Sacrifice, status and subsumation; Dave Singleman and competitive identity

“After all the highways, and the trains, and the appointments, and the years, you end up
worth more dead than alive.”

Central to the American dream is excessive, unending and consistently complimented “hard work”. The term used often, with such gravitas and force that it has formed a new meaning: to give one’s entire being – entire self – to competition. Miller grapples with this topic through the title of his play. It is the ‘Salesman’ that dies. No longer a man, no longer Willy, there is but a ‘Death of a Salesman’. In such a way, Death of a Salesman can be understood as a play deeply entangled with the loss of identity forced by frenetic capitalistic markets and the hyper-individualised cultural landscape of America.

“I’m gonna show you and everybody else that Willy Loman did not die in vain. He had a good dream. It’s the only dream you can have – to come out number-one man. He fought it out here, and this is where I’m gonna win it for him.”

Through a story told by Willy, the roots of such belief can be uncovered. When we look to the story of Dave Singleman, we see the complete and entire subsumation of identity to the game that is the capitalist markets. Singleman, an eighty four year old man, still works every day to make money for those above him. Singleman, in his old age, is forced to work even though he cannot leave the house. Singleman, who is entirely alone in the world, dies in the exact same vehicle he used to work in. His method of provision (his work) becomes a symbol of his own death. The ‘green velvet slippers’ he worked in become those that he died in. in this way, it can be understood that the entirety of the characters life is entangled with his work. He cannot be separated from the act of being a Salesman, so much so that he dies trapped into his work.

“Nobody dast blame this man. You don’t understand: Willy was a salesman. And for a
salesman, there’s no rock bottom to the life. He don’t put a bolt to a nut, he don’t tell you the law or give you medicine. He’s a man way out there in the blue riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back—that’s an earthquake. And then you get yourself a couple spots on your hat and your finished. Nobody dast blame this man. A salesman is got to dream boy, it comes with the territory.”

When examined closely, the reality of the story which Willy tells is clear and Miller’s messaging obvious; this is a man who was ruled by capitalism and destroyed by it – his death entangled into his life, both wrapped in his career. The fruits of his labour, the luxuriously described slippers, are ultimately of no use, he ends up dead and alone with but material goods as comfort. Yet Willy does not tell the story in this way. For Willy the death of Dave Singleman is not tragic but a fairy tale intended to inspire. Singleman, in the eyes of the character, is a hero, triumphing not through anything other than material possessions and an obsessive, unflinching commitment to his work. In
such a way the story of Dave Singleman becomes the blueprint of Willy’s attitudes; the ultimate good for Loman comes not from personal fulfilment, but instead the intensity of the intertwinement of ones identity with their productivity. In Willy’s story, Singleman deserves valorisation not because he is good at what he does, but because he unwavering.

“The only thing you’ve got in this world is what you can sell.”

In such a way, sacrifice becomes undeniable entangled with Willy’s psyche and therefore suffering in all its forms becomes something worthy of praise. To suffer is a mode of finding success, to be in pain or to struggle or to give up some of ones self is commendable – an absolute positive – as it proves ones dedication to the system. In other words, from the vantage point of Willy, his own death is not the symptom of anything wrong with society, but a symbol of a final success. When Willy kills himself, it is not because of a structural failure, but because he himself failed to provide in
life and must join with the machine that is capitalism in death to finally provide. In the same way Dave Singleman’s life is entangled with capital, so too is Willy’s death.

“To devote your whole life to keeping stock, or making phone calls, or selling or buying. To suffer fifty weeks of the year for the sake of a two-week vacation, when all you really desire is to be outdoors, with your shirt off. And always to have to get ahead of the next fella. And still — that’s how you build a future.”

In a society that valorises sacrifice, destroys family time together (Willy is constantly away), relationships (Willy’s cheating on Linda to move boxes), and sleep (Willy gives up so much time for his job), it is no surprise that the titular character has no problem ultimately sacrificing his life rather than ask for help. Willy died a preventable death that could have been stopped had he just taken a job with Charlie. But he cannot do this, he cannot take something, he must only give. The story of Dave Singleman has ultimately become that of scripture for Willy. A man who gave everything, lived alone and died alone but died rich and – if our only metric is capitalistic gain – died successful, is a hero for Willy Loman. Sacrifice in Death of a Salesman becomes an integral part of capitalism, a necessitated section of the world in which Willy Loman lives and, ultimately, the reason he feels he must take his own life rather than take a job. The American Dream demands the death of Willy Loman.

