Article 13: Conflicting Spirits in Arthur Miller’s The Death of a Salesmen The Decisive Defeat of a Salesmen

by Daniel John Werstroh

Conflict and tensions are a certainty in life. These conflicts may be long-term, short term, easily solvable or unsolvable. In Death of a Salesman, the primary conflict is the unsolvable struggle the salesman, Willy, has against himself. His inability to control his pride and to care for himself and others grows a tremendous tension that drives himself to suicide.

There are two conflicts presented within the first scene—a minor conflict that gives room for the major one in the story. The minor conflict is Willy’s ‘Man vs. World’ presented in the initial staging directions. The house Willy and his family live in is out of place, surrounded by foreign ‘towering angular structures and angry colours of orange’ (Miller 11). These structures and colours signify a massive, furious development program that has taken place to ‘fit more in less’; it puts the house out of place because in an ideal house, one puts a secure family in more space, but this is the exact opposite. This contrasts of ‘hopeful blue vs. angry orange’, ‘mass vs. small’, and ‘us vs. them’ is further explained when Willy comes home exhausted and sighing after a long day of making sales in the world. He explains to Linda that he can no longer drive: “I couldn’t make it. I just couldn’t make it, Linda”, “It took me nearly four hours from Yonkers” (13).

The second and main conflict from the beginning is the implication of how hard Willy is fighting himself, or rather the truth about his life. He complains to Linda about his surreal experience on the road. He talks about having to meet “Brown and Morrison tomorrow morning at ten o’clock to show the line” and then “he starts putting on his jacket” only having returned home a minute ago (Miller 14). He is putting on his jacket to get right back to driving after coming home due to his inability to drive. He has incoherent thoughts as he mentions “opening his windshield of his car while driving” as the cause for his elation, but his current car is mentioned later by Linda to ‘not have this feature’ (14, 19).

Another point to make for this conflict is how he hides his exhaustion and age. Willy, 60 years old, boasts about how “If old man Wagner was alive I’d a been in charge of New York by now” to build up his courage or ego to continue his struggles; he describes himself being great enough to fit his past dreams in an alternate time and fantasy world (Miller 14). His ego will prevent him from taking any blame for his discouragements, as he pushes it onto the neighbourhood surrounding them, “The street is lined with cars. There’s not a breath of fresh air in the neighborhood. The grass [doesn’t] grow anymore” (Miller 17). Obviously, the competition from “there being more people” is what is ruining Willy’s life, not Willy himself

Linda implies that Willy is not taking personal responsibility for his choices with suggestions like, “We should’ve bought the land next door” (Miller 17), but Willy still goes into his rant. This is a sign of Willy just ignoring his loving wife whom he hardly sees as he is always driving to make ends meet (Miller 13, 17). It is hard-breaking to see the tension of their marriage on the side of Willy, who always fights his fleeting strength and pushing himself to work. Linda fears unbottling all the pent-up negative emotion within Willy. So, to bring him back down to earth, she will “share her longings with Willy to calm him, but she lacks the temperament to utter and follow them to their bitter ends” (Miller 12). With such disconnections with Willy, she is not able to handle Willy’s eventual breakdown at the end. His relationship with his wife Linda is tenuous.

More tensions appear from Willy’s relationship with Biff and the stress of his mental health. Willy’s statements, questions, and remarks grow from being easy and casual to “worried and angered” after Linda brings up the touchy subject of Biff’s current standing, “There’s such an undercurrent in him. He became a moody man” (Miller 15). Willy snaps angrily about Biff, “Not finding yourself at the age of thirty-four is a disgrace” (Miller 16)! Willy believes he is being “critical”, but these statements are more emotional responses to a deeply rooted problem or tension that Willy is not interested in resolving since he believes Biff only needs “a job selling. He could be big in no time” (Miller 15-16). The solution for Willy is to make Biff a successful man by getting him a job in the line that makes Willy successful, ignoring the real problem.

The play is full of numerous intertwined details and facts from beginning to end. The conflict Willy struggles with grows into a struggle with the true negative feelings Willy has had but ignored until the end. The tension from his relationship with Biff explodes, which leads to a domino effect. Willy’s American dream fall to pieces as Biff breaks down saying “I never got anywhere because you blew me so full of hot air I could never stand taking orders from anybody! That’s whose fault it is!” (Miller 131). The tension flashes hot into a steadily depressing climax as Biff explains the real worth of himself and Willy as “dime a dozen[s]” (Miller 132). The conflict, however, is not resolved. Willy is unable to handle his emotions and he completely breaks down mentally. Knowing that he will be late to miss the boat, he gets into the car and at full speed he collides into the American dream.

The conflicts from the beginning remain the same till the end. The world was, and still is against everyone. Willy’s world is more difficult, incredibly harsh and poor compared to the world today. Wording throughout the play measures it well, but what mattered is the struggle, and the conflict which Willy has had with himself. He has to fight tooth and nail to keep his optimism and talkative upbeat nature in good shape to retain success because that is what he believes to be working. The play goes into further detail about the ideas and people who continued to influence, or when and how they influenced Willy to be, but that is beyond the scope of this short essay. In short, Willy is doomed well before his friends and family could have done anything about it.

Works Cited
Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman, Text and Criticism, edited by Gerald Weales, Penguin Group, 1996.

About the Author: Daniel Werstroh was born in Fort St. John, British Columbia. At the age of two, he and his family moved to The Pas where he was raised for the current majority of his life. Daniel has just finished his first year at UCN and is coordinating his engineering intention into reality for the next year.

Instructor’s Remarks: This essay was written for ENG.1015 Major Works and Authors of the 20th Century. Daniel’s essay addresses two primary questions: What conflict or tensions appear in the opening scene of Death of a Salesman? Does the primary source of Willy’s conflict remain constant or shift throughout the play?
At the 2018 UCN Language Arts Festival, keynote speaker Greg Chomichuk succinctly summed up the concept of plot: ‘Somebody wants something, and then things get complicated.’ In this essay, Daniel explores the complicated conflict that arises in the aging protagonist of Arthur Miller’s celebrated play, Death of a Salesman. While Daniel observes the significant role of Willy Loman’s battle against the outer world of capitalism and challenging family dynamics, Daniel underscores the tremendous inner battles that Willy wages against himself, his own collapsing, unrealistic dreams, and his way of deflecting blame for past regrets, which escalate those external conflicts. In a relatively short essay of 3 – 4 pages, Daniel stays focused on his topic and bases his interpretations on a solid array of references to the play. At the same time, he adeptly demonstrates the relational and emotional complications that arise when Willy’s desires steer him directly into a head-on collision with the American Dream (Werstroh 4).
The structure of Daniel’s argument is clear and concise. His introduction economically funnels down to a crisp thesis statement, which then transitions smoothly into the main body of his essay. To support his argument, Daniel examines lines of dialogue, as well as significant stage directions that Miller provides in the play. His choice of quotations for textual support is particularly adept and focused. Daniel’s conclusion refreshes the salient points of his argument without sounding repetitive. My main recommendation is that the conclusion should also include one or two sentences exploring the importance of the essay’s findings for the reader. While Willy fatally collides with the American Dream, are there variations of a ‘Canadian Dream’ that provide similar high-speed hazards for northern drivers? (Dr. Keith Hyde)