Questions+to+Ask

Questions to Ask – Death of a Salesman **1.**** How is the dramatic action unified? Through cause-to-effect relationship of incidents? Character? Theme/motif/idea? ** The following is from E. Kazan, original director for __Death of a Salesman__.He kept a notebook in which he wrote himself notes concerning the basic elements of the script interpretation and how he translated these for the stage: Basic: //The play is about Willy Loman.// Basic Style: //It is a tragedy, in a classic style, with the drive of an inner inevitability that springs from a single fatal flaw. Willy is a good man. He has worth. But he is a Salesman with a Salesman's Philosophy. Therefore he dooms himself.// Basic: //This is a story of love-the end of a tragic love between Willy and his son Biff.// Basic: //He built his life on his son-but he taught his son wrong.// The result: //the son crashes and he with him.// Basic: //The whole play is about love- love and competition. The Boy loves him. The only way Willy can give him anything back is thru the $20,000.// Basic: //What the audience should feel at the end of this performance is only one thing: Pity, Compassion and Terror for Willy. Every dramatic value should serve this end. This Willy is a fine, tender, capable, potentially useful human.// Direction and Style: //This play is essentially about Willy. Biff's importance is only as the love- object which "failed." But the play describes the process in Willy's mind. In doing this all the elements of theatre magic are necessary.// Directing: //This play has to be directed with COMPASSION, which simply means with a quick and intense realization of the PAIN of each of the characters.//

The play is divided into three main parts, Act I, Act II, and the Requiem. Each section takes place on a different day in present-day. Within Act I and Act II, the story is presented through the use of Willy's flashbacks. This use of flashback is fundamental to the structure and understanding of the play. The story starts at present-day and Willy then lapses in and out of the past. Each flashback is somehow related to the present. Very often, the contents of the flashback offer essential background knowledge for understanding why the present-day problems in the Loman family are occurring. For example, when Willy is thinking about Biff and Biff's problems, Willy is transported to the summer of Biff's senior year. The events that took place in the past expose for the reader the situations that have led up to the present-day boiling point in the Loman household.
 * Structure **

**2.**** What are the given circumstances? (Geographical Location? Period? Time of day? Socioeconomic environment? Attitudes and relationships of characters at the beginning of the play?) How is this information conveyed? ** Willy Loman’s house in the New York City area; Boston; New York City. Some of the action takes place in flashbacks while Willy hallucinates. ** Traveling salesmen ** were common in the 1940s, selling items such as brushes and vacuum cleaners door-to-door.

** Social relations: ** Linda Loman’s role as a loyal and often shy housewife and mother does not necessarily represent all women’s lives in the 1940s, nor does Miller necessarily approve of the role. However, her behavior does suggest the cultural notions, common in that period, of restrained, even timid, femininity; and, as the play bears out, masculinity of the time was overly identified with the virile figures of the athlete, businessman, and soldier.

3.** What is the point of attack? **

Willy Loman is a traveling salesman who has worked for the Wagner Company for thirty-four years. He is now sixty-one years old and has been taken off salary and put back on straight commission, and he is unable to earn enough money to pay the bills. Charley, the Lomans' neighbor, has been giving money to Willy every month to meet his payments, even though Willy is too proud to accept a payroll job from him. Charley's son Bernard, who was in school with Willy's sons, has become a successful lawyer. Willy's two sons, Biff and Happy, come back home and are temporarily sharing their old room. Biff is the oldest son who was a football star in high school with several scholarships, but for the last fourteen years he has been unable to find himself. He returned from somewhere in the West due to his mother's request for him to see his father. Happy works in a department store and has his own apartment in another part of New York. Willy has been plagued by daydreams and illusions, and the play begins with his driving home prematurely from one of his New England business trips due to the fact that he cannot concentrate on the road.This is the point of attack.

4. **What is the major conflict, dramatic question, or unifying theme? What is the climactic scene?** Climax: When Biff and Willy are arguing and Biff, knowing his own and his father’s limitations tells him: “Pop, I’m a dime a dozen, and so are you! . . . I am not a leader of men, Willy, and neither are you.”

Conflict: Willy Loman is in conflict with society, his family, and himself. In his struggle to compete in materialistic America, he comes up short; society beats him down. In his effort to communicate with his son Biff and mold him into a success, he fails. In a war with his own inner self, he refuses to accept what he is–ordinary, average, unremarkable. Ultimately, Willy's inner and outer conflicts destroy him.

