Death of a Salesman

A play by ARTHUR MILLER

Dramaturgy packet compiled by BRIANNA ARRIGHI

Table of Contents

About the Playwright: Arthur Miller.................................................pg. 1-2

Article from www.neh.org

“‘Salesman’ Willy Loman: A Towering Little Man”............................pg. 3-6

Article from www.npr.org

“Birth of the American Salesman”...............................................................pg. 7-9

Article from www.hbswk.org.hbs.edu

Time Period in Perspective.........................................................................pg. 10-11

Information from www.investopedia.com

Student Guide

Elements of “Salesman”...................................................................pg. 12-14

Information from www.zerterion.org/salesman

Glossary of Terms......................................................................................pg. 15-17

ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT: ARTHUR MILLER

1915-2005

"The American Dream is the largely unacknowledged screen in front of which all

American writing plays itself out," Arthur Miller has said. "Whoever is writing in the

United States is using the American Dream as an ironical pole of his story. People

elsewhere tend to accept, to a far greater degree anyway, that the conditions of life are

hostile to man's pretensions." In Miller's more than thirty plays, which have won him a

Pulitzer Prize and multiple Tony Awards, he puts in question "death and betrayal and

injustice and how we are to account for this little life of ours."

For nearly six decades, Miller has been creating characters that wrestle with

power conflicts, personal and social responsibility, the repercussions of past actions, and

the twin poles of guilt and hope. In his writing and in his role in public life, Miller

articulates his profound political and moral convictions. He once said he thought theater

could "change the world." The Crucible, which premiered in 1953, is a fictionalization of

the Salem witch-hunts of 1692, but it also deals in an allegorical manner with the House

Un-American Activities Committee. In a note to the play, Miller writes, "A political

policy is equated with moral right, and opposition to it with diabolical malevolence."

Dealing as it did with highly charged current events, the play received unfavorable

reviews and Miller was cold-shouldered by many colleagues. When the political

situation shifted, Death of a Salesman went on to become Miller's most celebrated and

most produced play, which he directed at the People's Art Theatre in Beijing in 1983.

A modern tragedian, Miller says he looks to the Greeks for inspiration,

particularly Sophocles. "I think the tragic feeling is evoked in us when we are in the

presence of a character who is ready to lay down his life, if need be, to secure one thing-

his sense of personal dignity," Miller writes. "From Orestes to Hamlet, Medea to

Macbeth, the underlying struggle is that of the individual attempting to gain his 'rightful'

position in his society." Miller considers the common man "as apt a subject for tragedy

in its highest sense as kings were."Death of a Salesman, which opened in 1949, tells the

story of Willy Loman, an aging salesman who makes his way "on a smile and a

shoeshine." Miller lifts Willy's illusions and failures, his anguish and his family

relationships, to the scale of a tragic hero. The fear of being displaced or having our

image of what and who we are destroyed is best known to the common man, Miller

believes. "It is time that we, who are without kings, took up this bright thread of our

history and followed it to the only place it can possibly lead in our time-the heart and

spirit of the average man."

Arthur Asher Miller, the son of a women's clothing company owner, was born in

1915 in New York City. His father lost his business in the Depression and the family was

forced to move to a smaller home in Brooklyn. After graduating from high school, Miller

worked jobs ranging from radio singer to truck driver to clerk in an automobile-parts

warehouse. Miller began writing plays as a student at the University of Michigan, joining

the Federal Theater Project in New York City after he received his degree. His first

Broadway play, The Man Who Had All the Luck, opened in 1944 and his next play, All

My Sons, received the Drama Critics' Circle Award. His 1949 Death of a Salesman won

the Pulitzer Prize. In 1956 and 1957, Miller was subpoenaed by the House Un-American

Activities Committee and was convicted of contempt of Congress for his refusal to

identify writers believed to hold Communist sympathies. The following year, the United

