This evocation is amplified by the opening sight of Willy Loman coming in the door. The very title Death of a Salesman both declares the significance of a salesman’s death and finds value in its ordinary anonymity. Let's begin, however, with some of the reasons why the play continues to occupy the place it does in American drama and our national imagination. But whatever the case, the legacy questions inevitably following the playwright's recent death, make it time to take another look at his vaunted reputation, and pare it down to its rightful size: medium. While it's impossible to know his psychology enough to be sure, the shape of Salesman's flaws seem to suggest that Miller's artistic trouble stemmed from a divided personal impulse between making his play and his protagonist Jewish, and making them universal or representatively American. But the relevance of this central idea, connected with door-to-door salesmen and the Darwinian nature of rampant capitalism, has withered with time and changing technology, and even if it hadn't, Miller still failed to craft a play befitting Salesman's exalted reputation. The immense international success of Death of a Salesman comes from the intellectual force of the play’s central idea prevailing over the glaring defects of Arthur Miller’s execution. Death of a Salesman and Death of a Salesman: The Swollen Legacy of Arthur Miller Bert Cardullo
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |