Death of a Salesman

1 Death OF A SALESMANC ertain Private Conversations inTwo Acts and a RequiemARTHUR MILLERWITH AN INTRODUCTION BYCHRISTOPHER BIGSBYpPENGUIN BOOKS penguin twentieth-century classicsDEATH OF A SALESMANA rthur Miller was born in New York City in 1915 and studied at theUniversity of Michigan. His plays includeAll My Sons(1947), Death ofa Salesman (1949),The Crucible(1953),A View from the BridgeandAMemory of Two Mondays(1955),After the Fall(1964),Incident at Vichy(1965),The Price(1968),The Creation of the World and Other Business(1972), andThe American Clock(1980). He has also written two novels,Focus(1945) andThe Misfits, which was filmed in 1960, and the textforIn Russia(1969),Chinese Encounters(1979), andIn the Country(1977),three books of photographs by Inge Morath. His most recent worksinclude a memoir,Mr. Peters Connections(1999),Echoes Down the Cor-ridor: Collected Essays 1944 2000, andOn Politics and the Art of Acting(2001).

2 Timebends(1987), and the playsThe Ride Down Mt. Morgan(1991),The Last Yankee(1993),Broken Glass(1994). He has twice wonthe New York Drama Critics Circle Award, and in 1949 he wasawarded the Pulitzer Weales is Emeritus Professor of English at the University ofPennsylvania. He is the author ofReligion in Modern English Drama,American Drama Since World War II,The Play and Its Parts,TennesseeWilliams,The Jumping-Off Place,Clifford Odets, andCanned Goods as Cav-iar:American Film Comedy of the Weales is the editor ofEdwardian Plays,The Complete Plays of William Wycherley, and The Vi-king Critical Library edition of Arthur Miller sThe a novel,Tale for the bluebird , and two books for children. won the George Jean Nathan Award for Drama Criticism ARTHUR MILLERDRAMAThe Golden YearsThe Man Who Had All the LuckAll My SonsDeath of a SalesmanAn Enemy of the People (adaptation of the play by Ibsen)The CrucibleA View from the BridgeAfter the FallIncident at VichyThe PriceThe American ClockThe Creation of the World and Other BusinessThe Archbishop s CeilingThe Ride Down Mt.

3 MorganBroken GlassMr. Peters ConnectionsONE-ACT PLAYSA View from the Bridge,one-act version, withA Memory of Two MondaysElegy for a Lady (inTwo-Way Mirror)Some Kind of Love Story (inTwo-Way Mirror)I Can t Remember Anything (inDanger: Memory!)Clara (inDanger: Memory!)The Last YankeeOTHER WORKSS ituation NormalThe Misfits (a cinema novel)Focus (a novel)I Don t Need You Anymore (short stories)In the Country (reportage with Inge Morath photographs)Chinese Encounters (reportage with Inge Morath photographs)In Russia (reportage with Inge Morath photographs) Salesman in Beijing (a memoir)Timebends (autobiography)Homely Girl, A Life (novella)COLLECTIONSA rthur Miller s Collected Plays (Volumes I and II)The Portable Arthur MillerThe Theater Essays of Arthur Miller (Robert Martin, editor)VIKING CRITICAL LIBRARY EDITIONSD eath of a Salesman (edited by Gerald Weales)The Crucible (edited by Gerald Weales)

4 TELEVISION WORKSP laying for TimeSCREENPLAYSThe MisfitsEverybody WinsThe CrucibleDEATH OF A SALESMANC ertain Private Conversations inTwo Acts and a RequiemARTHUR MILLERWITH AN INTRODUCTION BYCHRISTOPHER BIGSBYpPENGUIN BOOKS penguin booksPublished by the Penguin GroupPenguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street,New York, New York 10014, Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane,London W8 5TZ, EnglandPenguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood,Victoria, AustraliaPenguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue,Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2 Penguin Books ( ) Ltd, 182 190 Wairau Road,Auckland 10, New ZealandPenguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:Harmondsworth, Middlesex, EnglandFirst published in the United States of America byThe Viking Press 1949 Published in a Viking Compass Edition 1958 Published in Penguin Books 1976 This edition with an introduction by Christopher Bigsby published inPenguin Books 1998 Copyright Arthur Miller, 1949 Copyright renewed Arthur Miller, 1977 Introduction copyright Christopher Bigsby, 1998 All rights reservedcaution: Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned thatDeath of a Salesmanis subject to a royalty.