States Court of Appeals overturned the conviction. In 1959 the National Institute of Arts

and Letters awarded him the Gold Medal for Drama. Miller has been married three

times: to Mary Grace Slattery in 1940, Marilyn Monroe in 1956, and photographer Inge

Morath in 1962, with whom he lives in Connecticut. He and Inge have a daughter,

Rebecca. Among his works are A View from the Bridge, The Misfits, After the

Fall, Incident at Vichy, The Price, The American Clock, Broken Glass, Mr. Peters'

Connections, and Timebends, his autobiography. Miller's writing has earned him a

lifetime of honors, including the Pulitzer Prize, seven Tony Awards, two Drama Critics

Circle Awards, an Obie, an Olivier, the John F. Kennedy Lifetime Achievement Award,

and the Dorothy and Lillian Gish prize. He holds honorary doctorate degrees from

Oxford University and Harvard University.

Throughout his life and work, Miller has remained socially engaged and has

written with conscience, clarity, and compassion. As Chris Keller says to his mother

in All My Sons, "Once and for all you must know that there's a universe of people

outside, and you're responsible to it." Miller's work is infused with his sense of

responsibility to humanity and to his audience. "The playwright is nothing without his

audience," he writes. "He is one of the audience who happens to know how to speak."

--Rachel Galvin. From www.neh.gov

‘Salesman’ Willy Loman: A Towering Little Man

By Scott Simon I think I see Willy Loman several times a week — in lobbies, coffee bars, airports.

He has a heavy case on his lap. He's wearing heavy-soled shoes, scuffed, creaking, but well-shined. He tugs at his tie, but won't loosen it. He looks down into a small book, or a screen, and taps out a number:

"Hey, Julia! How are you? Ted Jinks for Rod Holloway. Rod! Hi! Ted Jinks. The family? Good, good." And he laughs, for no apparent reason.

"Listen, Rod, I won't take much of your time. But we've made some improvements in the A-9 series. So if maybe I could stop by, and — Oh, you don't. I understand. Well, catch you next time. My love to Liz! Go Giants! Take care."

He might sit back, and stare at his shoes, or into a light. Then he sits up to tap out a new number, and snap open a new smile.

"Walk in with a big laugh, don't look worried" — that's Willy's strategy. "Start with a couple of your good stories to lighten things up. It's not what you say, it's how you say it. Because personality always wins the day."

Willy Loman isn't a guy in an airport, of course. He's the title character of Arthur Miller's 1949 play Death of a Salesman, and he's our In Character profile today, the next in our series exploring famous American fictional characters. We never really learn what Willy sells; mostly, he tries to sell himself. He is 63 and loves his sons, Biff and Happy. They find him foolish, a small-timer trapped in big dreams. Willy loves his wife, Linda, though he has sought companionship on the road.

Willy is ashamed: He's not selling things like he used to. He hears people laughing behind his back. He's disgraced that he can't pay an insurance bill because his wife had to repair their refrigerator.

He tries to hide his anxieties — and his hurts — with jokes and bluster, but his wife, Linda, has noticed that he's had a lot of driving accidents. One day, she goes into the basement, and finds a little rubber hose leading from a gas pipe.

Figure 3: Phillip Seymour Hoffman in his Broadway performance.

(www.nytimes.com)

"Willy Loman never made a lot of money," Linda tells her sons amid all this. "His name was never in the papers. He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid!"

Critics who saw the first performance in 1949, with Lee J. Cobb as Willy, said that when the curtain closed, they only heard silence. Then, sobbing.

"It's the only play I know that sends men weeping into the men's room," says director Robert Falls.

