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摘 要

《推销员之死》是美国戏剧家阿瑟·米勒的作品，它讲述了一个普通美国人威利·罗曼穷尽一生追寻梦想，最后失败自杀的故事。本文将其梦想分成三部分：成为一个好父亲、好丈夫，成为一名伟大的推销员，以及超越邻居的梦想，并从个人原因和社会原因来分析威利·罗曼梦想幻灭的原因。威利把梦想建立在不切实际的期望，不足的自我评价之上，坚信通过个人魅力就能获得成功，最终导致梦想破灭。同时他又深受美国梦的影响, 选择高远的梦想，追求财富和名望。他的悲剧警示人们在选择梦想时要切合自身实际，并在追梦的过程中不断调整，使之适应现实生活。

关键词：《推销员之死》；梦想；破灭；自我评价；美国梦

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 2

3. The Reasons of Disillusion of Willy Loman’s Family Dream 3

3.1 Willy’s unfortunate childhood 3

3.2 Willy’s wrong education methods 4

3.3 Willy’s improper love affair 5

4. The Reasons of Disillusion of Willy Loman’s Career Dream 6

4.1 Unilateral understanding of selling 6

4.2 Inadequate self-knowledge 7

4.3 Blind perseverance 8

4.4 Impractical American Dream 8

5. The Reasons of Disillusion of Willy Loman’s Dream to Surpass His Neighbors 9

5.1 Excessive self-assertion 9

5.2 Betrayal of original Puritan ethic 10

6. Conclusion 11

Works Cited 12

1. Introduction

As one of the greatest twentieth-century world playwrights, Arthur Miller is regarded as the American conscience. His realistic drama writing style and his unique stage expression methods have influenced many other dramatists. The majority of Arthur Miller’s works are based on materials drawing from real life. In his works, Arthur Miller pays much attention to common people and shows his solicitude for humanity.

Arthur Miller was born in 1915 in a Polish Jewish immigrant family. His father was a successful businessman owing a clothing manufactory and his mother was a school teacher. He lived a wealthy and respected childhood. However, the family went through a tough time and lost almost everything in the Wall Street financial crisis. Since then, Arthur Miller began to do some part time jobs to help his family. By working at several menial jobs, he finally saved enough money to attend college at the University of Michigan. These working experiences endowed Miller with a profound understanding of the lower class people’s life, as well as the essence of American Dream. As a witness of tragedies, he tried to speak at full throat for common people to help improve the situation.

As a prominent figure in American theatre, Arthur Miller wrote a lot of famous masterpieces including All My Sons, Death of a Salesman, The Crucible and A View from the Bridge, among which Death of a Salesman was Miller’s most widely admired work. It brought Arthur Miller a worldwide fame. Miller received the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and Tony Award for Best Play. The play was performed on Broadway for 742 times and turned into a film. In 1983, this play was first performed on the stage of Beijing People Art Theater, causing a sensation in China.

Death of a Salesman, written by Arthur Miller, is set in 1949, New York, after the Great Depression. It tells a story of Willy Loman who is a typical traveling salesman. Willy travels all over New England to sell his products. He once had a good operation performance in his work and a welcoming popularity in New England. Besides, he had a happy family life: a gentle wife Linda, two handsome boys Happy and Biff, a house and a working car. However in his sixties, Willy is in bad health and encounters great plights in his business and his family life. He is plunged into life crisis by his waning career, his conflicting relationship with Biff and his inability to give his wife a wonderful life. Illusions keep appearing in his life. After being fired in despair and finding no way to succeed, Willy commits suicide.

2. Literature Review

Since Death of a Salesman has a worldwide influence, Arthur Miller brought this drama to the stages in many other countries. After that, there are countless studies focusing on Arthur Miller and Death of a Salesman in terms of his biography, the special stage expression methods, the typical characters, the theme and the critical social effect of his works both in China and abroad.

The study on Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman in the domestic and overseas has gone deeply into each aspect. Scholars have analyzed this play from the perspective of symbolism, Puritan ethics, stream of consciousness and Nietzsche"s tragic thoughts etc.

When it comes to the detailed reasons of Willy’s tragedy and confusion, scholars’ standpoints can be divided into the following several categories.

