Devoured by Moloch

It is kind of difficult to start writing a post about Death of a Salesman by Miller since it has so much to analyze and relate to the American society. Even though the play is very short in length, it has so much content. But, I will mostly focus in Willy Loman’s journey through the whole play.

Although the play has not had an explicit or omnipresent narrator, we know that the story is told from Willy’s perspective. Willy is so devastated by his constant failure in trying to succeed, that he is becoming mentally insane up to a point that he prefers to keep living in the past through memories of  better times, when he was just started his life and still has his dreams untouched by the US society:

“WILLY: Don’t say? Tell you a secret, boys. Don’t breathe it to a soul. Someday I’ll have my own business, and I’ll never have to leave home any more.”

Willy is letting their sons know how important is to work hard, to get in the business, he seems to believe that is the only way to succeed in life, and off course, he wants their sons to remember this. He made a promise in front of their sons that he is determined to achieve it.

We all have made promises to somebody or to ourselves, and we give everything to accomplish them, and if we broke them, we felt just horrible. Now, imagine this father promising to their family that he is going to make it, that he is going to achieve the American Dream, and then inevitably failing.

So for me, the exact part in which Willy’s life broke into pieces is when his eldest son, Biff, returns home. This gives Willy the feeling of not having achieved any success in his (Willy) life at all. 

His son is back, but without having anything in life, without having a bright future, or at least, without having the future Willy wanted for him. Willy always believed that Biff was well qualified to become a man of success, so he didn’t see the reason of their son’s “failure”

“WILLY: Biff Loman is lost. In the greatest country in the world a young man with such—personal attractiveness, gets lost. And such a hard worker. There’s one thing about Biff— he’s not lazy.”

Since that moment Willy start to get lost in the shadows of memories, in which he realize how much he has failed in life, as a worker ( he felt he was never take into consideration when it comes to work), as a husband ( he cheated on Linda ), and as a father (since his son doesn’t find their way). So basically he is screw up by all this memories, and he felt trapped in a life that he cannot manage, the American dream and the society had promised him better opportunities, and all was just a lie, and now he cannot come back to start all again… he is not able to forgive himself for having lost his life trying to success in business, he cannot still living on such horrible society, and he doesn’t really know how to escape.

Now, HOWL by Ginsberg totally fits here. We know that his poem is about a self-destructive generation oppressed by a dominant culture, in this case the American society or more obviously the American dream, which was overvalued. 

The poem feels like it was written for Death of a Salesman, in fact, it seems to have been written in an angry tone, just the same as Willy talks through most of the play.

The strongest connection that I can make with the play and the poem is the one related to Moloch. This beast that feeds on babies that were sacrificed by their own parents is totally the representation of the American society feeding on Willy’s dreams to achieve the American dream.

“What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up

            their brains and imagination? (…)”

“(…) Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the crossbone soulless

jailhouse and Congress of sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgment! Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stunned governments!

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

money! (…)” 

Willy is immerse in this kind of Moloch society which he cannot defeat since he has contribute with his life to support it. He had quit all his dreams, and personal life in order to success, so he ended up sacrificing himself to Moloch in a more literal way (committing suicide) in order to get absolved of his mistakes that he cannot carry on.