**5.**** How is the action resolved? ** At the end of the play, Biff realizes the illusions that Willy lived on. Biff is destined to no greatness, but he no longer has to struggle to understand what he wants to do with his life. Unlike Biff, Hap cannot see reality. Like his father, he is destined to live a fruitless life trying for something that will not happen. "Willy Loman did not die in vain," he says, "He had a good dream, the only dream a man can have - to come out number one man. He fought it out here, and this where I'm gonna win it for him."

**6.**** What is the dominant tone of the play? Serious? Comic? Ironic? Is the tone consistent throughout, or does it change often? How is tone established? ** //Death of a Salesman// is a Drama of tragedy and pathos. It contains two acts and a conclusion called a “Requiem.” Unlike the classic Greek or Elizabethan tragedy, which focuses on the downfall of a noble character (often a king or another person of high social status), //Death of a Salesman// focuses on an ordinary character, a common American man.

**7.**** For each character, list the physical, social, psychological, and moral traits indicated in the script.Which traits of each character are most important to the dramatic action? What is each character willing to do to achieve his/her desires? ** // Willy Loman // Willly Loman is an elderly salesmen lost in false hopes and illusions. The sales firm he works for no longer pays him salary. Working on straight commission, Willy cannot bring home enough money to pay his bills. After thirty-four years with the firm, they have spent his energy and discarded him. Willy's sons, Biff and Hap, are also failures, but Willy doesn't want to believe this. He wants his sons, especially Biff, to succeed where he has not. He believes his boys are great and cannot understand why they are not successful. This is a major source of conflict throughout the play. As Willy has grown older, he has trouble distinguishing between the past and present - between illusion and reality - and is often lost in flashbacks where much of the story is told. These flashbacks are generally during the summer after Biff's senior year of high school when all of the family problems began. Willy has had an affair with a woman he meets on sales trips and once caught by Biff. Now, Biff does not respect Willy and they do not get along. Willy eventually commits suicide so that Biff can have the insurance money to become successful with.

// Linda Loman // Linda is Willy's wife and is the arbiter of peace in the family. She is always trying to stand between Willy and her sons to ease the tension. She is protective of Willy. She knows that Willy is tired and is a man at the end of his rope - the end of his life and, as he put it, "ringing up a zero." She wants him to be happy even when the reality of the situation is bad. Linda knows that Willy has been trying to commit suicide, but does not intervene because she does not want to embarrass him. She lets it continue because she is not one to cause trouble.

// Biff Loman // Biff Loman is Willy's son and it is the conflict between the two that the story of the play revolves around. Biff was a star football player in high school, with scholarships to two major universities. He flunked math his senior year and was not allowed to graduate. He was going to make the credit up during the summer but caught Willy being unfaithful to Linda. This shock changed Biff's view of his father and everything that Biff believed in. Biff then became a drifter and was lost for fifteen years. He was even jail for stealing a suit once. But now, he has come home and the problems begin. Willy wants dearly for Biff to become a business success, although Biff has an internal struggle between pleasing his father and doing what he feels is right. Biff wants to be outside on a cattle ranch, and Willy wants him behind a corporate desk. Through the illusions that Willy believes, he cannot see that Biff is a nobody and not bound to be successful as defined by Willy. This conflict is the main material of the play. Eventually, Biff finally sees the truth and realizes that he is a "dime a dozen" and "no great leader of men." He tells this to Willy who is outraged. Willy shouts, "I am not a dime a dozen! I am Willy Loman and you are Biff Loman!"

// Happy Loman // Hap is the Loman's youngest son. He lives in an apartment in New York, and during the play is staying at his parent's house to visit. Hap is of low moral character; constantly with another woman, trying to find his way in life, even though he is confident he's on the right track. Hap has always been the "second son" to Biff and tries to be noticed by his parents by showing off. When he was young he always told Willy, "I'm losin' weight pop, you notice?" And, now he is always saying, "I'm going to get married, just you wait and see," in an attempt to redeem himself in his mother's eyes. Hap also tries to be on Willy's good side and keep him happy, even if it means perpetuating the lies and illusions that Willy lives in.

//Charlie:// Charlie is the Loman's next door neighbor, and owns his own sales firm. He and Willy do not get along very well, but they are friends nonetheless. Charlie is always the voice of reality in the play, trying to set Willy straight on the facts of Willy's situation, but Willy refuses to listen.