Falls staged a 1998 Death of a Salesman revival at Chicago's Goodman Theater. The production went on New York and London, and won awards in both cities. The actor Brian Dennehy played Willy Loman for more than 600 performances. "I can tell you anecdote after anecdote after anecdote of men — men, 50-year-old pinstripe-suited men dissolved in tears and shaking," Dennehy says. "And telling me story after story about themselves, about their relationship with their sons, and so forth." An Ordinary Man in an Extraordinary Tragedy Willy Loman seems an odd little character to call out such searing emotions. He isn't struggling to survive war, bigotry, or poverty — just the ordinariness of middle-class life. He doesn't want to defeat evil or save the world, just pay off his house and provide for his family. He wants his sons to love him, and he wants to deserve the love of his wife, whom he feels he has failed.

"There's so much pain and love," says Robert Falls. "And I should always stress that it's ultimately a play about fathers and sons, and a woman who loves her husband and a husband who loves her and his boys and his country and his business and his car and his valise — and [who] has sort of believed in a system that he's always felt is going to support him. And you know, there's just something very primal about that for us as Americans."

The first time Falls saw his own father cry was when he was 12, and they watched a TV version of the play together. Later, Falls played Willy in high school.

"When I was a very young person, even when I was playing Willy Loman, my empathies were always with the son," Falls says. "Battling against his father, looking at sort of the B.S.-meister that Willy was, all of the crap coming out of his mouth.

"And I think by the time I directed it, I was a young father with a young son, but my empathy had very much changed, and I identified with Willy," says Falls. "I see him as a courageous person. I see him as having a certain amount of bravery, a certain amount of grit. A certain amount of American can-do that I find admirable."

A Salesman on 'Salesman' We asked a working salesperson to watch a DVD of the 1985 TV version of Death of a Salesman, starring Dustin Hoffman. Gregory Hamilton is 40; he lives in Southern California. He's sold women's clothing, lingerie, beauty products, wireless and pager service, and he says he actually likes "cold calls" — walking into an office without an appointment and trying to make a sale: "It's exciting to me," Hamilton says. "I never know who I'm going to meet, I never know what the situation is; it's spontaneous. ... And when you fall into an office, you need to scout — you need to look, you need to see what's going on, you need to feel the person that you're initially talking to, whether it's the receptionist or the office manager, and you really have to win them. ... My smile, my demeanor. My whole ambience — I have to come across to them and win them for me."

And he finds Willy Loman...?

"You know, he was eccentric," Hamilton says. "So I can identify with that. ... I was looking at his tie ... and I was like, See, yeah, he's a salesman. Because you want something ... that's gonna grab who it is you're trying to affect, to utilize and purchase what it is you're selling." At one point in the play, Willy comes in to see the head of his company. It's the son of the man who hired him more than 30 years before, the man who promised that the company would take care of him. Willie says he knows his sales numbers are down. But "there were promises made across this desk," he says, and "you mustn't tell me you've got people to see. I put 34 years into this firm, Howard, and now I can't pay my insurance."

"That's the epitome of sales once again," Hamilton says. "Your numbers are up, and when they're down — man, you're out. ... You strap it up and you go out there and get in the day, and the next day, and the next day, and you make your work to bring your numbers up so you can continue to take care of your family. ... That whole segment, it just grabbed me."

Another reason Willy Loman keeps reappearing is that great American actors want to play him, the way Shakespearean stars work their way up to Hamlet.

"It's kind of easy to don his clothes, to don his character," says Brian Dennehy — because for actors, "so much is luck. So much of it is a sales job."

Director Robert Falls agrees.

"I've always felt that — that actors have very little to do but sell themselves," Falls says. "You hear these amazing stories about actors who are 65 years old ... and they've, you know, gotta walk into an audition with a 22-year-old director who says 'Tell me what you've done.' "

Death of a Salesman is a tragedy, not a mystery: We know it will end with Willy's death. He cracks up in his car. All the sales he made, the jokes he told — and only his sons, his wife and a neighbor come to his funeral. But that neighbor delivers one of the great speeches in all of theater at Willy's graveside:

"Willy was a salesman. And for a salesman, there is no rock bottom to the life. He don't put a bolt to a nut, he don't tell you the law or give you medicine. He's a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back — that's an earthquake. and then you get yourself a couple of spots on your hat, and you're finished. Nobody dast blame this man. A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory."

