[lit-ideas] Re: FW: Death of a Thinker
- From: "Andreas Ramos" <andreas@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2005 11:10:02 -0800
From: "William Ball" <ballnw@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> Willy took the road well worn, not "The Road Not Taken". He chose the
> worn road that leads to nowhere, the road of any salesman, or safe job
> in the civil service. He should have gone to Alaska to mine for gold. He
> should have made flutes, like the one we hear in the play, he should
> have had the courage to follow his dreams.
By coincidence, I read Death of a Salesman (DoS) a month ago. Several friends
saw I was
reading it, so they borrowed it, and we talked about it for several days
afterwards.
Willy didn't give up on his dreams. He had a grand life as a salesman. He was a
Big Man.
Everyone knew his name. He has a large sales territory and made good money. He
was a True
Believer in the American Dream. The flutes are his dreams.
But when he became old and his sales slipped, the company threw him out,
despite their
promises to take care of him.
His sons are Happy and Biff (what names!). Biff spent several years working out
West. But it
turns out he was just bumming around at petty jobs and spent some time in
prison, probably
also for a petty crime. He had been successful in school but his grades crashed
when he
found out his father was having a cheap affair on the road.
Willy's problem is his disconnect between his understanding of the world (The
American
Dream, his Salesman success) and the world: he's washed up, his son is a petty
drifter, his
house is old and not nice anymore. He lies to his wife, to his sons, and to
himself, and
occassionally, he sees through his own lies.
The title has two meanings: the death of Willy (the person who loses his job),
and the death
of a Salesman (a salesman who sells the American Dream, but loses faith in that
dream.)
The Salesman isn't just an icon: there are Salesmen (with capitalization). Zig
Ziglar is
easily the best-known Saleman; he is passionate about the art of selling. I
deal with quite
a few people in sales and marketing (i.e., S&M) and they have all read Zig's
books and many
of them have attended his lectures. Ziglar has been on the road since the 50s
or 60s and he
is still on the road, holding his seminars and lectures. If you want to
understand Miller's
play, I strongly recommend that you read one of his books. (There's also Tom
Hopkins,
another Salesman.)
I really do think that DoS is about capitalism. Miller finds a Hero of
Capitalism (the
Salesman) and shows the underside: the salesman is pitched out when he is no
longer useful.
One could write (and there probably is) a play on the Death of a Comrade: a
Hero of the
Soviet Union who gives everything for the USSR and ends up in poverty (or a
gulag). Or Death
of a Neocon: an evangelical True Believer goes to Iraq to enlighten people
about how W.
really cares, but during his prayers, the seeds of doubt begin to worm out of
the dark
manure of his soul.
DoS isn't just about capitalism: it's a very good play because of the
complexity, the
ambiguity, the emotional insights, the very disturbing moments when Willy
realizes he is
lying to himself, and so on (oh, and for Paul, the endless wild sex scenes).
But DoS is an outsider's understanding of business. Yes, there are salemen who
end up as
losers, and there are bad companies such as Enron, but most workers are okay
with their jobs
and they end up with retirements and pensions and their houses in tree-lined
suburbs. In
comparison, if you ever were a graduate in the humanities, David Lodge's novels
about Eng
Lit are extremely funny because he's a professor in literature and he knows the
field from
the inside. I can't imagine that anyone who hasn't been in academia would get
much out of
Lodge's novels.
yrs,
andreas
www.andreas.com
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