Establishing relationships between Death of a Salesman and Howl

Death of a Salesman- Arthur Miller

The play that I chose was Death of a Salesman written by Arthur Miller. It is a play that shows the complexities that Willy Loman- the salesman- and his family face when trying to reach out the American Dream, which is understood as the ideal of succeeding in life in an upward social mobility through hard work. Most of the actions take place in Willy Loman’s house and in some other places that he visits when travelling to work.

So let’s start by explaining what happens in this powerful drama. I don’t want to spoil the “story”, but yes, he dies. He kills himself. He was a 60 years old man whose exhaustion after work was always apparent. But despite of that, he believed that you have to work “to be someone”, you need to bring money home to pay the bills, and you need to be good at business people to succeed. On page 25 he mentions “the man who makes an appearance in the business world, the man who creates personal interest, is the man who gets ahead”. He spent the whole life trying to be this kind of person, and indoctrinate this vision of life to his sons, but he failed. He never made a lot of money; his name was never in the paper... Was he happy with his life? Not apparently. He spent hours going to work and miles driving home sometimes without having earned a cent. After all he said “after all the highways and the trains, and the appointments, and the years, you end up worth more dead than alive” (p.77). But he still thought “There is so much I want to make for”.

This drama reflects the discontent of a family and the constant need to possess something material, the constant need to put money as a central element in life. At the same time, capitalism and consumerism are concepts that remain along the whole drama and appear as destructive to the human spirit, projecting a false image that money brings happiness. Sadly, Willy never realized about what really should matter: his family,  a patient and affectionate wife and sons who admired him. Instead of that, he pursued an empty life trying to be someone that the society and the new system imposed as a successful man.

In the end of the play, Linda- who is Willy’s wife- says “Willy, I made the last payment on the house today. Today, dear, and there will be nobody home. We’re free and clear”, but unhappily he had already died. Maybe Willy just had the wrong dream. He was unable to accept the disparity between the Dream and his own life.

Now that we have a general idea of what this play is about, let’s focus on the analysis of it. To explore relationships between this play and one poem of the Beat Generation, I decided to focus on Howl by Allen Ginsberg, which stands as the celebration of counter culture movement. As appears in Cambridge Dictionary, counter-culture is “a way of life and a set of ideas that are completely different from those accepted by most of society, or the group of people who live this way”. Another definition from Dictionaries.com says that it is “The culture and lifestyle of those people, especially among the young,who reject or oppose the dominant values and behavior of society.” This poem is a kind of tour of the other side of America, that side that is not explicitly shown or mentioned. There are drugs-addicts, prostitutes. There is a visceral rage against the system that requires conformity and selling-out (Rahn, nd). The poem is not just a poem; it is a new vision of America, an expression of indictment against the American culture. In terms of structure, the poem is in elegiac tone (from elegy that is a sad poem or song, especially remembering someone who has died or something in the past. Cambridge Dictionary); the tone of mourning.

One similarity between this poem and the play Death of a Salesman is the theme Capitalism, which comes to cause conflict and separation. In Ginsberg’s poem, Moloc (a Babylonian God) could represent money as the element that causes this conflict:

What sphinx of cement and aluminun bashed open their

            skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?

 Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars!

(…)

Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money!

Another relationship between the play and the poem is the use of the technique Stream of consciousness. In Death of a Salesman this technique can be seen when William’s memories, thoughts and feelings exist outside the primary consciousness, when he moves from the present to past without any barrier of time and space, which make us know about his chaotic state of his mind. In Howl the whole poem could be considered a stream of consciousness, thoughts written with an energetic rhythm, designed even to let you breathe.

To finish off, I’d like to mention one difference which is kind obvious: while literature of the Beat Generation is more bold, straightforward and expressive- and in particular this poem of Allen Ginsberg, the play of Arthur Miller expose an American problem from a less explicit point of view.

If you haven’t read the play Death of a Salesman I strongly recommend you to do it. Even though it is a play of just 112 pages, it is full of emotions that grip you from the beginning until the end.

Rahn, J. nd. The literature Network: The beat Generation. Retrieved from http://www.online-literature.com/periods/beat.php