“He died the Death of a Salesman”

With thanks to HA – year 13 2022

A Martyr of the Mind

• A character analysis of Willy Loman, from Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman

Martyrdom is defined as subjecting one’s self to the ultimate sacrifice, death, as an act driven by a greater purpose, higher belief or a cause of paramount importance. The very skeleton of the play confirms that Willy fulfils at least half of this criteria, with his death being foretold in the work’s title, so attention must be turned to the latter of the definition when attempting to decipher Willy Loman’s eligibility for the role of the martyr. It might take a village to translate what Miller’s intention was when crafting this production; Death of a Salesman is a labyrinth of half-truths and open-ended conversations between the characters, culminating in a tangled mess of fraying, loose threads that are never tied up. It makes it difficult then, as readers, to determine the true standing of Willy Loman. He is an unreliable narrator at the best of times, and as the play largely revolves around Willy’s point of view, positioning the other characters as extensions of his experience, it becomes near impossible to establish an objective opinion of any personality or moral compass within the play’s reality. Arguably,
this element of incoherence is a driving force of the case for Willy being considered a martyr: he is so infatuated in his worship of The American Dream that he is beyond functioning as a grounded member of society, instead turning to a borderline religious devotion to the capitalist ideology that he undoubtedly values as a cause of paramount importance. It is this devotion that ultimately results in his death.

It’s interesting to evaluate Willy Loman from a psychological standpoint; many critics have considered the variety of mental disorders or illnesses that Willy could be interpreted as suffering from. However, even when leaving an explicit diagnosis ambiguous, the idea of Willy’s psychological instability, shown through his fractured existence, strewn between dream-like memories and his uncomfortable present reality, is an important factor when considering his self-image. This idea provides further evidence for the case of Willy’s martyrdom, because even if Willy’s cause is one of imagined greatness, does it not still stand just as greatly in Willy’s reality?

As witness to the defining chapter of Willy’s life, we as an audience primarily gain insight into the life of the Lomans through the vessel of Willy, invited into his retrospective sequences in a manner unlike any other character in the play. This gives us a greater understanding of Willy’s rationale, and we are able to grasp how he comes to the decision of suicide as a solution. In this respect, the audience are able to see
what Biff, Linda and Happy are unable to in the requiem: why Willy’s death has occurred,
and the honour to be found in it.

Miller wrote Death of a Salesman in play-form, with intent to meet audiences as a theatre production, so I feel that analysing a theatre character without discussing at least one theatrical portrayal would be a disservice. The casting of Dustin Hoffman as the titular character in the 1984 Broadway production of Death of a Salesman is possibly one of the most artful pieces of casting in the play’s history. Known for his antihero, emotionally vulnerable roles and described by famed actor Robert De Niro as “an actor with the everyman’s face who embodied the heartbreakingly human”, Dustin Hoffman makes a perfect choice for the likes of Willy Loman, whose story is not tragedy of great injustice; rather, he is a victim of the decidedly dull reality of suburban capitalist America, designed to represent the average human and his average hardships, which is cited by many critics and audiences as the ingredient of Miller’s play which makes it quite so poignantly miserable.
Willy Loman is not likeable, as martyrs rarely are. Instead, he is a reflection of the
undesirable part of ourselves, that which is driven by a feeling of superiority and an
unforgiving want to be liked and respected, even admired, by those around us.

Ultimately, it is Willy’s belief that he is owed something more than he has received which leads to his demise, as he sees in death the only way to access the reward he deserves and truly make his point. And so, it is hard to deprive Willy Loman of the title martyr; he dies for his beliefs, and in this twisted sense, Death of a Salesman’s protagonist holds the legacy he dreamed of in life, in death.