Arthur Miller spoke to NPR about his most famous character in 1983, when he directed his play in Beijing.

"Willy, as misled as he is, to the very end of the play is struggling," Miller said. "It's the opposite of a passive person. He's struggling for some meaning in his life. He seizes upon what we would mostly consider the wrong meaning. But the struggle is exemplary."

Gregory Hamilton says that in one important respect, Willy — and by extension Miller — got it right.

"A salesman does have to dream," Hamilton says. "Because you have to see something that isn't there, and you have to make it happen — you have to manifest it. And that's just you, you're out there, you're like an island.... You have to have the ability to believe in yourself enough to go out there and make it happen."

So maybe the next time we think we see Willy Loman, trudging through a lobby or terminal, we won't see only his frustration or failure, but his dreams and struggle.

Attention must be paid.

www.npr.org

Birth of the American Salesman Modern sales management is a uniquely American story, says Harvard

Business School's Walter A. Friedman, author of Birth of a Salesman.

Q: What role have salesmen played in the development of America's

consumer society? What do you see as the distinction between sales and

advertising?

A: The entrepreneurs who built large mass manufacturing businesses

usually relied on both selling and advertising. But the salesman's role in

promoting goods was different from that of advertising. To use a military

analogy common in the early twentieth century, advertising was a weapon

for waging an air war, while salesmen were deployed as foot soldiers in a

ground campaign.

Sales workers performed a range of different tasks: explaining and

servicing products, collecting information, and pressuring people to make

purchases by overcoming resistance. Salesmen learned to answer specific

questions about a product and its application, and to grant credit to buyers

and make arrangements for delivery. The industries that traditionally

invested heavily in salesmen—insurance, automobiles, office machines,

branded foods, and pharmaceuticals—did so because they believed

salesmen were effective and persuasive in creating demand.

AMERICAN BUSINESSES RECOGNIZED

SALESMANSHIP AS AN ESSENTIAL COMPONENT OF

MODERN STRATEGY.

Salesmen pushed customers to buy products or services that they might not have otherwise purchased. They were particularly good at introducing

new products to customers. For instance, the cost of selling the first electric refrigerators in the early twentieth century was very high as salesmen worked to convince homeowners of the value of the new machine over the traditional delivery of ice. After the demand for refrigerators was established, manufacturers concentrated on advertising, on differentiating their product from other makes, and on price competition.

Salesmen also persuaded customers to buy their company's product rather

than a competitor's, championing an Electrolux vacuum cleaner rather than

a Hoover, for instance. Salesmen could be effective in this regard, pointing

out marginal differences between one product and another. If two cars or

two refrigerators were similar in performance and design, salesmen might

be able to sway the customer toward one brand or another. This was not a

trivial accomplishment. The consequence of this type of marginal ability to

influence consumers could be great. Once "prospects" purchased one

company's product over another's, they became customers of that

company and were targeted for follow-up calls or for more promotional

material. They also became familiar with the product and were likely,

unless disappointed with it, to continue to purchase from the company

again, as this was less risky than trying something new.

Q: The salesman is perhaps the most familiar and consistent image of

American business particularly in literature. George Babbitt and Willy

Loman are familiar names to many Americans. Why do you think the

salesman has become the symbol of American business?

A: Salesmen have always held a special place in American culture. This

was true from the earliest days of the republic, when folk tales of Yankee

peddlers abounded. In the nineteenth century, Nathaniel Hawthorne,

Herman Melville, and Mark Twain all wrote about peddlers and canvassers.

In the 1920s, stories about salesmen frequently appeared in popular

magazines like The Saturday Evening Post and Colliers. Sinclair Lewis's

novel Babbitt, about the arch real estate salesman, was published in 1922

and then, the most famous fictional salesman of them all, Arthur Miller's

Willy Loman, appeared on stage in 1947.

