Month: October 2008

Given Circumstances: Geo, Date, Economic [REVISED]

by Paul Kappel

Geographical Location:

The play is set in Brooklyn, a neighborhood (and one of the five boroughs) of New York City.  Brooklyn is known as being a hotspot for many different cultures including Italian, Russian, Irish, Polish, and German Americans. Although this is the physical location for the Loman home, Willy's imaginary conversations occur in and around New York City and Boston.

Date/Year/Season/Time:

Late 1940's, early spring, taking place over the course of one day.

Economic Environment:

Willy Loman, as a salesman is living soley off of his commissions, and is clearly not able to make ends meet as he frequently seeks loans from Charley. The economic environment is the keystone of this work, with much of Willy's frustration and agony centering on wealth.

Towards the beginning of the play, we see Willy's conversations with Ben, his wealthy brother, who had millions by his 21st birthday- Willy is clearly extremely envious of this fame, and although being unable to replicate it for himself, seeks to pass the wisdom to his sons Biff and Happy.

One of the strongest motifs in the play is Willy's desire for his children's financial security, something which he will never know. In his internal conversations about their planned sports franchise in Florida, he dwells on the duo turning a profit and making money. Willy does never discover this for himself though and remains stuck in his economic class without ambitions for his own success.

It is likely that due to his brothers amazing and unbelievable ease of making money paired with his back breaking and agonizing over every cent which passes through his wallet, that we find the motivation of Willy's character.

Previous Action – Act 1

by Paul Kappel

(in approximate cronological order)

-Willy’s brother Ben went into the jungle when he was seventeen and came out rich when he was twenty-one.
-Willy accepts a job as a salesman.
-Willy decides not to take a trip with Ben to Alaska.
-Willy promises that he will start his own business and spend more time with his family.
-Biff stole a number of basketballs from Bill Oliver.
-Biff nearly flunks math class and has poor grades in school, but Willy encourages him to use his personality and looks.
-Happy moved out of the home and lives in an apartment, drives his own car, and has lots of women.
-The company which Willy works for as a salesman reduces his pay to straight commission.
-Biff lost his job again, this is something which happens almost yearly in the spring.
-Biff sent a letter home saying that he would be returning soon.
-Willy was out driving and had to return home because he could not keep his mind on driving and was dreaming.

Research – Postwar historical context

Source: http://www.ushistory.org/us/53b.asp:

“For many generations and many decades, the American Dream has promised an egalitarian society and material prosperity. For many, the notion of prosperity remained just a dream”.  The American ideals that Willy Loman holds are an American tradition.  His views of the ability to make it big with a wink and a smile are not an anomaly; they are fostered by generations of success stories of very talented underdogs who did just that.  Unfortunately, this becomes a dangerous notion when an ordinary man like Willy thinks himself to be something more.

However, for millions of Americans after the war, “the American Dream became a reality. Within their reach was the chance to have a house on their own land, a car, a dog, and 2.3 kids.  Postwar affluence redefined the American Dream. Gone was the poverty borne of the Great Depression, and the years of wartime sacrifice were over. . . Automobiles once again rolled off the assembly lines of the Big Three: Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler. The Interstate Highway Act authorized the construction of thousands of miles of high-speed roads that made living farther from work a possibility”. Suddenly after the war, there are not only those not fit for combat competing for success, but a surplus of Americans vying for the very things that Willy has been suffering for.  Specifically, the accessibility of a personal automobile makes it even easier for energetic young salesmen to flood Willy’s area of expertise.  This new affluence makes Willy and his sons even more redundant in both the workplace and society.

Arthur Miller has a marked distaste for the consumerism that came out of this period of prosperity.   “In our big car civilization we still clutch to our breasts these chromium-plated iron hulks in the hope that they are salvation” (Bigsby xxx).  Yet in Willy’s case, the perceived salvation of materialism causes him to lose any opportunity to be himself in the drive to become the ideal prosperous American.

Idea and Metaphor- Metaphor

By Eric Houdek 

As we talked about earlier, there were two metaphors from the play that encompassed the whole meaning of the play. 

Howard: Kid, I can’t take blood from a stone(Pg. 81)

Willy: The world is an oyster, but you can’t crack it open on a mattress.(pg. 41)

Both of these metaphors summarize the play itself.  Willy Loman is a man who believes that being well liked by everyone will lead to sucess in the real world.  This is evident when he tells Biff that Bernard will never succeed in the real world because being a book worm does nothing to add to his popularity.  This ties in to the fact that Willy is a delusional character. Although he literally sees delusions throughout the course of the play, Willy has a warped perception of reality.  Willy embraces the American dream, which is to “make it big” and to take care of his family.  However, Willy uses the salesman Dave Singleman to make the decision to use “salesmanship” as the means to achieve the American dream.  There is nothing deceptive about Singleman’s name.  He dies a SINGLE MAN, and most likely he didn’t die with a lot of money, for he had to be out working at the age of 84.  It is with a warped sense of reality that Willy sets out to conquer the world.  Raising his children, Willy chooses not to instill many disciplinary values in his children, and even looks down upon Charley’s son Bernard for being a nerd.  As time passes by, and it is evident that many of Willy’s means of achieving success have not been successful, Will still comes to the conclusion that he can take care of his family by killing himself to achieve an insurance reward of $20,000.  He commits this act, but once again, he is using the wrong means to address the problem.  He leaves his wife a widow, his son Biff has no intentions of using money for the sake of business and has plans of moving away, and it is entirely possible that the insurance company did not even honor the policy.