With thanks to IB – year 13 2022

‘In all three tragic texts, a sense of resolution and emotional catharsis is not always clear – there is often a terrible sense of waste’

‘Death…’

At the end of DOAS, after Willy has made the ultimate sacrifice (the ‘diamond’ of his life is sold). Indeed, the audience are hoping that this is the moment where the Loman family progress, however, instead we are left with Happy wanting to make his father ‘proud’, by completing his ‘legacy’, leaving us to feel as if Willy’s sacrifice was a waste – the cycle continues.

Arguably, Willy’s sacrifice ensures that his family are debt free (‘we’re free’) and thus they have been given a second chance. The audience could feel there is a sense of resolution – however, Biff will always feel as if he has fallen from an ‘imagined height’: once the school jock, now a failure in the American society where by 30 you should have a stable career path and a family – which Biff and Happy have not secured.

Happy will continue to be ‘lost like his brother’ and believe that popularity is the key to success, as he would tell Biff he is ‘well-liked’ – showing his inability to escape his fathers flaws.

‘Othello’

There is not much debate for whether or not this play has a sense of resolution – of course, the order of things are restored, however, the blood that is spilled throughout leaves the audience feeling a terrible sense of waste – Othello’s myopia, regarding Iago as ‘honest’ throughout, is his fatal flaw as it leads to a chain of events that ultimately kills his wife, as well as himself.

Iago’s manipulation comes into full effect by the end of the play, the audience sees how Othello mind has been completely warped by the ideas planted by Iago – ‘Iago keeps his word’, ‘Honest Iago’, ‘She (Desdemona) is like a liar, gone to burning hell’, ‘She (Desdemona) was a whore’

Shakespeare exploits Othello’s jealousy through the characterisation of Iago who is the source of this idea of ‘waste’, as his hatred for ‘the moor’ kick starts the tragic suffering throughout the play.

Keats’ poems

‘Isabella and the Pot of Basil’- The ‘moneybag brothers’ with their ‘red-lined
accounts’, exploit the lower class – Lorenzo, Isabella’s lover, is exploited by
her brothers, and is murdered by them because the brothers are myopic to
societies expectations where they feel they have to secure their business by
sending their sister to some ‘high noble’ – End of this poem has no resolution –
the brothers flee whilst Isabella’s alienation, due to her love and loss of
Lorenzo, causes her death – However, there is debate whether the audience is
left with no resolution, as, ‘from mouth to mouth through all the country
passed… still is the burthen sung’ – Their love is immortal – They were
restricted to love in the physical world, however, their love remains alive so
long as their story is alive.

With thanks to RRE – year 13 2022

“Heroes fall too?”

At the beginning of Shakespeare’s eponymous play ‘Othello’, the protagonist Othello himself is aligned with all that is ‘good’ and viewed by those who surround him as a noble figure. He is admired and glorified until his tragic flaw of myopia, not only blinds himself, but blinds his conscience and perceptiveness when it comes to his foil, Iago. As Othello continues to allow the infection of Iago into his life, he begins to lose his noble self and the admiration from other characters, especially his newly wed wife, Desdemona. This loss of his morality consumes most of the plot and causes the downfall of others as well as the protagonist.

However, Othello’s demise may not be explicitly down to his own tragic fall. Shakespeare plagues those around the protagonist in ‘Othello’ with their own tragic flaw and then, does not give the blame to Othello’s myopia. Instead, Shakespeare leaves the action of allocating blame to the audience, as they chose who is at fault for the tragic ending.

Similarly, in ‘Death of a salesman’, Willy’s unwillingness to see things which are shown to him so explicitly can be seen to be the cause of his own tragic downfall, and furthermore, his death.  Both Willy and Othello fail to see the effect of their violence on those around them, as they continue to journey further along their tragic trajectory.
Willy continues to believe, no matter what he is told by others, that he is the same man he was years ago, that nothing has changed for him. He believes he is still under Howard’s management and that he is still the “New England man”. Because he continues to align himself with this old version of himself, Willy is unable to move on and create the new version of himself.

Contrastingly, his loss of identity is not actually at the heart of his tragic downfall, and is instead the loss of his sense of family. Losing Biff and Happy to the adult world evidentially took a massive toll on both Willy and Linda as they began to feel that their jobs as a maternal and paternal figure have concluded and they have nothing left to live for. (“Work a lifetime to pay off a house. You finally own it, and there’s
nobody to live in it”) The same way many parents felt when they lost their children, mainly sons, to the myth of the American dream and were imprisoned within it.