//Bernard:// Bernard is Charlie's goody-two-shoes son who was a childhood friends of Biff. Bernard always studied and eventually became a successful lawyer, something that Willy has trouble dealing with.

//Uncle Ben:// Ben is Willy's dead brother who appears to Willy during his flashbacks and times of trouble. Ben was a rich man who made it big in the diamond mines of Africa. Willy once was given the chance to become partners with Ben, but refused and instead choose the life that he currently lives.

//Howard Wagner// - son of former owner of the Wagner Company; he now runs the firm and is responsible for putting Willy on straight commission

//The Woman// - Willy's mistress from Boston

8.** What are the major ideas/themes/implications of the dramatic action? **

Inadequacy: Exemplified by Happy's randomly claiming to have lost weight and declaring that he's going to get married someday in an attempt to get his parents' attention away from Biff

Ignorance/Denial: Willy's philosophy that success is based on appearance and popularity without mentioning hard work.

Pride:-Willy was too proud to accept a job working for Charley, but he would accept his money on the premise that it was a loan, even though it was impossible for Willy to repay.

Self-Awareness:- Biff knew that he loved working with his hands and outdoors, whereas his father was in denial of the fact that that was his love in life as well; Willy suppressed that joy because it did not fit into his predetermined mold for a beloved businessman

Lacking an Awareness of Reality: Throughout the play the Lomans in general cannot distinguish between reality and illusion, particularly Willy. This is a major theme and source of conflict in the play. Willy cannot see who he and his sons are. He believes that they are great men who have what it takes to be successful and beat the business world. Unfortunately, he is mistaken. In reality, Willy and sons are not, and cannot, be successful.

Motifs: the jungle, the diamonds, the garden, the car, the refrigerator, whistling, references to sports prowess, stockings, simonizing, house payments, references to Greek mythology, trophy (consider which of these also function as props)

9.** What information is given or implied in the script about settings? Costumes and makeup? Lighting? Is this information significant to the dramatic action? If so, how? **

The following notes are taken from the essay that is also available on the wikispace page.

At the end of act 1, Biff comes downstage "into a golden pool of light" as Willy recalls the day of the city baseball championship when Biff was "[l]ike a young God. Hercules - something like that. And the sun, the sun all around him." The pool of light both establishes the moment as one of Willy's memories and suggests how he has inflated the past, given it mythic dimension. The lighting also functions to instill a sense of irony in the audience, for the golden light glows on undiminished as Willy exclaims, "A star like that, magnificent, can never really fade away!" We know that Biff's star faded, even before it had a chance to shine, and even as Willy speaks these words, the light on him begins to fade (68). That Willy's thoughts turn immediately from this golden vision of his son to his own suicide is indicated by the "blue flame" of the gas heater that begins immediately to glow through the wall - a foreshadowing of Willy's desire to gild his son through his own demise. Productions that omit either the golden pool of light or the glowing gas heater withhold this foreshadowing of Willy's final deed.
 * Lighting **

Similarly, productions that omit the lights on the empty chairs miss the chance to reveal the potency of Willy's fantasies. Perhaps even more important, the gas heater's flame at the end of Act I recalls the "angry glow of orange" surrounding Willy's house at the play's beginning (11). Both join with the "red glow" rising from the hotel room and the restaurant to give a felt sense of Willy's twice articulated cry: " The woods are burning!.. .There's a big blaze going on all around" (41, 107). Without these sensory clues, audiences may fail to appreciate the desperation of Willy's state.

