Death of a Salesman
by Arthur Miller

Sample essay illustrating the following skills:

  1. identifying the key demands of the question

  2. collecting relevant evidence from the text, with supporting analysis, to meet the demands of the question

  3. composing a response within a clear, relevantly argued and fully illustrated structure

 

©Higher Results Consultancy

(i)  identifying the key demands of the question

Choose a play in which a theme of significance, is developed by the dramatist.
Briefly indicate what that theme is and then go on to show how the playwright
conveys the significance of this theme.

The highlighted areas show the most important aspects of the question, what are called the key demands of the question. In this case there are two main stages to the question, both of which rely on the first instruction which is to choose a play in which a theme of significance is developed.

  1. briefly identify a theme of significance in a play of your choice.

  2. go on and show how the playwright conveys the significance of your chosen theme.
    Show how is a very important instruction which is really asking you to take account of the techniques
    employed by the dramatist to explore his theme.


Below (in red) are the paragraphs of a sample essay which tries to answer the above question.

Introductory paragraph:

In the play 'Death of a Salesman' by Arthur Miller, the playwright focuses on the theme of failure in a success oriented society. Willy Lowman, a failed salesman, is the central character whose 'crime', if it can be called that, is believing the propaganda of a society which only has room for winners. Movingly, the play's theme demonstrates how a victim of 'The American Dream' can be destroyed by false promises which not only impact on one's business life but also set up conflicts within personal relationships. The significance of this theme, still very relevant to many societies today, is heightened by Miller's skilful use of a range of key techniques, including setting, characterisation and symbolism.

This opening paragraph fulfils the following criteria:

identifies title of text and author's name,

makes clear reference to all the demands of the question ,

sets down the structure of the essay by indicating techniques to be addressed in the body of the essay.

 

Brief account of the text:

The drama focuses on the life of a middle aged salesman, Willy Lowman, who, at the outset of the play is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. He lives with his adoring but over protective wife, Linda, who acts as a buffer between her husband and their two adult sons, Biff and Happy, whose relationship with their father is permanently under tension. The play plots the tragic collapse of a man who cannot face up to his moral responsibilities in a society whose false values attach a dangerous importance to success as measured in such transient terms as income and material possessions. Living according to these values means that failure is likewise defined in economic terms.


(ii)  collecting relevant evidence from the text, with supporting analysis, to meet the demands of the question

 

Body of essay:

The play's setting contributes to our understanding of the significance of this theme. (link sentence back to question) Willy Lowman's home is presented as 'small and fragile-seeming', (evidence) dwarfed by a wall of apartment blocks whose presence contributes to the trapped, claustrophobic atmosphere. He makes reference to a time before the build up of this area when there were 'two beautiful elm trees', (evidence) now cut down by the builder and a garden in which scented wisteria and lilacs bloomed in profusion.Willy complains of the airless quality within his apartment, despite the open windows. Here there are no signs of greenery, no views of nature which come to represent positive values in the play. The world outside Willy's 'small, fragile' home seems oppressive and menacing, threatening to swallow up an economic failure like Willy.

Willy's yearning for the setting of the fresh outdoors and open spaces is echoed by his elder son, Biff, who sees himself at ease in the open country:

'To suffer fifty weeks of the year for the sake of a two-week vacation, when all you really want is to be outdoors, with your shirt off.'

In the competitive setting of the city, he feels out of place and unable to work with his hands, a skill which he has inherited from his father who takes pride in building a front porch and putting up a new ceiling. In the country, Biff is not a 'success' according to the capitalist definition because as Willy points out disparagingly:

'...he (Biff) has yet to make thirty-five dollars a week!'

The background story to Willy's father is sketched in by Ben against a setting of wild, open spaces across which the craftsman father travelled in a lifestyle reminiscent of the American frontiersmen. He is represented as someone who was true to his own self, not corrupted by materialism and successful in his own way as Ben tells us:

'Great inventor, father. With one gadget he made more in a week than a man like you could make in a lifetime.'

The references to the 'jungle' as the setting for Ben's ruthless success carries uneasy connotations of a place where only the fittest will survive and in which weaker members, like the Willy Lowmans of this world, will be devoured by the capitalist system. (evidence followed by analysis)

While the playwright's use of setting helps to underline the theme of a competitive society in which there is no room for failures, it is through characterisation that the audience really comes to an understanding of the significance of this situation in terms of the human cost. (topic sentence linking back to question) Willy is presented not simply as a passive victim of society: he is, in fact, given a choice of adopting a different lifestyle by his brother Ben but Willy opts to stay where he is, influenced by Linda's fear of stepping out into an unfamiliar world. Furthermore, Willy's own personality and his value system demonstrate that he is, himself, partly to blame for his failure. He has been an indulgent father to Biff and Happy who, as children, establish a 'matey' relationship with Willy who is known as their 'pal'. He has transmitted to them an ambiguous morality, failing to set down clear moral standards. For example, he wavers about the incident with Biff taking the basketball which the latter says euphemistically he has 'borrowed'. Here Willy's response is to laugh with him at the theft, saying halfheartedly, 'I want you to return that.'