The portrayals have never been flattering, but the image of the salesman

changed a lot throughout the years. In the earliest stories, Yankee peddlers

were marginal figures who operated at the fringes of established society,

outwitting farmers and townspeople. Sam Slick, the Connecticut clock

peddler, was able to place a timepiece in every farmhouse he visited,

usually through flattery and false praise.

In the twentieth century, salesmen, far from operating on the fringes of

society, came to serve as embodiments of American capitalism and

society. Babbitt was a member of the Good Citizens League and the Order

of the Elks, and a popular figure in his hometown, Zenith. He represented

the aggressive, expansionist, and highly "American" way of doing business

of the 1920s.

Willy Loman was also a representative figure. But this time, the salesman

seemed to capture the entire tragedy of commercial society in the decades

after depression and war. The play revealed the cruelty of a system of

capitalism based entirely on salesmanship, in which bosses hired and fired

people when they were no longer effective. "You can't eat the orange and

throw the peel away. A man is not a piece of fruit!" says Loman.

Despite changes in methods of selling, popular culture doesn't pay much

attention to the corporate salesperson who works for a large firm, makes

use of data, and services large accounts. To give some recent examples:

the Maysles Brothers documentary Salesman featured Bible salesmen;

Barry Levinson's film Tin Men, aluminum-siding salesmen; and David

Mamet's play Glengarry Glen Ross, realtors. The figure of the professional

salesperson simply does not hold the same dramatic appeal.

Excerpt of interview taken from www.hbswk.hbs.edu, originally published 19 Apr. 2004. Linard.

Time Period in Perspective: What was going on during Salesman?

Did you know that there have been several recessions in the U.S. since the "Great

Depression"? It's surprising to be sure, especially when you see these events covered in

the media as one-time horrors.

Let's take a look at some of these recessions, how long they lasted, how they

affected gross domestic product (GDP) and unemployment, and what is known about

what caused them...

What's a Recession?

A recession historically has been defined as two consecutive quarters of decline in GDP,

the combined value of all the goods and services produced in the U.S. It differs from

the gross national product(GNP) in that it does not include the value of goods and

services produced by U.S. companies abroad or goods and services received in

the U.S. as imports.

A more modern definition of a recession that's used by the National Bureau of Economic

Research (NBER) Dating Committee, the group entrusted to call the start and end dates

of a recession, is "a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy,

lasting more than a few months."

In 2007, an economist at the Federal Reserve Board (FRB), Jeremy J. Nalewaik,

suggested that a combination of GDP and gross domestic income (GDI) may be more

accurate in predicting and defining a recession.

The Union Recession: (February 1945 - October 1945)

• Duration: 9 months

• Magnitude

o GDP Decline: 11

o Unemployment Rate: 1.9%

• Reasons and Causes: The tail-end of World War II, the beginning of

demobilization of military forces and the slow transition to civilian production

marked this period. War production had virtually ceased and veterans were just

beginning to re-enter the workforce. It was also known as the "Union Recession"

as unions were beginning to reassert themselves. Minimum wages were on the

rise and credit was tight.

**The Post-War Recession: (November 1948 - October 1949)

• Duration: 11 months

• Magnitude

• GDP Decline: 1.1

• Unemployment Rate: 5.9%

• Reasons and Causes: As returning veterans returned to the workforce in large

numbers to compete for jobs with existing civilian workers who had entered the

workforce during the war, unemployment began to rise. The government's

response was minimal as it was much more worried about inflation than

unemployment at that time.

The Post-Korean War Recession: (July 1953 - May 1954)

• Duration: 10 months

• Magnitude:

• GDP decline: 2.2

• Unemployment Rate: 2.9% (lowest rate since WWII)

• Reasons and causes: After an inflationary period that followed the Korean War,

more dollars were directed at national security. The Federal Reserve tightened

monetary policy to curb inflation in 1952. The dramatic change in interest rates

caused increased pessimism about the economy and decreased aggregate

demand.

