My First Great Works Response

Dear Readers,

I just finished my first Honors Great Works response. At the beginning of the semester I saw Theatre Mitu's production of Death of a Salesman in the Pardoe Theatre, and I've just spend the last several hours writing about it. It was a great production, and I wish I'd had more than three pages available to write about it (as you'll see, I spent most of my available text discussing Miller's intentions in the play rather than the implications of this very interesting production). Let me know what you think:

Great Works Response: Death of a Salesman

By the age of thirty, Arthur Miller had lived through two world wars. He was born 17 October 1915 and grew up during that strange period between the two world wars. His parents, Isadore and Augusta Miller, were Polish Jews who had immigrated to the United States. Though his father was illiterate, he was a very successful businessman and so young Arthur and his sister Joan grew up in a comfortable up-town situation in Manhattan. His father’s clothing store suffered major losses when the stock market crashed and the Miller family was forced to move to Brooklyn. Then a teenager, Miller worked as a bread delivery-boy to contribute to his family’s finances and, after graduating from Abraham Lincoln High School, took menial jobs to pay for his education. This particular period of his life was very influential later on, especially in the writing of his classic Death of a Salesman. The events of his young life—quickly descending from a well-to-do socioeconomic position to a poor one and so drastically changing his lifestyle to deal with this change—are clearly reflected in his discussions on the definition of success and the nature of the American dream as expressed through his play.

It was at the University of Michigan when he first began writing plays, earning awards for his collegiate work. After earning his BA, he fluttered around working for various theatre companies. He was exempted from military service during World War II because of a high school football injury, and during this time he married and had children. In 1948, he settled in Roxbury, Connecticut and quickly wrote Death of a Salesman, his first masterpiece. His play opened on Broadway 10 February 1949 to much success. He won the Tony Award for best author, the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award, and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. (Historical information courtesy of Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Miller>)

This particular production of Theatre Mitu finds itself in a context that is historically similar to the play’s original production and the events in Miller’s life that influenced its writing. The play was originally created soon after a major war. This production was begun in the middle of a major war. The effects of the Great Depression heavily influenced Miller’s writing. The current economic recession turned serious during this production’s rehearsal process, and many real American families are dealing with the same challenges that Miller faced in his youth and that the Loman family faces in the play. Given the globalized nature of today’s world, Theatre Mitu’s choice to use world theatre traditions to tell this story is very appropriate.

Death of a Salesman tells the two intertwined stories of Willy Loman and his son Biff. Through the story of Willy’s death and Biff’s self-discovery, Miller both celebrates the American Dream and mourns its death. In a way, he redefines the American dream and questions a typical American view of success. Half the story is shown in the real-life interactions of the Loman family in and around their New York home, and half of the story is shown in the hallucinations and recollections of the aging Willy Loman. These two means of story-telling reveal the vast distance between the way Willy Loman perceives himself (and those around him) and the way the world sees him. It is through this dichotomy that Miller begins to questions typical definitions of success. The title of the tragedy gives away the ending—Willy Loman dies. But it is not his death that makes this play a tragedy—it is the sympathy that we, the audience/readers, have for this poor old man. Yes, he made mistakes. Yes, he was very delusional by the end of his life. And yet he worked hard every day of his life, he always did what he thought was best for his family, and he was determined to live and provide a good life for himself and his wife and children. We want him to have been successful, and it is fair to say that he was more successful than his colleagues would say.

But it doesn’t stop here. It is through the character of Biff Loman that Miller expresses the new definition of success, or at least the promise of it. Biff’s journey is one of self-discovery and honesty. He was born with his father’s tendency to deceive himself, and throughout the course of the play he learns to overcome this vice. He musters up the strength of character to look at his life realistically and accomplishes a feat that his father never did—he admits that he hasn’t been successful and he accepts responsibility for it. And here is the key to Miller’s message—Biff doesn’t move forward from this point by pursuing the success his father sought—a cushy job making telephone calls to thirty-one states while sitting at home in green slippers. He seeks to create his own success through hard work. And this, to me, is Miller’s message—that success and the American dream are not defined by the ease of life that one can achieve, but what one accomplishes through hard work and internally motivated ambition.

My pre-college life bears many similarities to Biff Loman’s progression as a character in Death of a Salesman. I am the ninth of eleven children, and each older sibling has been very successful in many aspects of life. As a child I was very precocious—full of promise, as was Biff. There came a point, however as I began to mature, that I learned how to be lazy. I became too reliant on my identity as a Frandsen. I was a Frandsen, and Frandsens are successful no matter what. This I knew. What I forgot was that Frandsens are successful because they work hard. Unfortunately, I was not a hard worker, and I quickly fell off of the pedestal of success in my high school years, but I refused to admit it. Though I was not living up to the standards of my older siblings, nor to my own potential, I refused to admit that my performance was lacking, until I couldn’t possibly deny it any more. As I have come to BYU, I have learned, like Biff learns in Death of a Salesman that success comes through hard work and not through the privilege of identity. There certainly have been difficulties, relapses, and obstacles to overcome, as I’m sure Biff faced as his life as a character continued after the end of the play. What matters is that I, like Biff, am much more honest with myself. I’ve developed the humility to work hard and I am committed to stick to it. In my mind, this is success.

Here are some wonderful videos I watched last night. I think the humor is brilliant. Enjoy!







--Christian