Generally speaking, the international scholars paid more attention to the individual ability. Although they recognized that the war and the Great Depression have left marks on American people, they ignored most of the tragic reasons related to the capitalist social system. As Kamp said “it is confusion of the feeling in one’s personal life and the feeling in the working that led to the suspicion and incontinence so it is natural to be self-condemned and hypocritical when he fails” (2010: 12). From the other side, international theorists considered that it was Willy’s hypocritical relationship that made him feel hopeless. “Willy kept a lot of things from his wife, including the income, failure, suffering etc, to maintain his illusion of perfection in front of others” (Offo, 1978: 46). Willy had great expectation of Biff, so the failure of his son also became a psychological barrier for him. Overall, the distorted relationship contributed a lot to Willy’s psychological burden. When he could not bear it any longer, Willy gave up his life.

Scholars in china made many comments on the fictive American Dream, materialism and the definition of success. They concluded Willy’s death to the society. The nature of fluctuate and fictive in the American Dream is always misleading its followers, and however hard they try, they always end up with failure and depression (Wu Hongjun，2008:114).

As an old salesman without a healthy body and open mind, Willy is labored in managing selling. But as a matter of fact one’s value is demonstrated when his production is high (Qin Qiong，2008:170). From this critic, it can be concluded that people’s value is only judged by the money they make and have. Therefore, when people like Willy become old and lost their working performance, both the company and the society would desert them. This truth pushes Willy to lie, to cry, and at last, to commit suicide. Besides, living in a society filled with materialism, citizens unconsciously measured their life with the standard of money and status instead of the happiness of their family and the support of friends.

According to the researches above, there seems nearly no intensive study about the reasons of disillusion of Willy’s three dreams. Thus, an all-sided analysis of Willy Loman’s failure is necessary. This thesis will analyze reasons of the disillusion of Willy’s family dream, career dream and dream to surpass his neighbors in a detailed way.

3. The Reasons of Disillusion of Willy Loman’s Family Dream

As the master of the house, Willy wants to be both a qualified husband who can make his wife’s life comfortable as well as a successful father who can develop his sons into outstanding men. This is an especially important dream for Willy since he does not come from a complete family. However, Willy’s family dream goes bankruptcy finally. Biff is fired several times because of unreasonable theft. Happy also turns out to be a braggart and idler who is busy in flirting with women. Willy’s wife Linda still worries about household expenses.

3.1 Willy’s unfortunate childhood

From Willy Loman’s recollection and illusion, it can be concluded that Willy’s own growing experience casts a shadow over his whole life. He was born in the late 1870s. (We learn that he is 63 in Act One). His father was a nomadic inventor with an expertise in making flutes and his family roamed across the country in a wagon. However, Willy’s father left his family when Willy was only three years old. Then Ben, his elder brother, departed for Alaska in search of their father. According to Ben, he accidentally went south founding himself in Africa and made a fortune by the age of 21. Moreover, Willy also lost mother’s love at an early age as his mother died a long time ago. Willy’s experience of childhood does leave a deep mark on him.

Firstly, Willy admires his father very much, which can be found out from Willy’s eagerness to ask Ben about his father’s story. Thus Willy sets his father as a good example of himself and tries to be a respected father admired by his sons. However, in order to obtain his sons’ admiration, Willy brags himself as a welcomed person everywhere. He exaggerates his great deals and traveling experiences in front of his sons. When these lies are later found out by his sons, his dream to be a respected father is shattered.

Secondly, Ben is a representative of success in Willy’s eyes. As a key figure in this play, he plays an important role in Willy’s life. He is someone who has walked into jungle in Africa with clothes on his back and ended up with diamond mines. He becomes rich in illegal way which can be demonstrated by what he teaches his nephews Biff and Happy: one should never fight with a stranger in a fair way or one will never get out of the jungle. However, Willy follows his successful brother without any self-judgment. He defines his life value on the basis of money without any morality. And even worse, Willy educates his own sons with this life value.

Thirdly, considering that Willy is abandoned by his father and loses his mother at an early age, the formation of his basic values is greatly affected by the society Willy lives in. This means he is more likely to be influenced by the social thoughts and has more difficulty in forming his own judgment. In addition, Willy’s lack of love and education from the family causes Willy’s confusion about how to raise children correctly, especially in developing their morality, which results in his inevitable mistakes in cultivating sons.