The Eisenhower Recession: (August 1957 - April 1958)

• Duration: 8 months

• Magnitude:

o GDP Decline: 3.3%

o Unemployment Rate: 6.2%

• Reasons and Causes: The government tightened monetary policy to years prior

to the recession to curb inflation, but prices continued to rise in the U.S. through

1959. The sharp world-wide recession and the strong U.S. dollar contributed to a

foreign trade deficit.

From www.investopedia.com

ABOUT DEATH OF A SALESMAN: Elements at a Glance

SETTING: With Miller being familiar with Aristotle’s Poetics, which outlined the basis of what a

proper play should be, it is no surprise that his own plays reflect the same principles. Salesman

takes place in the Loman house in Brooklyn, New York, in 1949. Although Willy’s tendency to

daydream shows the audience events over the course of his lifetime, the story takes place over

the course of 24 hours and remains in the same location for the duration of the show. This

incorporates Aristotle’s unities of time and place, which were thought to increase the

verisimilitude, or believability, of the work.

“When Death of a Salesman premiered in

February of 1949, the United States was in the

midst of a recession. Some feared that another

depression was at hand. Miller makes no direct

references to the 1948-1949 recession in Death

of a Salesman, just as he omits or glances over

more momentous historical events such as the

Great Depression and the Second World War.

Nonetheless, a palpable sense of economic

anxiety hangs over the play—anxiety that likely

feels all too familiar to today’s audiences -- the

family struggling to make mortgage payments, a

long-time employee laid off without warning, and

an ill and aging parent afraid of becoming a financial burden to his grown children.”

THEMES

Reality and Illusion:

“The gap between reality and illusion is blurred in the play -- in the structure, in Willy’s mind

and in the minds of the other characters. Willy is a dreamer and dreams of a success that it is

not possible for him to achieve. He constantly exaggerates his success: (‘I averaged a hundred

and seventy dollars a week in the year of 1928’) and is totally unrealistic about what Biff will be

able to achieve too. Willy’s inability to face the truth of his situation, that he is merely ‘a dime a

dozen’, rubs off on his sons. Happy exaggerates how successful he is and Biff only realizes in

Oliver’s office that he has been lying to himself for years about his position in the company: “I

realized what a ridiculous lie my whole life has been. We’ve been talking in a dream for fifteen

years. I was a shipping clerk.” Biff is the only one who realizes how this blurring of reality has

destroyed them all. His aim becomes to make Willy and the family face the truth which they

have been avoiding, the truth of who they are: “The man don’t know who we are!… We never

told the truth for ten minutes in this house.“ This blurring of reality and illusion is carried

through into the structure.”

Figure 1: The original set on Broadway, 1949

(www.livedesign.com)

The American Dream:

“The American Dream is the capitalist belief that if you work hard enough you can be a success

in America. However, the success that the dream aspires to is based on money and power. In

Willy’s mind it is also linked with being “well-liked”. Biff realizes that being true to yourself is a

more important success. Howard’s treatment of Willy shows how destructive the pursuit of this

dream can be. He lays Willy off when he can no longer generate money for the company which

enrages Willy: “You can’t eat the orange and throw the peel away – a man is not a piece of

fruit.“ Willy’s adherence to the dream means that he buys status symbols on credit that he

cannot afford to keep the payments up on. It is ironic then that Willy’s funeral is on the day that

the last mortgage payment is made.”

Family:

“In the play, each generation has a responsibility to the

other that they cannot fulfill. Biff and Happy are shaped by

Willy’s sins. In Happy’s case, he is destined to perpetuate

Willy’s values and strive for material success, where Biff has

been destroyed totally by Willy’s betrayal of the family

through the affair and the fact that Willy never discouraged

him from stealing. On the other hand, Biff and Happy have

the opportunity to save Willy by becoming “successful” in

his eyes and supporting him and Linda in their old age.

However they are not able to do this because of the way

they have been raised. Biff is attempting to break this cycle of destruction in the family.”

