DEATH OF A SALESMAN

Death of a Salesman: Arthur Miller. First published 1949.

I never liked the name Janaiker Mrityu (Death of Someone) given to the Bengali version of the play. A salesman in a capitalist society is not just someone. He is a unique entity encompassing a unique set of virtues and vices not to be found in earlier economies. For my own purpose I quote from the play:

Willy- Figure it out. Work of a lifetime to payoff a house. You finally own it, and there’s nobody to live in it.

Linda-Well, dear, life is a casting off. It’s always that way.

Linda spoke like that, okay. World over, on the contrary, all the countless Lindas think differently. They want to have houses of their own. It is instinctive since they themselves are houses. Their bodies are houses to bear, feed, and nurture the embryos of generations of mankind. Linda was only consoling Willy Loman over the inevitability of break up of a family, over leaving a house to nobody. Obviously, Linda could not mean it sincerely. And that is only natural. This Death of a Salesman, as I progress afresh for umpteenth time I am stunned by the overwhelming depth of Arthur Miller notwithstanding the canards and gossips crafted over the media. The theme is lasting for sixty years with clear signals of lasting for a century unless not “existing” socialism but real socialism starts controlling productive forces and the economy. The play, for once, strives to bring an individual out of stereotype when and where Charley says one must have something to sell otherwise you are destined for the black hole.

It is astonishing and amusing also to view us in the mirror. With what a tremendous load of illusion we continue to live and suffer only to see us dramatized and look at each other and realize that the fellow beside me is also similarly suffering and hoping and waiting for a morning with a flood of sunshine.

And the pride, arrogance and their futility when viewed in the context of relationship between parents and offspring overpowers us with such sadness. Father figure is a miniature hero and he is worshipped forgetting that the heroes too have feet of clay. Loman is continually failing and boasting and getting beaten and ending up in ridiculous womanizing in full view of his elder son Biff. When the wreckage of this son rebels in frustration he threatens him despairingly. Really, quite moving and relevant till today.