In ‘La Belle’, it is clear as day to see that the Knight has lost his self and identity as he has become only an ill body. He cannot move and is stuck in a limbic state, feeling as if he is in the middle of life and purgatory. Due to his abuse of power towards the faery’s child, (I shut her wild wild eyes), the Knight has consequentially lost his masculine self as he no longer has any power as he cannot move but can only continue to retell the story of himself.

It was the norm for men at the stage of when this poem was written to abuse the power, they had to get something that only they wanted, including women. They blinded
themselves with their power and saw their wrong doings as something that was simply normal in their everyday life. Opposing this view, the Knights loss of identity did not cause his tragic fall, the identity that he knew of himself as a strong, powerful, masculine man was stripped from him as a consequence of his hubris and unwillingness to see the negative actions he forces on this “lady in the meads”. His excessive pride causes the downfall as he truly believes in himself and that the actions and emotions exchanged between the knight and the faerys child is, in fact, love.

Quotes from the texts which support that a protagonist’s tragic flaw is to blame for their demise.

 “I saw pale, kings and princes too.” (LA belle.)
 “I’m the New England man. I’m vital in New England.” (DOAS)
 “Therefore, be double damned: swear thou art honest.” (Othello)
 “Men in rage strike those that wish them best.” (Othello)
 “I set her on my pacing steed.” (La Belle)

Quotes from the texts that do not support that a protagonist’s fatal flaw is to blame for their demise.

 “I saw pale kings and princes too.” (La Belle)
 “I kiss’d thee ere I kill’d thee.” (Othello)
 “Because the woman has waited and the woman has suffered.” (DOAS)
 “A salesman has got to dream boy.” (DOAS)
 “She found me roots of relish sweet.”

With thanks to RN – year 13 2022

All three of the tragic texts studied explore the protagonist’s myopia or tragic blindness and its consequences.

Othello:

• Blindness is an excellent motif for the wealth of knowledge possessed, or the lack of it. Immoral blindness drives the plot, especially as Othello must obtain ocular
  proof of D’s unfaithfulness, which closely ties this theme to appearance versus reality.
• Othello is tragically blinded by Iago’s manipulation; this is especially poignant due to Iago’s close positioning to Othello in the military structure.
• Othello’s blindness inspires tragic conventions to both himself and his inner circle
  brings about their tragic fall from high grace. The flag bearer, who supposedly
  performs a ceremonial duty of functional formality, subverts his formal duties,
  belittling the righteousness of the army.
• Desdemona is complicit to the blinded Othello on her death bed, this exemplifies
  her own ill nature. Desdemona is weakened by inevitability as said by her father and
  becomes a product of the past narrative. Her actions to destroy the complexities
  and intricacies of the father-daughter relationship, work to further isolate her,
  making her a malleable character, and therefore blinded too by inescapable devotion to Othello.
• Othello’s myopia to see Cassio as an appropriate replacement, in contrary to the
  military skillset of Iago, leads Othello to dire consequences; his decision can not be
  reversed, and his morality is determined by this decision.

Death Of a Salesman:

Willy is bound, exhausted by capitalist pressures and consumerist society. His addiction means he succumbs early to the inevitable process of lacklustre life and eventual suicide. His past thinking invades his present, stuck in a limbic state, a middle ground between past and present this inhibits his life. So much enthralled in the passive state of looking back, he loses forward thought which entangles the family unit.

Linda’s failure to identify Willy’s faltering mind-set further degrades their puny existence of survival. Her supportive, loving nature is ill-used, and she is lethargic to correct Willy’s woes. The compassion required is not shown glowingly, instead it is falsified as Willy goes through the motions.

“A small man can be just as exhausted as a great man.”

Linda works to defend past achievements, providing little to non-aspirational momentum for Willy to repeat such feats of selling seen before.

Keats:

The knowing, and the wealth of knowledge is arguably more powerful in some of Keats’s work compared to blindness. Within ‘Lamia’, the knowing of detail inhibits life.