Nature and Physical Pursuits:

“In the play, the alternative to the corruption of urban capitalism is physical or natural pursuits.

Biff talks about working with horses or cattle on ranches as his calling. Happy knows he can

‘outbox, outrun and out-lift anybody in that store’ and Willy ‘was a happy man with a batch of

cement’. The ‘Loman Brothers’ would sell sporting goods and Willy should have gone to the

wilds of Alaska. The suggestion is that the true nature of all three of these men would be in

physical pursuits and in a rural setting. However, Willy’s dependence on ‘the dream’, means

they cannot follow their true calling.”

STYLE

Realism: “Realism was an artistic movement that began in 19th century France. The realists

sought to accurately portray everyday characters, situations, and dilemmas. Realist drama was a careful

observation of human characteristics and the language attempted to be as close as possible to natural

conversation. Contemporary costuming and three–dimensional sets were used so as to create a ‘lifelike’

Figure 2: The cast of the most recent Salesman

performance, 2012. (www.theatrelit.com)

stage picture. The plays were usually critiques of social problems. Famous realist dramatists are: Henrik

Ibsen, Anton Chekhov and George Bernard Shaw.”

Expressionism: “A reaction to Realism, the Expressionist movement began in the early 1900s.

Expressionist dramatists were concerned with presenting the inner psychological reality of a character, a

subjective vision of the world as opposed to an objective representation as Realism wanted to do. They

were, as American Expressionist playwright Elmer Rice claimed, “... getting beneath reality, displaying

more than reality, replacing reality with something more expressive.“ They threw out dramatic

convention – plot, structure and characterization were abandoned, dialogue became poetic and lighting

was used to create atmosphere. Expressionism was successful mainly in Germany and Scandinavia, but

American dramatists like Eugene O’Neill and Thornton Wilder were also influenced by Expressionism.”

STRUCTURE

Flashbacks/Daydreams: “In Death of a Salesman, this style (blending of Expressionism and

Realism) is most obvious in the use of ‘flashbacks’ or ‘dream sequences’. At the beginning of the play,

Miller first of all provides an anchor in reality. He presents a series of events that are accepted by the

audience as the objective reality of the play i.e. those sections of the play that take place in the present.

We understand them as objective reality because we see various different characters’ perceptions of the

events – for example, Willy’s breakdown is discussed by the boys and Linda; Jenny the secretary talks to

Bernard before Willy enters. However, the play also shows the internal turmoil and psychological

breakdown that Willy is experiencing by presenting what is going on in Willy’s head. Sometimes this

takes the form of the acting out of Willy’s past experiences, sometimes in the appearance of Ben or The

Woman in Willy’s ‘present’. This style means that while the audience can share the nightmare

experience of Willy’s breakdown with him, we never lose touch with the real events even though Willy

perceives reality in a distorted way. Miller described Willy as ‘literally at that terrible moment when the

voice of the past is no longer distant but quite as loud as the voice of the present’. He did not see Willy’s

internal sequences as ‘flashbacks’.”

FORM

Tragedy: “There has been much discussion whether Salesman can be considered a tragedy.

According to Greek playwright Aristotle, a tragic character is defined as: A person who suffers from a

fatal flaw (often arrogance or over-confidence) that leads to his or her downfall. The suffering is not

wholly deserved and through that suffering, the character gains some self-awareness that turns his or

her defeat into a sort of triumph. The play should not leave the audience feeling depressed, but rather

with a sense of compassion and awe. If we go by this definition, Willy fulfills most of the qualifications-

except that he is not of high-rank in society...[However], the play follows much of the structure of a

tragedy as Willy is inexorably drawn to his destruction by his inability to see the truth (his ‘fatal flaw’).”

Cited from www.zeiterion.org/salesman.pdf, courtesy of Weston Playhouse Theatre Company.

