Death of Salesman

A Dramatic Afternoon

In this season in our country-Iran- we have several festivals in different areas that named "Fajr Festival". This festival remind for our people the historical events what presented for them the things that they want to reach them and it was "Islamic Revolution of Iran" in bahman 22, 1979.
A part pf this festival is drama festival. In one of these days, my friend and me went to see a drama that named "Death of Salesman" writhed by Aurtor Miller presented in Dey 26.
Also I should add that the popular presence is very great and I glad that drama meeting is apprehension of our people.

Family as a Drama

The story of drama takes place during the economic depression and the wave of unemployment in the United States. Although is not refer to it directly during the drama. Miller as author has used of family form for making his story. In this way, I should say that for much modern American drama the Family" is the central subject, as the anthology selection show. In "Long Day's Journey into Night", O'Neill" studied his own family through the Tyrones; in Tennessee William's "A Streetcar Named Desire" the Kowalskis are one family , which Blanche invades , while Blanche and Stella, as sisters, are another. Most of Arthur Miller's plays as well, concentrate on the family and envision ad ideal world as, perhaps, an enlarged family. Often the protagonist's sense of family draws him into conflict with- and eventual doom in- the outside world.
Yet, Miller recognizes that an ideal is sometimes a rationalization. Joe Keller insists in "All My Sons" (1947) that he shipped damaged airplane parts during the war to support his family, but a desire for commercial success was part of his motive. Eddie Carbone in "A View from the Bridge" (1955) accepts death because of his sense of responsibility to his niece, but married man though he is; he may also be in love with that same niece. Also in this drama , "Death of Salesman" (1949) Willy Loman's delusions and self-deceptions derive from, and return to, his image of himself as family provider, an image he can not live up to.
The man who becomes disable while has toiled all of his life. He has thought that he has succeeded in his life and salesmanship is only important job and even his sons should become salesman; but the reality is else.
He doesn't have any savings except for future. Life insurance that also it isn't chargeable to his family because he wants to suicide. I think all of the restlessness arises of abstract concept that named "American Dream". The concept that by it proves the desire of Great America, and encourages all of the Americans in different classes to reach it. It's clear that the attempts of different persons don't have same conclusions, and it causes human distress.

Sociological Presence in Art

This drama is other discretion from American restless that causes many different reactions:
Conformism, Innovation, Ritualism and finally Resignation or Isolation.

What do these concepts remind for you?
Yes, Merton theory that talks about different positions of people when they confront with social different affairs (the position of goals and tools)
And I should say the situation of this drama is" Anomy" that Durkhaim talked about it.
In this way, I will talk about these positions in connection with Miller's characters:
1-Innovation about Willy, because he has accepted American goals but he doesn't have reach the suitable tools, and the way how selects similar to creation.
2-Resignation or Isolation about Bife, he doesn't accept both of tools and goals and leaves home.
3-Conformism about Happy, he has adopted with social trite values, just as his name shows it.
4-Ritualism about Linda as absolute dependence against her husband without any protest, and it shows the manly system in American family during that time.
Miller has reflected all of these social facts and I think his dramas are best representation of American society and these are great references for studying about the United States of America that show us things that we don't reach them by scientific texts.

The Man of American Events

I think, it's good that talk about the author of this drama:
Miller was born on October 17, 1915, into a German-Jewish family in Manhattan; his father was a well-to-do but almost illiterate clothing manufacture, his mother an avid reader. When his father's business collapsed after the stoke market crash in 1929, the family moved to Brooklyn, where Miller graduated high school. His subsequent two years of work in an automobile-parts warehouse to earn money for college. In the University of Michigan he enrolled as a journalism student. These were the years of the "Spanish Civil War", the rise of fascism, and the attraction of Marxism as away out of the Depression, and here Miller formed his political views. He also began to write plays, which won prizes at the university and in New York. He then went to work for Federal Theater Project, wrote radio plays , toured army camps gathering material for a film, and married Mary Slattery, the first of his three wives.
In 1947, his first Broadway success," All My Sons", was produced (the man who had all the luck and failed in 1944). This strongly realistic portrayal of a family divided because of the father's insistence on business as usual during the World War II drew the attention of audience and theater critics. "Death of Salesman", his masterpiece, was produced two years later; it won the "Pulitzer Prize". In 1950s the hysterical search for supposed communist infiltration of American life reached its height, as Senator Joseph Mc McCarthy summoned suspect after suspect to hearing in Washington. Miller later said that at this time he was reading a book about the Salem.
Miller had long been looking for the way to dramatize what he had earlier learned about mob control of the Brooklyn waterfront and finally did so in the one-act play "A View from the Bridge", produced with "A Money for Two Mondays" in 1955. In 1964 two plays opened and in late 1960s he was asked to become president of PEN (poets, essayist, novelist), the international writer's group. By opening this organization to writers in what were Iron Curtain countries and speaking out for those repressed by totalitarian regimes, he has become a respected champion of Human Rights.
It is good to remember that for both earlier and later plays Miller's protagonists have death on their minds, a concern greater than any political affiliation.
Finally, I suggest you to see this drama, because there are so much distance between hearing and watching, as Iranian said.

References:
1- Baym, Nina, the Norton anthology of American literature, sixth edition, volume (New York, 2003)