Blindness is key to the existence of Lamia and the relationship, and by extension blindness only becomes tragic when the blindness is removed. The removal of blindness and the implementation of sight work as destructive forces to the unity between Lamia and Lycius.
In ‘Isabella; or The Pot of Basil’ the ‘Moneybag Brothers’ only concerns are represented through their economic and financial successes. The Brothers’ flawed interpretation of happiness; their tragic blindness, leads them to
inflict eternal woe.

With thanks to BH – year 13 2022

The Value of the Common Man in Miller’s ‘Death of a Salesman’

The idea that only a figure of higher status can hold dramatic tension in a tragedy negates the impact of tragedies on audiences. The catharsis that comes with the end of tragedy, when an equilibrium is found once more within the text, arguably does not come from a sense of relief in a character of high status retaining their power, but in the fact that the emotional toil that comes from the ‘point of realisation’ has finally ended.

In Arthur Miller’s play ‘Death of a Salesman’ the subjects of the tragic plot are a working-class family from Brooklyn, New York City – at the time of the play being published, Miller defended his choice to have the Lomans at the centre of tragedy in his essay ‘Tragedy and the Common Man’. Here, he outlines his philosophy that the events of tragic narratives (especially Greek tragedies) “were enacted by royal kings beings, but which apply to everyone in similar emotional situations”. Miller injects the idea that the everyday person is worthy of tragic storytelling into the spoken word of his characters, Willy Loman is a “prince” and his sons are “built like Adonises” – bringing forward the idea that although the Lomans are working-class, they are still ‘god-like’ in some aspects. 

‘Death of a Salesman’ can be strongly inferred to have socialist sympathies, the Lomans’ growing disillusionment with capitalism is a key factor in this reading of the text; Happy has what he’s “always wanted… And still, goddammit, I’m lonely.” These political ideologies have a strong alignment with bringing forth social equality, to remove systems of power which deliberately keep families (such as Lomans) poorer for the gain of richer and more powerful people; Willy complains that the “competition is maddening” and that the apartments that have been constructed around their house “stink”. Miller outlines the idea that the motivation for Willy’s actions is founded in his disillusionment with the capitalist system, at least in some ways given that he still moves to give his sons the chance to succeed in the same system that killed him. Miller instils a sense of equality in his text as the common man is given the same gravity as a the likes of Shakespeare’s tragic heroes: Othello, for example, kills himself and Desdemona (his wife) because he fears he has been betrayed by her, the alleged betrayal is the motivation for the tragedy of the plot, not Othello’s power as a figure in the Venetian army. Miller’s play ‘The Crucible’ was also inspired by his run-ins during McCarthy America.

Miller argues that the ‘common man’ is just as valuable as a tragic hero than any character of great power and status. Shakespeare put on plays for the ‘groundlings’ of Elizabethan society and those audiences were still fully capable of understanding the plight of the high-ranking characters before them. Perhaps characters that are more ‘normal’ make plays more compelling, Willy Loman has survived so strongly as a figure in tragic literature largely because his undoing is so relatable to audiences, his disillusionment with the system is one that most people can probably relate to, especially after/during the pandemic, where social inequalities have been exposed in their most insidious forms.

Miller’s message in his play is founded in the ways in which the common man, the everyday individual, navigate a world in which they are deliberately isolated from the power and high status that other characters in tragic tradition have enjoyed (or not enjoyed – Macbeth did not have fun once he murdered his way to power). Willy Loman, despite the sadness inherent to his exit in the play’s narrative, leaves behind some hope for his family as the Lomans are “free” and perhaps Biff and Happy have one more chance to find the success their father hoped he would be able to see them achieve.

With thanks to LS year 13 2022

Despite Willy Loman’s shortcomings, Miller successfully arouses pathos at his passing- somehow the world seems a worse place without him.

Willy Loman sacrifices his life to allow his family to live- suffering is thus obligatory to him and the audience, creating an orthodox sense of pathos after his passing.