SALESMAN GLOSSARY

PAGE

#

LINE DEFINITION

Page 6 Stage Direction: “His emotions, in a

word, are mercurial.”

mercurial: adj. volatile, changing quickly and

often

(www.merriam-webster.com)*

Page 7 Willy: “I got as far as a little above

Yonkers.”

Yonkers: Geographical location in South East New

York. *

Page 7 Willy: “I don’t think Angelo knows the

Studebaker.”

Studebaker: A type of car.

Page

11

Linda: “You make mountains out of

molehills.”

Meaning: To make something seem larger or more

important than it really is.

Page

11

Willy: “Certain men don’t get started

till later in life. Thomas Edison, I think.

Or B.F. Goodrich...”

Thomas Edison: Famous inventor and creator of the

phonograph and the light bulb.

B.F. Goodrich: Maker of tires, which has become a

widely known brand.

Page

12

Willy: “I was thinking of the Chevy.

1928 when I had that red Chevy.”

Chevy: A type of American-made

vehicle

Page

13

Willy: “Remember those days?-the

way Biff used to simonize that car?”

Simonize: (1934) to polish or wax

(www.merriam-webster.com)

Page

19

Willy: “Don’t forget the hubcap,

boys...get that chamois to the

hubcaps.”

Chamois: (pronounced ‘shammy’) “Originally, a

leather, prepared from the skin of the chamois; now

applied to a soft, pliable leather prepared from the

skins of sheep, goats, deer, calves, and the split hides

of other animals.” (www.oed.com)

P. 20 Willy: “It’s got Gene Tunney’s

signature on it!”

Gene Tunney: American professional boxer and the

world heavyweight champion from 1926–28. (www.findagrave.com)

Page

23

Willy: “That’s why I thank Almighty

God you’re both built like Adonises.”

Adonis: In reference to a statuesque male figure.

(www.wikipedia.com)

Page

25

Linda: “Then you owe Frank for the

carburetor.”

carburetor: “A device in an internal-combustion

engine for the controlled mixing of air with a fine

spray of liquid fuel” (www.oed.com)

Page

38

Willy: “What ever happened to that

diamond watch-fob?”

Watch-fob: “A chain or strap attached to a watch for

carrying in a waistcoat or waistband pocket, often

worn hanging outside the pocket.” (www.oed.com)

Page

42

Linda: “...one a philandering bum-“ philandering: referring to flirting or seeking casual

intimacy. (www.oed.com)

Page

44

Stage directions: “Kneeling in front of

her in a fever of self reproach and

striving...”

Self-reproach: loathing or shame of one’s self or

actions.

Page

46

Willy: “You know sporting goods

better than Spalding, for God’s sake!”

Spalding: Founder of the American sporting goods

company, 1876. (www.about.com)

Page

53

Stage directions: “Gets a bottle of

saccharine from top of refrigerator.

Puts saccharine in coffee, stirs it.”

Saccharine: a fancy, near scientific term, for sugar.

Page

56

Howard: “Suppose you wanna see

Jack Benny, see?”

Jack Benny: Recognized as the leading entertainer of

the 20th

century; American comedian, actor, radio

personality and violinist.

(www.findagrave.com )

Page

64

Charley: “You goin’ for a ride? I

wanna shoot some casino.”

Meaning: indicating he’d like to go to the casino, to

gamble.

Page

70

Willy: “You big ignoramus, if you say

that to me again I’ll rap you one.”

Ignoramus: latin for ‘we do not know.’ An insult used

to call someone stupid or ignorant. (www.oed.com )

Page

71

Willy: “Who liked J.P. Morgan? Was he

impressive?”

J.P. Morgan: Founder of the leading financial firm

with global scale and reach. (www.jpmorgan.com )

Page

92

Willy: “Didn’t I work like a coolie to

meet every premium on the nose?”

coolie: offensive term in reference to an Asian

laborer. (www.oed.com)

Page

94

Linda: “You don’t want them calling

you yellow, do you?”

yellow: cowardly.