3.2 Willy’s wrong education methods

In his way of education, Willy always emphasizes popularity and charismas which are more important than hard-work at school. Willy makes his sons believe that they can be anyone as long as they want, which leads his sons to the road of losing their correct definition of who they are and what kind of people they really want to be.

During the growth of his sons, Willy does not play a role of a qualified father. As parents, people should help children tell right from wrong and get them straight when they make mistakes. All Willy does about his sons’ mistakes are nothing but providing bad advice. He helps develop Biff’s habit of stealing. He takes it casually when Biff fails his exams. He tells his sons not to easily make promise to women, which has a great influence on Happy who sleeps with the woman who is going to be married with his manager. Besides, Willy has an unpractical expectation on Biff and makes Biff develop a sense of superiority, making it hard for him to work under any people.

Another point should be noticed is the relationship between his son Happy and him. There is a plot that Happy proudly tells Willy that he has lost weight, but Willy pays no attention to him. It can be seen that Happy is trying to get Willy’s praise but unfortunately he is ignored by his father. He always lives in the shadow of Biff. Later we know that Happy haunts out with a woman leaving his father alone in the restaurant. Happy seems to treat his father disrespectfully. However, it is understandable that someone acts that way when he seldom gets enough love and care from his family.

3.3 Willy’s improper love affair

When Biff finds out Willy’s love affair in Boston hotel, everything changes. All fantasy disappears when he recognizes that his father betrays his family. Biff begins to doubt what kind of person his father actually is. With no more admiration for his father and no more ambition to go to university, Biff breaks up with his father and leaves his family to go to the west land to find his life. With nothing found, he finally goes home in confusion. Happy also turns out to be an idler who is busy in chasing after women.

Facing the crisis of both his relationship with Biff and Biff’s original promising future, Willy Loman chooses to escape from taking the responsibility. He is afraid to admit failure and fault. During the following years, he is clear about the obstacle in Biff’s life. However, he does nothing to remove the deep gap, no apology, and just let it be. When Bernard refers that secret event which causes great changes in Biff, Willy becomes very anxious and emotional. Willy has no courage to face up to the troubles in life. He would rather stay in the past and in the imagination. He is confused, so he turns to Ben in the illusion to make sure he raises his sons in a correct way and to get some comfort. However, no one could escape from the try.

For Willy’s wife Linda, she is a kind woman caring for her sons and husband. She tries to understand any pain of Willy, forgives Willy’s rudeness to her and comforts him when Willy is in bad mood. Although Linda does not know his love affair, Willy is tortured by the regret all his life.

Finally Willy is forced to confront the truth that it is himself who destroys his dream to be a role model of his sons and a qualified husband.

4. The Reasons of Disillusion of Willy Loman’s Career Dream

Willy Loman spends all his life pursing his dream of being a successful salesman. There was a Golden Age when Willy opened the market of New England for the company. He had a good salary and even dreamed of establishing his own company. His boss thought highly of him, even letting him help name his baby. Later comes the tough time: work becomes more challenging because of fiercer competition. Although Willy works twice as long as others, he can not emulate their achievements. He is trapped in the economic problem and has to borrow money from his neighbor to support his family. Finally, he summons up his courage to talk with his boss, hoping to stay in New York, but is ruthlessly refused. He recognizes that he is deserted by the company when he has nothing to be made use of. In a word, Willy does not lose the final hope until the reality takes everything away from him.

4.1 Unilateral understanding of selling

When establishing his career dream, Willy is deeply influenced by the social trend and bases his dream on unilateral understanding of selling. There is such a line in the play:

“… We’ve got quite a little streak of self- reliance in our family… I realized that selling was the greatest career a man could want. ‘Cause what could be more satisfying than to be able to go, at the age of eighty-four, into twenty or thirty different cities, and pick up a phone, and be remembered and loved and helped by so many different people?”（Miller, 1961: 101）

In Willy’s words, a successful salesman is like Singleman who can support himself even at eighty, live a confident life without turning anyone for help and be respected and liked by everyone who knows him.