SO WE NEED TO FINALIZE OUR METAPHOR…

Some Previous Actions of Principal Characters who have Polar Attitudes n’ such

Willy's need to be well liked most likely stems from his abandonment issues with his father and brother.   Ben describes his father as a masculine man who was skilled with his hands and had an entrepreneurial spirit.  According to Ben, Willy's father was a successful salesman who produced what he sold.  We see Willy's fear of abandonment in his memory of Ben's visit.  When Ben says he must leave to catch a train, Willy frantically searches for ways to delay his departure.  He shows off his children to Ben in a desperate plea for approval.  With his father and Ben gone, Willy is unable to develop a normal concept of self worth.  Therefore, he models that self worth after the American dream which is highly unrealistic.  He ends up downplaying more important measures such as family love and support, and the freedom to choose what to do with your life.   It becomes fairly clear that Willy made a poor choice in becoming a salesman after we see his dream of living in the Alaskan woods which related to the American dream of living life on the frontier.  The image of the American pioneer who searched for riches began to change in the late 1940s as people realized that the real place to strike it rich was through capitalism and consumerism.  Business entrepreneurs replaced the explorers of the old west.  Ben represents a character that was actually able to get rich by literally searching for riches in the wilderness of an African Jungle.  In the end of the book, Willy may be alluding to the fact that he regrets becoming a salesman when he uses gardening as a metaphor for his legacy.  Just as Biff had enjoyed his time working on a ranch, it seems that Willy preferred working in a more natural environment.

Willy's thought processing ability is marred by a lifetime of him creating his own realities to conceal his own failures in achieving his dreams.  His delusions are often revealed in the contradictions that arise from his multiple mindsets.  For example, he refers to his car as a piece of trash at one point and then claims that it is "the finest car ever built."  He says that Biff is a lazy bum in one instance, and later says that he is anything but lazy.  Willy acts as an enabler to Biff's compulsive thievery which later becomes a crippling habit. He never reprimands Biff for his bad grades or the stealing and even laughs when Biff first steals the football and is impressed with his ability to get away with theft.  It is possible that Willy doesn't reprimand Biff because he fears damaging Biff's ego or that he fears that Biff will no longer like him.

At the beginning of the play, Biff and Happy have come back home and are currently sharing their old room. Biff is the oldest son who was a football star in high school with several scholarships, but for the last fourteen years he has been unable to find himself and he has lost a great deal of his confidence. He is a war veteran and has had six or seven jobs since his time in the war (including one job as a worker on a ranch which he enjoyed).  He taught his younger brother about women although he has no idea how to act around them.  Biff is in a cycle of going home every time that he gets fed up with a job and then leaving home because of a fight with his father.  He recently returned from somewhere in the West because his mother asked him to see his father.  Biff and Happy went to school with Charlie's son, Bernard, who is now a prominent, successful lawyer.  Happy works in a department store and has his own apartment in different part of New York.  Willy has clearly favored Biff over Happy during their childhood because Biff represented a potential for the American dream with his reputation as a football star and his various scholarship offers.  Happy began to emulate the high school Biff in an attempt to get his father's approval.  Willy would praise Biff's success with women and his ability to get away with theft. As a result, Happy competed with more successful men by sleeping with their women as a form of theft that also established his sexual dominance.

Environment note

One noteworthy aspect of the environment is that a good deal of the action in the play is set in the Loman household.  When Willy first moved in, the Brooklyn neighborhood was a distant, quiet suburb of the city.  It represented Willy's American dream home for his future as there was plenty of open space for development and gardening.  However, as time went on, the house began to reflect Willy's diminishing optimism.  The house became overwhelmed by apartment buildings as well as the noise and pollution of New York City.  Soon there was barely any light able to reach the garden in the backyard.  This densely urban setting conflicts with Willy's idea of the American dream being lived on the wild frontier.

The Nominal Phrase

  • Sam Beaver, but really all three of us cuz this was during our meeting.  
  • Nominal Phrase:  Capital is not an ends in itself, but a means. 
  • Willy Loman has some serious issues with money.  He fails to realize that getting money will not bring happiness.  To him, capital is the ends, the final goal of life.  As we see, he eventually gives his life for this end.   Miller is making the point that throughout “DOS” that in order to be truly successful one must love and respect his family.  Willy Loman does not understand that money is not the solution to his problems, and as a result dies in the pursuit.  Though money does aid one’s situation in life, the accumulation of wealth is not the thing that makes a man happy, as we can see from Biff’s final decision to move out west.  Willy’s self isolation from his family in the form of his death is his ultimate failure in DOS.  