Willy Loman falls steadily from an imagined height; where his degradation seems inevitable and his suffering appears inevitable. Although he partially elicits his own way into being myopic to the economic climate in 20^th century Boston- where salesmen jobs were within the relentlessly most underpaid brackets of employment- Willy’s continuation of hopefulness focuses sentiments of pathos into the hearts of audiences as they become bystanders to his suffering in a similar manner to Linda. Miller states that Willy’s death is not a “document in pessimism” and therefore the pathos audiences feel should be equally paired alongside hope for the future of his family; didactically suggesting that without hopefulness and relentless optimism (which are arguably illustrated through Willy’s characterisation) experiencing the monotonous journey of exploitation seems futile.

“Some attention must be paid”

Here, pathos within Miller’s audiences is intentionally heightened as Linda pleads for respect to be placed upon Willy’s name as a world without him seems unfathomable. Linda adores Willy and places him upon a heighted pedestal, her describing him as the “handsomest man”- the superlative here successfully illustrates how deeply Linda is in ore of Willy’s journey and therefore, through her eyes, the world would be a far worse place without him. The concept of respect is toyed with throughout Miller’s tragedy; arguably, the most heightened amount of disrespect is felt by Biff, when walking in on Willy’s affair with the – ominously presented- Women. From this poignant moment in the play, Biff feels a sense of disillusionment with his relationship with his father and this only allows him to escape the myopic view both Linda and Happy share about Willy and his suffering. As this segment is illustrated through flashback, it can be assumed by audiences that this was the most significant moment where Willy and Biff’s relationship demises from an authentic truthful height. Therefore, the pathos felt by audiences is emphasised through Linda soul-wrenching plead for ‘attention’ to be paid to the illusion of Willy’s life- the overtly unrealistic and undeniably idealistic screenplay of Willy’s existence. Biff illustrates his freedom from the rose-tinted glasses that Linda and Happy share in the requiem section, where Biff says that Willy had “the wrong dreams. All, all wrong”. However, Happy’s adrenaline-filled response (“almost ready to fight Biff “Don’t say that!”) suggests that he is prepared to defend capitalism’s inhumane exploitation of his father, implying that audiences can anticipate Happy continuing the cyclical nature of having ‘the wrong dreams’; further wrenching pathos within helpless audiences.

The betrayal of the nuclear family

The disequilibrium within Willy’s family unit arguably echoes Marxist critics beliefs that the nuclear family dynamic is solely a hub for consumeristic ideology to spread like wildfire and relentlessly devoured the minds of working-class civilians who strive to succeed within the American Dream’s standards. Willy’s garden is set out to represent his desire to create a good and stable life for his family where they’re all able to flourish- yet due to the invasion of industrialisation, “towering, angular shapes” “surround it on all sides”, Willy’s garden acts as an emotive microcosm for the barren nature of his life as a struggling salesman. Willy’s decision to commit suicide is made significantly in the garden, reflect his succumbing to the failure of the American Dream as the ‘towering building’ place him in an ultimate position of inferiority and vulnerability. 

With thanks to EH – year 13 2022

Willy and Pathos in ‘Death of a Salesman’

It appears that very few people learnt from his passing:

• Happy wants to continue in Willy’s footsteps of becoming a salesman and staying in the same claustrophobic city.
• Linda lets Willy treat her badly throughout the play and even in his death she wonders why nobody has respect for him, he either idolised or patronised the people he met. Shown when Linda questions “Why didn’t anybody come?” when mentioning Willy’s funeral.
• Biff is the only character that appears to understand the importance of his father’s tale when he stresses that “I know who I am, kid”. He doesn’t want to commit to the idealised life that his father had set out for him.

The fact that very few people have learnt from Willy’s mistakes shows the indoctrination that American society have enforced and the dangers of it. Miller creates this high level of pathos following Willy’s death as a message to the audience of the unrealistic ideology of the American Dream.

The world appears a worse off place without him due to the lack of attention that is paid to his death, only his close family come to his funeral and they are also the only ones that noticed the warning signs of his death. It could be symbolic of how the capitalistic employers did not see their employees as individuals but rather as disposable because of their working class status. Willy’s death is so heavily foreshadowed that it is no shock to the audience when it happens but the sense of inevitability spurs the amplified pathos.

His death is also heavily foreshadowed from the very beginning of the play, in Act One, Scene One when Willy states that he is “tired to the death”, an early indication of his deteriorating well-being. This decline is further highlighted in Scene One when Happy says that Willy “stops at a green light and then turns red and he goes” and the use of the lexical choice “again” when Happy exclaims that Willy “smashed up the car again!”