However, Willy makes no assessment about what abilities are needed to be a successful salesman. He pays no attention to the products, the services and the promotion skills etc. His selling philosophy is being well-liked by everyone. In fact, the effective marketing approach and believable high quality products are the solid selling foundation. Obviously Willy does not understand the real standard of a successful salesman. In the whole drama, Willy never refers the products he is selling, which means he ignores the value of the products in the selling process. His problem is that he relates the sales performance only to himself. For him, giving up the job also means that he must deny himself all. That is why he can not give up this career dream. In the end he has no choice but to hang on there in despair.

Besides, as the name Singleman implies, the successful cases in American society are too few. Even the great Singleman has to work in his twilight years. There are corners exposing the dark side where people like Willy never recognize.

4.2 Inadequate self-knowledge

Willy is a man lacking self-knowledge. When setting his dream, Willy Loman never takes his own abilities and characteristics into consideration, which results in his failure.

From the perspective of characteristics, Willy is a fragile man. He always thinks that people laugh at his body and do not like his jokes. He is fearful and stressful. For him, a great dream of being a successful salesman can help him get everything he wants from others. However, Willy overlooks the other side of a salesman that every salesman must have a strong will because they will confront with constant rejections from others at any time. On the contrary, Willy fears to be denied by others and is too sensitive to other’s judgments. Thus Willy does not meet the demand of a salesman which is a potential cause of his failure.

Moreover, Willy does not make use of his own gift well when setting his career dream. In fact, many people around him recognize his talent in woodwork and give their praise to Willy’s woodwork. If he takes woodwork as a dream, he could have been a promising carpenter and supports his family easier, but he chooses to be a salesman.

4.3 Blind perseverance

Willy has a blind faith in his dream and his success philosophy. Willy does not realize that not all of his fancy dreams can come true. With more than thirty years’ unceasing pursuing, he carves his dream on the stone. Even when he can hardly find any hope to realize his own dream, he still has a faith in success and believes that his sons can make it finally.

Dreams should be testified by reality and mended during the pursuing. Willy spends 34 years working for the company as a salesman. When reaching his sixties, Willy is still a salesman without any promotion. Time and experience do not make Willy wiser to see the essence of his career, to comment himself justly and to understand that a healthy dream needs to adapt to reality.

Willy never adjusts himself to reality because he never admits the change of time, glory and society, never considers his inability in selling and never tries to live in the present.

In fact, Willy’s wife Linda understands it clearly that Willy just deceives himself as well as his families, but she does not make any efforts to lead his husband to the right road. Instead, she consoles him and encourages him. So in this sense, Linda makes a big mistake that she does not prevent Willy from slipping to the edge of collapse.

4.4 Impractical American Dream

Through Willy’s life, the society had a great influence on his choices and values.

Willy’s personal dream of being a successful salesman is kidnapped by American Dream which persuades people to have fancy dreams beyond their ability. It makes American people refuse being common men and women and settling for simple accommodation. For instance, Willy prefers to be a salesman than a carpenter because American Dream teaches him that careers which can bring people fame and wealth is a proud career. Characters like Singleman and Ben in this play are the spokesmen of American Dream. The society never tells people how many dreamers have sunk in their pursing. In the end, Willy became one of these unfortunate dreamers.

Before the Great Depression, the American glory may properly help more people succeed. However, things changed a lot during the Great Depression: Thousands people lost their jobs and become homeless. As the population was increasing, more business living flats engulfed the original land, and the social competition became fiercer. According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, people have no choice but to fight for survival. As Bigsby wrote:

“During the Depression social aspirations, class presumptions, national myths seemed suddenly irrelevant. The only imperatives were those to do with the survival, the only relationships of value were generated by genuine human necessity” (2006：70).

At that time, everyone must face the fiercer competition without morality, and the whole society set money as the only standard of success. For Willy, It becomes much harder to achieve success in his career. However, Willy does not take these social changes into consideration. He still believes in fancy American Dream until his entire failure drives him to death.

5. The Reasons of Disillusion of Willy Loman’s Dream to Surpass his neighbors

Willy has the dream to surpass his neighbors when he establishes his family. However, it turns out Charley and Bernard are the winners. In this play, Willy’s neighbors Charley and Bernard are the comparison of Willy and his sons. They choose different attitudes towards life, education of children and work, which leads to different results.