From the opening flute notes to their final reprise, Miller's musical themes express the competing influences in Willy Loman's mind. Once established, the themes need only be sounded to evoke certain time frames, emotions, and values. The first sounds of the drama, the flute notes "small and fine," represent the grass, trees, and horizon - objects of Willy's (and Biff's) longing that are tellingly absent from the overshadowed home on which the curtain rises. This melody plays on as Willy makes his first appearance, although, as Miller tells us, "[h]e hears but is not aware of it" (12). Through this music we are thus given our first sense of Willy's estrangement not only from nature itself but from his own deepest nature. As Act I unfolds, the flute is linked to Willy's father, who, we are told, made flutes and sold them during the family's early wanderings. The father's theme, "a high, rollicking tune," is differentiated from the small and fine melody of the natural landscape (49). This distinction is fitting, for the father is a salesman as well as an explorer; he embodies the conflicting values that are destroying his son's life. The father's tune shares a family likeness with Ben's "idyllic" (133) music. This false theme, like Ben himself, is associated finally with death. Ben's theme is first sounded, after all, only after Willy expresses his exhaustion (44). It is heard again after Willy is fired in Act II. This time the music precedes Ben's entrance. It is heard in the distance, then closer, just as Willy's thoughts of suicide, once repressed, now come closer at the loss of his job. And Willy's first words to Ben when he finally appears are the ambiguous "how did you do it?" (84). When Ben's idyllic melody plays for the third and final time it is in "accents of dread" (133), for Ben reinforces Willy's wrongheaded thought of suicide to bankroll Biff. The father's and Ben's themes, representing selling (out) and abandonment, are thus in opposition to the small and fine theme of nature that begins and ends the play. A whistling motif elaborates this essential conflict. Whistling is often done by those contentedly at work. It frequently also accompanies outdoor activities. A whistler in an office would be a distraction. Biff Loman likes to whistle, thus reinforcing his ties to nature rather than to the business environment. But Happy seeks to stifle Biff's true voice: // HAPPY. . . Bob Harrison said you were tops, and then you go and do some damn fool thing like whistling whole songs in the elevator like a comedian. // // BIFF, against Happy. So what? I like to whistle sometimes. // //HAPPY. You don t raise a guy to a responsible job who whistles in elevator! (60)// This conversation reverberates ironically when Howard Wagner plays Willy a recording of his daughter whistling Roll out the Barrel" just before Willy asks for an advance and a New York job (77). Whistling, presumably, is all right if you are the boss or the boss's daughter, but not if you are an employee. The barrel will not be rolled out for Willy or Biff Loman.  Willy's conflicting desires to work in sales and to do outdoor, independent work are complicated by another longing, that of sexual desire, which is expressed through the "raw, sensuous music" that accompanies The Woman's appearances on stage (116, 37). It is this music of sexual desire, I suggest, that "insinuates itself" as the first leaves cover the house in Act 1.5 It is heard just before Willy - reliving a past conversation - offers this ironic warning to Biff: "Just wanna be careful with those girls, Biff, that's all. Don't make any promises. No promises of any kind" (27). This raw theme of sexual desire contrasts with Linda Loman's theme: the maternal hum of a soft lullaby that becomes a "desperate but monotonous" hum at the end of Act I (69). Linda's monotonous drone, in turn, contrasts with the "gay and bright" music, the boys' theme, which opens Act II. This theme is associated with the "great times" (127) Willy remembers with his sons - before his adultery is discovered. Like the high, rollicking theme of Willy's father and like Ben's idyllic melody, this gay and bright music is ultimately associated with the false dream of materialistic success. The boys theme is first heard when Willy tells Ben that he and the boys will get rich in Brooklyn (87). It sounds again when Willy implores Ben, "[H]ow do we get back to all the great times?" (127).  In his final moments of life, Willy Loman is shown struggling with his furies: "sounds, faces, voices, seem to be swarming in upon him" (136). Suddenly, however, the "faint and high" music enters, representing the false dreams of all the "low" men. This false tune ends Willy's struggle with his competing voices. It drowns out the other voices, rising in intensity "almost to an unbearable scream" as Willy rushes off in pursuit.
 * Music: **

** The Loman home ** is a modest house in Brooklyn, New York. Despite the play’s fixed location, playwright Arthur Miller makes it clear that Willy’s alienation and loss of meaning are afflictions of any modern American city. The introductory stage directions he wrote for Act One state that the “small fragile-seeming home” is surrounded on all sides by “towering, angular shapes,” which have sprung up around it. Throughout the play, the audience is visually aware of a gap between past and present : The house which once stood on a pleasant street of similar homes is now dwarfed by “a solid vault of apartment houses.” Like Willy himself, the house has been made insignificant by progress.
 * Theatrical Space **

Jo Mielziner, who designed the play’s original stage setting, framed the house so that it was “wholly, or, in some places, partially transparent.” Miller’s stage directions explain that whenever action occurs in the present, “actors observe the imaginary wall-lines, entering the house only through its door at the left.” By contrast, “in the scenes of the past these boundaries are broken, and characters enter or leave a room by stepping ‘through’ a wall onto the forestage.” The stage setting thus represents the two halves of Willy’s life: the realistic present, in which his breakdown is unfolding, and the dreamlike past, where most of his problems originated. “An air of the dream clings to the place,” Miller writes, “a dream rising out of reality.” Examples of the nature of these two halves pervade the play, concluding in the short “Requiem” in which Willy is buried. All those who hold onto their past, Miller implies—and all the Lomans are guilty of doing this—will have trouble adapting to the present.