Similarly, he has no scruples about Biff being supplied with answers for school exams by Bernard. As long as Biff succeeds in passing, it does not seem to matter how he achieves this goal. Willy demonstrates this same moral ambiguity when he encourages his sons to steal materials from a building site: in fact, he even boasts to Charley of previous forays, saying unconvincingly:

'I gave them hell, understand.'

In Willy's life, therefore, there is a double standard which society has encouraged: while at times proclaiming to his sons the virtues of clean living, friendliness, sportsmanship and honesty, his own life denies these qualities in that he has a mistress on the road and he lies about his business success. A basic tolerance of dishonesty permeates his actions, a dishonesty which is reflected in the lives of his sons. Willy's failure is not only a financial one but, more seriously, a personal and moral failure. (analysis)

This personal and moral failure can be measured by the superficial values that Willy encourages his sons to develop. He stresses the importance of being 'well liked', of being physically attractive and good at sport, of being able to 'sell' oneself: these gain preference over academic achievement which he scorns in Bernard, calling him a 'pest' and 'an anaemic'. But his personal motto, 'Be well liked and you will never want', turns out to be ironic in the face of Willy's constant state of debt.' (analysis)

Furthermore, Willy encourages his son's weaknesses and inflates their image of themselves:

'God Almighty, he'll (referring to Biff) be great yet. A star like that can never really fade away.'

He constantly reminds himself that Biff has done 'big things'. But he has inflated his sons' image to such an extent that when they grow up, it is an almost unforgivable disappointment to discover that being good at sport is not enough to ensure financial security and respect in the adult world.

Willy's sons illustrate other significant areas of this central theme of failure: (topic sentence linking back to question) Biff opts out of the competitive world which his father wants for him. And it is Biff who finally analyses the root cause of their domestic friction when he says:

'We never told the truth for ten minutes.'
It is Biff who finally blames his father for his own failure because:
'We've been walking in a dream for fifteen years'
'I never got anywhere because you blew me so full of hot air'

Biff comes to understand that he has been blinded by false values, unable to honestly address who he is or where he belongs in life. (analysis)

The result of this understanding is that he finally faces his father with the brutal self-knowledge:

'Pop! I'm a dime a dozen and so are you.'
His final verdict on his father and his failure is that:
'He had the wrong dreams. He never knew who he was.'

It is part of Willy's tragedy, however, that at this moment when he is asked to confront the truth, he cannot. This failure to face up to reality is seen in Willy's response to Biff's honest statement about what his professional position really was:

'Who ever said I was a salesman with Oliver? I was a shipping clerk.'
To which Willy replies:

'But you were practically.'

Willy's younger son, Happy, acts as a foil to Biff, showing up his own failure to grow into a man of integrity. He is more successful, in Willy's terms, than his brother but has been corrupted by competitive business life. He tells Biff:

'I'm constantly lowering my ideals.'

This corruption is also evident in Happy's sexual exploits; he boasts of his sexual conquests and treats women as sex objects, whether he is picking them up in restaurants or seducing them at business functions. He explains his seduction of the partners of senior businessmen as resulting from 'an over-developed sense of competition'. Unlike Biff, Happy does not confront the reality of his life and hence the audience is left with the feeling that, like his father, he will continue on a self destructive course that can only end in disastrous failure in both his professional and personal lives.

In addition to the dramatic techniques of setting and characterisation, Arthur Miller has employed symbolism to communicate the significance of this central theme of failure within a success oriented society. (topic sentence linking back to question)Advertising and consumerism are very much at the centre of the society which Willy inhabits and the products of this consumerism appear regularly in the play, usually in relation to the idea of debt. The 'sixteen dollars' on the new refrigerator whose fan belt has broken, the 'nine-sixty for the washing machine' and the 'three and a half' on the vacuum cleaner represent the products of a society which encourages the acquisition of material possessions, even when the individual cannot afford them. Without these visible symbols of consumerism, people like Willy are seen as failures who have not made it up the ladder of material success.

References to nature and to growing things symbolise more positive values than the latter. The beautiful elm trees that were axed by the builders to make way for housing developments are associated with a freer, healthier lifestyle before people were driven into fierce competitiveness. Perhaps the most poignant of this group of symbols, however, is the seeds which Willy desperately tries to plant in the dark in ground which receives no natural light. These come to symbolise his need to leave something positive behind, something that will represent new growth and investment for his sons. The audience knows, however, that the seeds will fail to germinate in these inhospitable conditions, in the same way as Willy and his children have failed to grow to full and healthy maturity within an inhospitable society. (evidence & analysis)


Concluding paragraph:

'Death of a Salesman', therefore, is a play in which we see a number of central and significant themes being developed with the aid of Arthur Miller's skilful use of techniques such as setting, characterisation and symbolism. The exploration of the theme of failure within a success oriented society is something which not only had relevance for those who believed in The American Dream but which still has great significance for our own contemporary society. For today's audience, Willy Lowman remains a poignant figure of failure, partly as a result of society's false value system but partly because of Willy's own inability to confront life with integrity.

The above concluding paragraph fulfils the following criteria: