Image by cliff1066 via Flickr

In order to have a panoramic view of the play Death of a Salesman, and the character Willie Loman, we have to delve into the context of our society.  Especially our own.  We live in very materialistic surroundings  nowadays, and Arthur Miller depicts not only the downfall of a salesman, but the imagined moral downfall of our already compromised society with material gain.  The main theme of “Death of a Salesman” is tied up to the same preoccupations with greatness that we as a nation have.  According to Miller, this is a bourgeois society, and Willie Loman, the main character is just a reflection and a representation of the selfish aspirations of the world we live in. 

We have to understand that Miller wrote this play in the middle of a tormented momentum in US history…  He witnessed the rise of Fidel Castro, the ephemeral glory of the USSR, the downfall of Hitler, the obsessions of Malcolm X, and the dreams of Gandhi and Martin Luther King.  Societal issues were a primary contemplation for most countries at that time.  And even today we, as members of this economical environment, are still adamant to equate greatness with money.

We can see that Willie Loman, like Socrates, is a man flawed by the conditioning of their era, or put in more fatalistic terms “the destiny” which besieged their lives and corrupted their chances for success. Sophocles’s Oedipus the king, on the other hand, has the same relative flaws as Willie Loman.  The difference is measured in the trappings of their particular environments.  Willie Loman’s downfall, therefore, is the downfall of his household; but Oedipus’ is the downfall of his own kingdom.  All this would have been avoided if a right conception of reality would have ensued moral and spiritual principles in both protagonists.  Sadly we see this was not case with either one. 

Willie Loman’s family had sucked his strength and failed wisdom. He has lived a life of production and utilitarian purposes, as long as he had the vitality to do so.  In his last days on earth, however, what was left of him was the husk of a man.  After that, he was good only to be left aside and discard, or at best, to be patronized in a very commiserating way, alleviating his existential suffering with vain words that were rather a palliative than real a medicine.

His sons, Biff and Happy, and Linda, his wife, saw in him the prototypical provider. They were really not into showing him real affection, and they were not into letting him be a hindrance to their own material progress either.  We know that Linda his wife, fed in him the same detrimental ideas of greatness that caused the demise of this poor man.  On the other hand his attempt to help Biff and Happy, his sons with the insurance money, resultant of his death, was the ultimate material version of hope showed by their progenitor

Arthur Miller’s play is indeed the portrayal of a human being devoid of the symbols of power, in the view of his family and his.  Others would have been the thoughts of Biff and Happy Loman if they would have seen his father making enough money and living a bourgeouis life.  For these young, it was the exclusive and only thing that would warrant them a valid pursuit of happiness and fulfillment.  Would that had been the case, their father’s life would have been imbued with a high moral value in their delusional viewpoint.

We can compare also the lives of Socrates and of Willy Loman.  Willie Loman’s life was insufferable because of his delusions of greatness, but also because he was pushed, like Socrates, into acceptance of a certain greatness not possible for him, due to his lack of money and power.  Just the same, I believe Socrates committed suicide, drinking the famous poison voluntarily, seeking a “dignified death.” In his view, it was the only way he could  face a world who blatantly rejected the moral principles he believed in, and which he taught to the Athenian youth incessantly.  In Arthur Miller’s drama, youth is represented by Willy’s sons Biff and Happy.  There is even a moral lesson in the name of his son Biff –which sounds like “beef”, as the obvious food of the affluent.  On the other hand, Happy’s name constitutes another mirage of our American Society, which states plainly and alluringly:

“We believe in the pursuit of happiness….” 

The word “pursuit”  has a meaning of a never ending quest; ultimately this can bring only deception, if we don’t place our eyes on the values and principles that witnessed the foundation of this Nation.