Death of a Salesman

Arthur Miller's play Death of a Salesman (1949) follows the downward spiral of Willy Loman, a traveling salesman who suffers several setbacks in his life, culminating in his dismissal from his job and eventual suicide. Loman's problems at work parallel his troubles at home, where he faces mounting debt and family tensions. The play's themes reflected anxieties about the meaning of middle-class masculinity in postwar America, and it enjoyed both critical acclaim and popular success.

In its exploration of masculinity and failure, Death of a Salesman addressed important concerns prompted by changing ideals of white middle-class masculinity. While the ability to provide for one's family remained an essential element of masculinity—and became even more important amid economic prosperity and the availability of new domestic products—many Americans no longer considered it sufficient. The postwar baby boom and the growth of suburbia promoted a model of family togetherness in which mature and responsible manhood required men to be engaged and emotionally accessible fathers as well as breadwinners. White middle-class men also faced transitions at the workplace as white-collar employment became increasingly bureaucratic and impersonal. These changes at home and work encouraged men to be “other-directed,” striving to fit in and conform to those around them.

By these new standards of masculinity, Willy Loman considers himself a failure. He had embraced the idea of the American dream, whereby hard work would earn men a good income, recognition at the job, family harmony, and comfortable surroundings at home. Instead, he became faceless and expendable to a new boss who found his declining sales more important than his many years of loyal service. At home, Loman's attempts to provide his family with such domestic commodities as a house, car, refrigerator, and vacuum cleaner have left him drowning in debt. The ideal of family togetherness also eludes Loman as distance and disappointment mark his relationships with his two adult sons. He had tried to instill in them the idea that popularity and personality, rather than skill and character, were central to masculinity and success. His sons, however, come to regard Loman as a pathetic figure and believe that his advice contributed to their own bouts with failure.

Loman increasingly retreats into the past, revisiting and second-guessing many of his choices. As he confronts his shortcomings as a man, he idealizes his older brother Ben, who had searched successfully for adventure and entrepreneurship on the frontier of Alaska. In this way, Ben represents an alternative to postwar masculinity, one that evoked nineteenth-century ideals of manhood based on risk-taking and independence in an expanding West. Back [Page 127]in the present, however, Loman continues to encounter embarrassment and failure. He commits suicide, confident that his life insurance money will enable his family to succeed. Only in death can Willy Loman find success as a breadwinner and family man.

Questioning the model of masculinity generated by American business culture, Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman found a receptive audience in postwar America. It resonated with American men who felt dissatisfied and suffocated by middle-class ideals of family life and white-collar work. The play also illustrated the concerns of a growing number of critics of postwar life, such as C. Wright Mills and William Whyte, who feared that postwar society was undermining the foundations of American masculinity, creating men who were feminized and weak.

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