In ancient times, lightyears from where we presently are, people used to write letters, some of a personal nature, others pertaining to business, to express themselves. This long-gone behavior was abruptly replaced by the internet’s email and rapid-fire texts. Because Mr. Miller’s play, Death of a Salesman, had universal appeal, it was read by most of us in high school or in college and/or seen performed on the stage. After the great success it had on Broadway in 1949, when it opened, he received a letter from a student, Barbara Beattie, studying journalism, asking him how he came to construct the play. Barbara’s daughter, in helping her 95-year mother relocate, fortuitously found the letter in her mother’s attic, stored in a trunk with some of her other keepsakes. I consider it a gem inasmuch as it revealed Miller’s approach to theater. However, as you may guess, there is more to what I read in this review of a letter than at first meets the eye.
In the letter, the playwright pointed out that the genesis of Death of a Salesman came from Elizabethan drama, namely, Shakespeare. The playwright enumerated on this by saying the heart of Shakespearian tragedy is rooted in the Fall where chaos occurs when social status embodied by royalty is threatened. Hamlet, the protagonist of Shakespeare’s most widely read play, is faced with the dilemma of what to do with his uncle, Claudius, upon proving that the latter had murdered his father, the former King of Denmark. There is a complete upheaval of social status that is sacrosanct in Elizabethan feudalism. Hamlet has no legal recourse or alternative, but to take matters in his own hands, resulting in the revenge he seeks against King Claudius. The outcome being the tragic deaths of several of the characters in the play, including Hamlet.
But, as Miller talked about, in viewing contemporary society, namely that of America, the Fall no longer represents that of a socially elevated person exclusively. Thinking more abstractly, Miller interpreted the Fall in a much broader sense than social status. Rather, in America, Miller states that his view of the Fall is much deeper insofar as it is rooted in the “destruction of a man’s idea of what he is by forces opposing him.” Willie Loman, the principal character in Death of a Salesman, suffers from his need to be accepted by what he can accumulate materialistically, but not what he can offer to society. He possesses an illusory state of mind insofar as he tirelessly seeks what he considers to be the American Dream.
The force that moves Willie is his need to succeed by what he views as the standards of others. He is so wrapped up in his job identity that when he loses his job, he loses his self, causing him to undermine his relationship with his sons and wife. His son, Biff, wants so badly to be revered by his father but is taken aback when he catches his father with another woman. The betrayal of love and one’s inner values conflict with this image of father that Biff sees in Willie. The loss of a moral center, where the ideas of a man are trampled by his underlying need for fame and fortune, result in the tragic death of Willie.
Later in life, Mr. Miller took on a much greater task than writing drama, when he lived it in marrying Marilyn Monroe. Although Monroe was and still is an icon of fame and fortune, there was something in her inner core that left her deeply frustrated and unhappy with her life. Mr. Miller could not fill the hollowness that she experienced and, the two subsequently divorced. Mr. Miller, similar to Willie’s family, could not save Marilyn, and two years later, her life came to an abrupt and sad ending.
In his letter, the playwright pointed out that his view of tragedy reverses the idea of contributing to society by believing that accumulating the accoutrements of fame represent the greater good. Whether we succeed or not at this goal, we are left with a spiritual emptiness, depicted so well in Willie Loman’s plight. We then experience a brooding inner poverty that can lead to the tragedies so central in Mr. Miller’s most noted plays. The tragedies that Mr. Miller speaks of are generally based on that of an individual. But it would be much worse if the conglomeration of individuals that make up America abandon the ideals that made this country so different from others. Willie Loman and Marily Monroe, one fictitious and one real, represent individual tragedies. America was and is an experiment created by humans with ideas that outlawed social stature, by elevating the rights of the common citizen. How sad it would be if these same citizens succumb to the lies and untruths that filter down from social media and other false sources. Individuals that lose their lives prematurely from some ill-fated set of choices or values are indicative of tragedy. But a country that loses sight of its ideals and self-destructs would be a colossal tragedy.
Whereas Arthur Miller wrote about individuals betraying their ideals, perhaps some future playwright will write about how a nation’s people allowed their illusions of grandiosity, contained in their moral bankruptcy, get the better of their natures. And this play, like The Death of a Salesman, may be taught to high schoolers and college students and shown all over the United States. It will be regarded so highly that it will become a part of the core curriculum throughout the country and have a great influence on those who read it. More importantly, it will serve as a beacon to all of us to change the deviant path we find ourselves in the hope of preserving the freedom and liberty so sacred to our country.
Dr. Bernard F. Natelson 