Idaho Commission for Libraries

Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller

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Book Summary | Author Biography | Bibliography | Discussion Questions | Other links

Summary

Declared an American classic almost from its first staging, Death of a Salesman (1949) focuses on Willy Loman, a 63 year-old salesman. Loman's life starts to fall apart when he is forced to face the incongruity between his delusions about his own success and his children's potential and the actualities of their situation. The story of the Loman family unfolds during a 24 hour period and is fleshed out by a series of flash-backs depicted as symptoms of Willy's failing mind. Like most of Miller's work, this play deals with societal issues, most importantly our definition of success, the effect this definition has on people incapable of achieving such a success, and the relationship between reality and perception.

Biography of Arthur Miller

Arthur Miller was born in 1912 in New York City to a middle class family. His family lived in Brooklyn during the Great Depression where they struggled under financial hardship. This change in the family's fortunes is reflected in many of Miller's works. After high school Miller worked for two years to earn money to attend college. In 1938, he graduated from the University of Michigan, where he had begun writing plays and winning awards. After college, he returned to New York. A football injury kept him out of World War II. Miller is best known for Death of a Salesman, which brought him international fame. He was hailed as one of the greatest twentieth-century American playwrights. In the 1950s, when anti-communist sentiment in the U.S. was growing in fervor, Miller's play The Crucible, about the Salem witch hunts, became an allegory for the McCarthy era. He was investigated by the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1956, and when he refused to give names to the committee, was cited for contempt of Congress. The Supreme Court reversed this ruling in 1958. Miller was also in the limelight because of his marriage to movie icon Marilyn Monroe 1956-1961. Now in his eighties, Miller continues to write and lives with his third wife Ingeborg in Roxbury, Connecticut.

Bibliography

Plays

• The Man Who Had All the Luck (1944)
• All My Sons (1947)
• Death of a Salesman (1949)
• An Enemy of the People (1950)
• The Crucible (1953)
• A Memory of Two Mondays (1955)
• A View from the Bridge (1956)
• The Misfits (1961)
• After the Fall (1964)
• Incident at Vichy (1964)
• The Price (1968)
• The Creation of the World and Other Business (1972)
• The Archbishop's Ceiling (1977)
• Playing for Time (1980)
• The American Clock (1980)
• Two-Way Mirror (1982-84)
• Danger: Memory (1987)
• The Last Yankee (1991-93)
• The Ride Down Mt. Morgan (1991)
• Broken Glass (1994)
• Mr. Peter's Connections (1998)

Fiction

• Focus (1945) [novel]
• Jane's Blanket (1963) [children's book]
• Homely Girl (1992) [novella]
• I Don't Need You Anymore [short stories]

Non-Fiction

• Situation Normal (1944)
• In Russia (1969)
• In the Country (1977)
• Chinese Encounters (1979)
• "Salesman" in Beijing (1983)
• The Theater Essays of Arthur Miller (1978) [edited by Robert A. Martin]
• Timebends: A Life (1987) [autobiography]

Discussion questions for Death of a Salesman

1. Is the idealization of rural life in the play meant as a realistic alternative to the business life?
2. What is the significance in Happy and Willy's boss sharing the same first name (Howard)?
3. Why does Willy refuse to take a job from Charley?
4. What is significant about the ways in which Willy tries to commit suicide (and eventually succeeds)?

Web Sites

Visit the Arthur Miller Society's web site for a wealth of information, including an annotation of Miller's major works and a chronology of Miller's life: www.ibiblio.org/miller/

The Arthur Miller Society's web site also has a list of links to other Miller web sites: www.ibiblio.org/miller/links.html

The Kennedy Center's web site has a brief biography of Arthur Miller: http://www.kennedy-center.org/calendar/index.cfm?fuseaction=showIndividual&entity_id=3762&source_type=A

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