Dialogue/ Research

http://geocities.com/richston2/puns/miller.htm I found this site interesting. They have a lot of information about the roots of words used ect…, here’s some of the things I found most pertinent.  it appears that the title of the play itself is also the source of additional wordplay. Consider the folowing English words as an example: —de-, a preix meaning “opposite of”; —eath, earlier form of ease, “freedom from hard work and financial problems”. It is akin to easy, “socially at ease”; –of a say-less man, i.e., Charley. This wordplay manifests itself in the passage wherein Willy says that people do not seem to take to him and are either laughing at him or avoiding him when he walks into a place–an uncomfortable position. Linda then attempts to change the subject to a positive one by pointing out that Willy makes seventy to one hundred dollars a week, but he laments that he has to work ten to twelve hours a day to obtain that much and that other men do it more easily. He blames it on the fact that he talks and jokes too much, in contrast to the quieter Charley.  Charley: “You never heard from him again, heh? Since that time?” Willy: “Didn’t Linda tell you? Couple of weeks ago we got a letter from his wife in Africa. He died.” Charley: “That so”. Ben: So this is Brooklyn, heh?”…. Ben: “I must make a train, William. There are several properties I am looking at in Alaska”. Willy: “Sure, sure! If I’d gone with him to Alaska that time, everthing would have been different”. Charley: “Go on, you’d froze to death up there”. Willy: “What’re you talking about?” Ben: Opportunity is tremendous in Alaska, William. Surprised you’re not up there”. Willy: Sure, tremendous”. Charley: “Heh?” Willy: “That was the only man I ever met who knew the answers”. Charley:”Who?” Ben: How are you all?” Willy: “Fine, fine”. Charley: “Pretty sharp tonight”. Ben: “Is Mother living with you?” Willy: “No, she died a long time ago”. Charley: “Who?” Ben: “That too bad. Fine specimen of a lady, Mother”. Willy [to Charley]: “Heh?” Ben: “I’d hoped to see the old girl”. Charley: “Who died?” Ben: “Heard anything from Father, have you?” Willy: “What do you mean, who died?” Charley: “What’re you talking about?”  This conversation between Willy, Ben and Charley is a good example of how Miller uses dialogue to reveal Willy’s failing grasp of reality and the world. His sentences are short, mixed up, and he clearly cannot keep on top of what is really happening around him (the card game with Charley) and what is only in his mind (Ben). In fact, Charley says the least during the scene, answering with usually just a single, monosyllabic word, revealing that Willy is really becoming more connected with the world of the dead than that of the living. 

Happy – Dialogue

Happy’s dialogue suggests a yearn for acceptance, especially from Willy. As Alex noted, everything Happy says is sugar coated. He agrees with people, tells them what they want to hear, and has no qualms about making himself out to be bigger and better than he really is. For instance, during the dinner scene at the restaurant, it becomes clear that Happy is a smooth talker, and he doesn’t let the truth get in the way of a good story. This sort of dialogue is reflective of the kind of talk we hear from Willy, who also has no qualms about exaggerating the truth. He tells Linda that, “I did five hundred gross in Providence and seven hundred gross in Boston.” He borrows money from Charley instead of telling Linda he isn’t making enough. Happy, the second son, has picked up on this trait. It is clear he is devoted to Willy, at least in his youth. Three times he says this exact line, “I’m losing weight, you notice Pop?” Willy never replies, because he doesn’t take much notice of Happy when he has Biff, his golden boy to fawn over. Happy never gives up trying to please his father. He tells Willy, “…I’m gonna retire you for life” which certainly isn’t happening with his current paycheck or lifestyle. 

Erica Brotzman – Units Analysis

UNIT 1 — "It's all downhill from here"

  • Willy returns home — Linda wakes
  • Linda wakes — Linda questions
  • Linda questions –Willy explains
  • Willy explains – Linda suggests
  • Linda suggests – Willy justifies
  • Willy justifies – Linda concedes

 

Summary of Action – Willy returns home unexpectedly to a concerned wife, who makes suggestions regarding his current employment situation. 

 

Unit 2 – "PMS"

  • Willy inquires (of sons) – Linda explicates
  • Linda explicates – Willy bitches          
  • Willy bitches – Linda defends
  • Linda defends – Willy revokes
  • Willy revokes – Linda dotes
  • Linda dotes – Willy rants
  • Willy rants – Sons awaken

Summary of Action — Willy changes the topic of conversation with Linda to his sons and their situations and they eventually are awakened by his ranting and raving. **please feel free to edit/comment/review.  The more brains the better.