5.1 Excessive self-assertion

In the play, Charley represents rationality, reality and morality which Willy lacks. He is always moderate, focuses on practical work but never shows off his property and his son’s high records. He does not think much about Willy’s philosophy that a pleasing personality is the most important factor to succeed. Nevertheless, he does have morality. He cares for friends and provides advice to help Willy from mental collapse.

As Willy’s next door neighbor and only friend, Charley offers Willy many useful advice as well as comfort both in children education and career development. However, Willy is too stubborn and proud to listen to him. For instance, Charley warns Willy not to allow his sons steal from a construction site and that the night watchman would finally catch them. On the contrary, Willy thinks his sons are brave and such behavior is not a big deal. Bernard also warns Willy not to let Biff fail the Maths examination. Willy takes it casually and even asks Bernard help Biff cheating in the exam.

When Willy is in economic difficulty and borrows money from Charley, Charley never refuses him. Besides, he offers his friend a job to get Willy out of despair. Again Willy does not take Charley’s advice, insisting declining Charley’s offer. People can lead a horse to water but can not make him drink. Charley tries to lead Willy to the right way of life and career, but Willy refuses to take it.

For Willy, Charley is a lifelong competitor that he can not take the advice from Charley. Otherwise, it means that he admits that Charley wins and he fails. Willy’s esteem and dignity prevent him from accepting Charley’s help. Willy does not understand that people must learn from others to achieve their goals.

5.2 Betrayal of original Puritan ethic

Miller praises the Puritan ethic in this play through Charley and Bernard. By contrast, Willy fails with his belief about the key to success. Charley successfully runs his business and Bernard becomes a famous lawyer. They are hardworking, modest and moral without putting their dream on the basis of fantasy and well-liked fame. Willy is just the opposite. He betrays the original Puritan ethic in the name of being popular. Therefore, he can not escape the justification of fate.

Willy looks down upon Charley and Charley’s son Bernard. He shows off Biff’s popularity in front of Charley and reckons that Bernard is only good at study and could not have a bright future. Willy would rather work with no pay than work under Charley. His esteem and pride never allow him to admit his failure. He would rather die than beg friends for help. Although Willy has lost all his esteem in the work, he tries to remain an equal relationship between Charley and him. Besides, He can not take unemployment like others because he fears to admit that his company abandons him. Therefore, instead of finding a new job, he makes his mind to stay in his current company until his boss fires him.

6. Conclusion

As a great playwright, Arthur Miller is a moralist. The basis for his morality lies in the free admission of responsibility for the consequence of one’s own action. He insisted that society is inside man and man is inside society (Robert, 1978: 8).

In Death of a salesman, Willy Loman is a salesman who believes that being well-liked can help people achieve material success easily. Willy’s story symbolizes the common man’s struggle for his dreams under the influence of the American society. In the end, Willy was deserted not only by his company but the society.

This thesis analyses the reasons of disillusion of Willy’s dreams through three parts: his family dream, career dream and dream to surpass his neighbors. Generally speaking, Willy’s unfortunate childhood, his wrong education methods and his love affair result in the failure of his family dream. In Willy’s career dream, he sets his dream on the basis of inadequate recognition of himself and selling and does not adjust himself to reality. In the process of getting along with neighbors, Willy never takes others’ advice and insists his success philosophy.

Through the detailed and extensive discussion, it is clear that a balance between dream and reality is needed to achieve one’s ambition. One should never isolate self-knowledge and self-pursuing, or he or she can never escape the fate of self-destruction. In addition, the society should pay more attention to common people’s fate and provide people with necessary help to prevent the tragedy of Willy.

Works Cited

Bigsby, C.W.E. Modern American Drama 1945-2000. Shanghai: Foreign Language and Teaching Research Press, 2006.

Kamp, D. “Rethinking the American Dream”. Gale Resource Center, 2010.

Martin, Robert A, ed. The Theater Essays of Arthur Miller. Massachusetts: Da Capo Press, 1978.

Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman. Harmondsworth: Perguin books, 1961.

Reinert, Otto and P. Arnott. Thirteen Plays: An Introductory Anthology. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1978.

阿瑟·米勒.《推销员之死》. 英若成译. 上海： 上海译文出版社，2011.

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