In the introduction to his //Collected Plays//, Miller acknowledges that the first image of //Salesman// that occurred to him was of an enormous face the height of the proscenium arch; the face would appear and then open up. "We would see the inside of a man's head," he explains. "In fact, //The Inside of His Head// was the first title. It was conceived half in laughter, (60) for the inside of his head was a mass of contradictions" (23). By the time Miller had completed //Salesman//, however, he had found a more subtle plays correlative for the giant head; a transparent setting. "The entire setting is wholly, or, in some places, partially transparent," Miller insists in his set description (11). By substituting a transparent setting for a bisected head, Miller invited the audience to examine the social context as well as the individual organism. Productions that eschew transparent scenery eschew the nuances of this invitation. The transparent lines of the Loman home allow the audience physically to sense the city pressures that are destroying Willy. "We are aware of towering, angular shapes behind [Willy's house], surrounding it on all sides. The roofline of the house is one-dimensional; under and over it we see the apartment buildings" (11-12). Wherever Willy Loman looks are these encroaching buildings, and wherever we look as well. Willy's subjective vision is expressed also in the home's furnishings, which are deliberately partial. The furnishings indicated are only those of importance to Willy Loman. That Willy's kitchen has a table with three chairs instead of four reveals both Linda Loman's unequal status in the family and Willy's obsession with his boys. At the end of Act I, Willy goes to his small refrigerator for life-sustaining milk (cf. Brecht's parallel use of milk in //Galileo//). Later, however, we learn that this repository of nourishment, like Willy himself, has broken down. That Willy Loman's bedroom contains only a bed, a straight chair, and a shelf holding Biff's silver athletic trophy also telegraphs much about the man and his family. Linda Loman has no object of her own in her bedroom. Willy Loman also travels light. He has nothing of substance to sustain him. His vanity is devoted to adolescent competition.

Year of Publication //Death of a Salesman// was published in 1949. In that year, America was enjoying an economic boom that initiated a significant trend: the absorption of small businesses by large corporations that reduced the importance of the individual worker and increased the importance of the company as a whole and its bottom line. To an extent, Willy Loman must cope with this trend.
 * 10. What was the social context in which the play was written? **

** The American Dream ** : in the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s, many pursued “the American dream” of hard work rewarded by middle-class signs of success such as a house, a car, a college education, and household appliances. //Death of a Salesman// has frequently been understood as a commentary on the American dream and whether the dream’s economic prosperity is truly available to anyone who works diligently, and the importance the dream places on material wealth invites selfishness and social injustice.

Willy: "I'm the New England man. I'm vital in New England." Willy: "He's liked, but he's not well liked." Willy:"The man who makes an appearance in the business world, the man who creates personal interest, is the man who gets ahead. Be liked and you will never want." Willy: “The man knew what he wanted and went out and got it! Walked into a jungle and comes out, the age of twenty-one, and he's rich!" Linda: "I don't say he's a great man. Willie Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper. 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. He's not to be allowed to fall in his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person." Linda: "A small man can be just as exhausted as a great man."
 * Quotable Quotes **
 * ACT ONE **

Willy:"Before it's all over we're gonna get a little place out in the country, and I'll raise some vegetables, a couple of chickens..." Willy: "You can't eat the orange and throw the peel away - a man is not a piece of fruit." Willy:”"After all the highways, and the trains, and the appointments, and the years, you end up worth more dead than alive." Biff:"I realized what a ridiculous lie my whole life has been." Willy: "I've got to get some seeds. I've got to get some seeds, right away. Nothing's planted. I don't have a thing in the ground." "Biff: Pop! I'm a dime a dozen, and so are you! Willy: I am not a dime a dozen! I am Willy Loman, and you are Biff Loman!"
 * ACT TWO **

** REQUIEM ** Happy:"I'm gonna show you and everybody else that Willy Loman did not die in vain. He had a good dream. It's the only dream you can have - to come out number-one man. He fought it out here, and this is where I'm gonna win it for him."