So, I just got "Death of a Salesman", by Miller (1949) under my belt of readings... and I've got to say, it's not what I expected. Upon listening about it in class, I originally thought of it, as the story of an American family, that only wanted to escape this world that has been under the domain of social statuses, just because they didn't fit in it. After that, I watched (after a recommendation of the teacher) the 'Thug Notes' of the play, by the YouTuber Wisecrack (best name ever, btw). He gave me a more certain idea of what the experience of reading such an antique play would be, and it was that of an old man, a family man, fighting against the consequences of being a simple salesman, with a good-for-nothing son, which ended up in him giving up life and reality.
Of course, this wasn't the whole thing going on with the play, and naturally, once I read it myself, I got the point that (based on other entries) everybody has had, and the one I believe Miller tried to provide so many decades ago. That of a man trying to live the American dream at its fullest, and completely failing at it, which leds him to a mental breakdown.
But what is the American dream to this man? It's a combination of a life of economical success and high social status that he clearly can't achieve and wasn't able to during his whole life, and providing his children, more accurately, Biff, with the means to become a representation of this dream.
When Biff and Happy (Biff's younger brother) where young, Willy had over sighted a fantastic future for them, and up to the point of their final transition from youngsters to adults, everything started to get darker and darker for Willy.
He was caught cheating on his wife, which led his most promising son to stop caring about his future. This evolved into what I believe, is the greatest representation of "escaping reality" provided by the play (other than Willy's constant daydreaming), and that is, do not live and work based on something you will not be able to do, otherwise, you'll end up like William, who ends up killing himself because he wasn't able to escape the eventual whole he was destined to be in because of his actions. He constantly escaped reality by daydreaming, and when he got fired (climax of his "demise" against life) of the salesman business, this wasn't possible anymore, so he had to escape, for ever.
All of this made me understand certain aspects of what was living under a dream in that time, and I could not help of thinking about Snyder's poem "Riprap".
"The world's like an endless
Four-dimensional
Game of Go."
(Snyder, 1969)
In this verse, Snyder lightens life as something with endless possibilities (Something I can relate to, I've had this exact thought of life since 2013, no kidding), where one has to have at least four approaches to be able to 'play' in it correctly. I thought of them as Dreams, Self-Awareness, Community and Autonomy, and when you think of it that way, does the name Biff from, oh, I don't know, Death of a Salesman comes to mind?
He eventually had all of those, or at least was willing to do so. Sadly, his father wasn't able to approach life in the same way, as he was too much dream and nothing of Autonomy and Self-Awareness (specially the latter one, he never accepted his place in the world.)
With all that said, this play taught me to be more wise with my decisions, or else, I'll end up like Willy, the salesman
That's as deep as I believe I can get with this, did you get something similar from this? or do you believe I'm crazy? say something about it in the comments!
PS. If Biff's mother was named Martha, it would have been the most perfect play ever.
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ResponderEliminarPersonally I think that Miller’s idea of showing how the American Dream was about on those years is great, however, I don’t think that EVERY family had the same obsession about fulfilling the American Dream, where if you can’t fulfill it, you are not worthy to live in that society. Also I think the whole plot of the play is too exaggerated (even when that is the point of the tragedy) but that is just my point of view, because at least for me, was too predictable.
ResponderEliminarWhile i was finishing the play, I started thinking about “what would I do if I were in Willy’s shoes?”, many thing came to my mind, at first, probably I would tried my hardest in order to get out of that situation (having no job and no money) because even when Willy knew that he had all these problems, he didn’t do anything, he preferred to sit and complain about it, but of course, he had some mental issues so is quite understandable.
Another thing about the play is that I hated was Biff as a character, because every decision that he made, were the worst, from beginning to end, I mean, COMMON, why he had to hate his father after he discovered that he was cheating on his mother, I mean, he had the perfect father until that point so why he cannot just forgive him instead of doing all the opposite things that Willy always wanted for him? Is like a massive revenge for just that thing, and finally he realizes that he was wrong when it didn’t matter because Willy had already planned his suicide, it was just painful to read.