This continues in Act Two, when Willy says that he “slept like a dead one”, the again foreshadowed simile alludes the audience to the inevitable fate of Willy’s death. Act two is when Linda begins to become extremely anxious about Willy’s sufferings as she mentions to Biff how she wanted to “destroy” the “little rubber pipe” but finds it already missing at the hands of Biff himself. Willy seems to be in “desperation” when he tells Howard that he has “gotta earn money”.

It is important that Willy Loman’s death is mentioned in the title of the play as it shows how the play may not be about Willy’s death as an individual, but it is about the hazardous ills of society and the mass effect that it is having. The name ‘Loman’ could also be a reference to ‘low man’, someone that does not have a high status in the class hierarchy.

With thanks to KH in year 13

Loss of Identity: A Key Tragic Trope

The protagonists of Othello (Othello), Death of a Salesman (Willy Loman), and Keats’ poetry (notably Lamia from Lamia and the knight from La Belle Dame Sans Merci) all suffer, to an extent, a loss of identity. However, it is not necessarily true that the characters’ loss of identity is instigated by their tragic fall, but might instead be a cause of it.

Othello

Othello’s Moorish identity is a significant part of Othello, especially due to the constant racism he faces from characters such as Iago (who calls him a “barbary horse” and “devil”) and Brabantio (who accuses him of using “magic” to win over Desdemona). Early in the play (Act 1, Scene 2 and Scene 3), Othello does not outright reject his identity but acknowledges its limitations, understanding that his “parts… title and… perfect soul” are necessary to counteract racial prejudice in his trial. However, some rejection of his identity is inherent to his role as a general in the Venetian military; as a Moor, he almost certainly comes from a part of the world that has been damaged by colonial policy, however he fought colonial wars against “cannibals” in many “battles, sieges”. Othello’s interpretation of his own identity is largely irrelevant to his downfall, however in Act 4 it does appear that Othello is beginning to resent his identity, suggesting that he believes Desdemona to be unfaithful “haply, for I am black”. Therefore, it is evident that Othello’s ethnicity has led to him being somewhat insecure, and therefore susceptible to manipulation from Iago. In the instance of Othello, the tragedy is caused more by the loss of identity rather than vice versa.

Death of a Salesman

Willy Loman is clearly far more aligned with the natural world and with manual labour than he is with life in urban New York in white collar work. He demonstrates this during his card game with Charley, who he calls “disgusting” because “a man who can’t handle tools is not a man”. Furthermore, he is constantly distracted by the “scenery” of rural New England, and describes it as “so beautiful up there… the trees are so thick, and the sun is warm”, suggesting that he is inclined towards the natural world. However, Willy chooses to exist within New York, which has been urbanised since he has lived in his house (“there’s not a breath of fresh air in this neighbourhood”) due to his naïve belief in the American Dream and his ability to thrive within a capitalist society. This is in contrast to his natural identity, and this is a significant cause, not consequence of, his downfall.

Keats

Lamia is arguably the tragic hero that suffers from the most explicit loss of identity in Keats’ poetry, as it is categorised by a physical transformation. She begins the poem as a wondrous serpentine creature of the immortal world, “striped like a zebra, freckled like a pard”, however undergoes a painful transformation in to a mortal woman able to fulfil her mortal desires but with significantly less power. Due to this transformation, she is vulnerable to the world of rationality and science, embodied by Lycius, which leads to the ultimate tragedy of Lamia’s disappearance and Lycius’ death, and therefore the loss of identity was in part responsible for the tragedy. The knight from La Belle Dame Sans Merci has an equally significant but perhaps less obvious loss of identity than Lamia does, and it occurs as a result of the tragedy. After the “faery’s child” leaves the knight “on the cold hill’s side”, he undergoes an internal transition from being a proactive and forceful patriarch from a hyper-masculine world of war and killing, and becomes a physically weakened, “ail[ed]” character with a “lily on [his] brow” and “on [his] cheeks a fading rose”. Regarding this poem, it is certainly true that the tragedy of La Belle Dame Sans Merci instigated the loss of the knight’s identity.