5 It is fully protected under the copyright laws of the UnitedStates of America, and of all countries covered by the International CopyrightUnion (including the Dominion of Canada and the rest of the British Common-wealth), and of all countries covered by the Pan-American Copyright Conventionand the Universal Copyright Convention, and of all countries with which theUnited States has reciprocal copyright relations. All rights, including professionaland amateur stage performing, motion picture, recitation, lecturing, public read-ing, radio broadcasting, television, video or sound taping, all other forms of me-chanical or electronic reproduction, such as information storage and retrievalsystems and photocopying, and the rights of translation into foreign languages,are strictly reserved. Address inquiries to the author s representative, InternationalCreative Management, 40 West 57th Street, New York, New York of congress cataloging in publication dataMiller, Arthur, 1915 Death of a Salesman /Arthur Miller; with an introduction byChristopher cm.

6 (Penguin twentieth-century classics)ISB1. Sales personnel United States Drama. 2. Fathers and sons United States Drama. I. Title. II. '.52 dc2197 37223N: 1-4295-1457-4 CONTENTSI ntroduction by Christopher BigsbyviiActOne1 ActTwo52 Requiem110 Cast113viiINTRODUCTIONThe Depression of the 1930s seemed to break the promisesAmerica had made to its citizens. The stock market crash of1929, it was assumed, ended a particular version of history:optimistic, confident. The American dream faded. And yet,not so. Myths as potent as that, illusions with such a purchaseon the national psyche, are not so easily denied. In an im-migrant society, which has, by definition, chosen to rejectthe past, faith in the future is not a matter of choice. Whentoday fails to offer the justification for hope, tomorrow be-comes the only grail worth pursuing. Arthur Miller knewthis.

7 When Charley, Willy Loman s next-door neighbor,says that a Salesman is got to dream, he sums up not onlyWilly s life but a central tenet of his of a Salesmanis not set during the Depression butit bears its mark, as does Willy Loman, a sixty-three-year-old Salesman , who stands baffled by his failure. Certainly inmemory he returns to that period, as if personal and nationalfate were somehow intertwined, while in spirit, accordingto Miller, he also reaches back to the more expansive andconfident, if empty, 1920s, when, according to a presidentof the United States, the business of America was since he inhabits the greatest country in the world, a world of Manifest Destiny, where can the fault lie but inhimself ? If personal meaning, in this cheer leader society,lies in success, then failure must threaten identity itself. Nowonder Willy shouts out his name.

8 He is listening for anecho. No wonder he searches desperately back through hislife for evidence of the moment he took a wrong path; nowonder he looks to the next generation to give him backINTRODUCTION viiithat life by achieving what had slipped so unaccountablythrough his own of a Salesmanhad its origins in a short story Millerwrote at the age of seventeen (approximately the age of theyoung Biff Loman), when he worked, briefly, for his father scompany. It told of an aging Salesman who sells nothing, isabused by the buyers, and borrows his subway fare from theyoung narrator. In a note scrawled on the manuscript Millerrecords that the real Salesman had thrown himself under asubway train. Years later, at the time of the play s Broadwayopening, Miller s mother found the story abandoned in adrawer. But, as Miller has noted, Death of a Salesmanalsotraced its roots closer to Loman was kin to Miller s Salesman uncle, MannyNewman, a man who was a competitor, at all times, in allthings, and at every moment.

9 My brother and I, Millerexplains in his autobiography, he saw running neck andneck with his two sons in some race that never stopped inhis mind. The Newman household was one in which you dared not lose hope, and I would later think of it as a per-fection of America for that ..trembling with resolutions and shouts of victories that hadnot yet taken place but surely would tomorrow. 2 Manny s son, Buddy, like Biff in Miller s play, was a sportshero and, like Happy Loman, a success with the girls, but,failing to study, he never made it to college. Manny s wife,meanwhile, bore the cross of reality for them all, sup-porting her husband, keeping up her calm, enthusiasticsmile lest he feel he was not being appreciated. (123) It isnot hard to see this woman honored in the person of LindaLoman, Willy s loyal but sometimes bewildered wife, whois no less a victim than the husband she supports in his strug-gle for meaning and Miller spent little time with Manny, he was soINTRODUCTION ixabsurd, so completely isolated from the ordinary laws ofgravity, so elaborate in his fantastic inventions.

10 So lyricallyin love with fame and fortune and their inevitable descenton his family, that he possessed my imagination. (123) Todrop by the Newman family home, Miller explains, was toexpect some kind of insinuation of my entire life s probablefailure, even before I was sixteen. (124) Bernard, son ofWilly s next-door neighbor, was to find himself treated inmuch the same way by the is, however, something more than absurdity aboutsuch people as Manny, who managed to sustain their faithin the face of evidence to the contrary. Of a Salesman friendof Manny, Miller writes, Like any traveling man he had tomy mind a kind of intrepid valor that withstood the inevi-table putdowns, the scoreless attempts to sell. In a sense,these men lived like artists, like actors whose product is firstof all themselves, forever imagining triumphs in a world thateither ignores them or denies their presence altogether.