![]() ![]() Though the play's environment is one we associate with a grubby realism, its style is like a clean accounting on the books of an understanding but severe sage. "Death of a Salesman" stirs us by its truth, the ineluctability of its evidence and judgment which permits no soft evasion. It might have been graven on stone-like tablets of law. There is poetry in "Death of a Salesman"-not the poetry of the senses or of the soul, but of ethical conscience. For this reason his play is clearer than those of other American playwrights with similar insight whose lyric gifts tend to reflect the more elusive and imponderable aspects of the same situation. His talent is for a kind of humanistic jurisprudence: he sticks to the facts of the case. Ultimately, hoping to get life insurance money after his death, Willy determines to take his own life." Linda chooses to ignore the way Willy lives his life, but Biff never can. Biff never forgave Willy and now his anger spills out. There had been tension and anger between Willy and Biff for many years, stemming from the fact that Biff once went to visit his father on a sales trip and found him in a hotel room with a woman. Willy becomes embroiled in an argument with Biff as a result. Trying to calm their father, Biff and Happy tell their father that Biff plans to make a business proposition to an old friend the next day.īut the friend doesn't come through as hoped and Biff decides to return to the West. Willy walks in, furious that the two boys have never amounted to anything. ![]() Both have noticed his indecisiveness and daydreaming. The brothers reminisce about their childhood and discuss their father's mental state. Biff has unexpectedly returned from working in Texas as a ranch hand and Happy has come home to see Biff. The play begins with Willy coming home exhausted after a sales trip. Rather, he is an egotist who doesn't appreciate his wife and children and cannot acknowledge his failure as a salesman. Willy is not a successful father, a faithful husband, or an above-average salesman, as he brags he is. A 63-year-old salesman who has spent his adult life making sales calls through the northeastern United States, Willy and his wife, Linda, have two grown sons, Biff and Happy, and have lived in the same house for the last 25 years. It is a montage of present-day fact mixed with daydreams, memories, and hallucinations, which make up the last 24 hours of Willy Loman's life. Now, Ford's Theatre is giving a very polished production to Salesman, one that leaves no doubt as to why this play has remained so beloved since it was first produced in 1949. It's a work that emphasizes the hollowness and bitterness of a generation that lived through the Great Depression, hoping for salvation through material success, only to find that success a meaningless delusion. "Many consider Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman to be his finest play. ![]()
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