: Viking Penguin
ISBN#: 0141180978
Pages: 113
Media Type: Book
Reader's Annotation:

A not too successful traveling salesman rears his sons on platitudes to his and their undoing.

Plot Summary:

The character Willy is one that you love to hate – a liar, a cheater, and he’s too proud to let anyone else in on his problems. He’s a whiner, and yet we feel for him through his wife Linda, who has never given up on him. His lying and exaggerations were passed down to his sons, who he lied to himself, boasting of big sales and how he was raking in the money when he and Linda were barely scraping by, and later on, not at all. His jealousy of Charley, of his brother Ben who went off on an adventure and ended up with bigger things, all cause Willy to want his sons to grow up bigger than he is. Biff and Happy show motivation and commitment, they exude confidence and are well-liked all around.

Willy has forced his death early on in his life when he was raising his sons. While Bernard and Charley have worked hard to get where they are, Willy is influenced by Ben’s easy time in making money. What Willy doesn’t realize is that Ben was lucky enough to stumble upon diamonds in the jungle, but he didn’t work for them, and this easy time cannot happen for everyone else. Willy’s desire to work at a job where he can be well-known is his downfall, because no one remembers a salesman after a couple decades. He might have been personable, but people die or change.

Biff and Happy have done nothing with their lives during the point we are at during the play. They’re not married, not really working at a decent job, and they’re not helping out Willy when he needs them most. Instead, they’re off galavanting around, courting women they just met or pretending like they have an honest job when they know they don’t. Honestly, past ghosts haunt almost everyone in the family, especially Biff and Willy. Why did Biff become the way he is, and why doesn’t he care about his father anymore? And why does Willy regret so much? The play uses these ghosts as encounters for Willy to walk through, as his exhaustion turns his thoughts towards his past conversations. Through all this, he learns that he might have been where Biff and Happy went wrong, even if he doesn’t want to admit it.

Biff’s motivation lies elsewhere, and instead of following that dream and ignoring what his father wants him to do, Biff sticks around and constantly fights with his father. Biff and Happy are so self-concerned at times that they don’t wonder about Willy until it’s too late to mend it. Biff’s self-absorption is limited, but he’s still too stubborn to find jobs to help assuage his father’s exhaustion.

Death of a Salesman tries to teach us that popularity isn’t what’s important – it’s trust, the love and happiness of your family, that really make you who you are – and while Willy had the love of Linda, he didn’t have the trust of anyone because of his past mistakes and exaggerations. His death is one of our fears; to die having nothing, to know that our loved ones are throwing their lives away, are things that we can’t live with. So Willy doesn’t live with it, he dies with it, giving his boys probably their most important lesson.

Reading Level: 6
Interest Level: 9+
Awards Won: Pulitzer Prize-Critics Circle Award

Trailer from Movie Adaptation: (1996 version with British actor Warren Mitchell as Willy)