With thanks to KW in year 13

Tragedy Section C Class Essay

‘At the heart of the tragic experience is an overwhelming sense of shame’.

To what extent do you agree with this view in the relation to the two texts you have studied? Remember to include in your answer relevant comment on the ways writers have shaped meanings.

Whilst it can be said that shame, as experienced by the protagonists in ‘Death of a Salesman’ and Keats’ poetry (and readers and audiences) is significant, to what extent it is overwhelming and at the heart of the tragic experience may be debated.

Primarily, Miller explores the theme of shame through Willy’s relationship with Biff and their continual conflict. Within Act One, Willy expresses his anger and shame towards his son through the use of the adjectives ‘lazy’ and ‘moody’, which directs the reader’s attention to Biff’s lack of success and drive that is needed to attain the American Dream. This, in turn, casts the attention off Willy’s own personal failures, caused by the chaos and destruction of his ‘massive dreams’ in his own mind. Here, Biff’s fatal flaw is underscored: he strives for greatness yet at the first sign of hardship he gives up. It could be argued that this is due to his personal conflict between wanting to be surrounded by natural life and following in his father’s footsteps of being ‘well-liked’ in the world of business and capitalism. Biff’s habit to ‘borrow’ items foregrounds his future failures, which causes Willy great shame, as in fear of not succeeding he sabotages himself to prevent rejection. Each item he steals, such as the basketball and pen, becomes a motif of his cyclical life as he moves from one opportunity to another, stuck in ‘a measly manner of existence’. However, it could be argued that Willy’s feelings of shame towards Biff are a result of his own insecurities of being unable to maintain the vision of the American Dream. He is so blinkered by the societal construct that he elevates the goal of hard work leading to success; so much so that he is unable to see the love and support that surrounds him. For example, in Act Two, Willy asks Charley for ‘a hundred and ten dollars’ but refuses Charley’s job offer. Here, Willy’s pride gets the better of him as he would prefer to fulfil his dream of being like Dave Singleman, a salesman who ‘died the death of a salesman, in his green velvet slippers’, rather than acknowledge the support from Charley and take the job. The two adjectives ‘green’ and ‘velvet’ create a sense of luxury to act as a reminder of the increase of consumerism between 1945 and 1949 in America. In comparison, Willy’s life is a shameful one, as only a few people attend his funeral compared to the ‘hundreds of salesmans and buyers’ at Singleman’s. Therefore, Willy’s own poor mental state is reflected in the shame he feels towards Biff when he claims ‘not finding yourself at the age of thirty-four is a disgrace’. This is ironic as, even in death, Willy Loman has not found himself due to him having the ‘wrong dreams’ and ‘never [knowing] who he was’.

A similar sense of shame may be seen at the heart of the Knight’s tragic experience in ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’. The Knight’s tragic experience and the shame the reader feels for him may begin when he places himself in a world he does not belong. This can be seen as he ‘made a garland for her head.’ The inevitability of his limbic state at the end is highlighted here as he tries to place himself into a superior position of a potent being. Furthermore, another moment of shame can be seen as he ‘shut her wild wild eyes.’ Through this, shame is presented as he tries to dominate a superior force, highlighting the anthropocentrism of humanity. The use of the adjective ‘wild’ shows the futility of his own actions and heightens the shame the listener feels. Additionally, the Knight fails to see the futility of his own actions which presents shame within itself. This is underscored as he ‘sojourns’ ‘on the cold hillside’, he has self-willed his own isolation and his desolation is down to his inability to maintain the vision. The more we attempt to vision beauty the more painful the world seems due to its insufficiencies. Keats may have done this to create an extended metaphor for the struggles he experienced in his endeavours to capture the true beauty of reality and dreams and to show the power the natural world holds. As well as his discontent with the Industrial Revolution. A reader may experience shame towards the Knight and his selfish acts for pointless reasons.

Moreover, in “Death of a Salesman”, Arthur Miller portrays shame in his play – especially through the characterisation of Willy and Biff Loman. This is demonstrated when willy said “What are you trying to do, blame it on me? If a boy lays down is that my fault?”. This suggests how Willy is trying to pass away his guilt by not taking any responsibility over his sons’ actions and deflects any attention away from their father and son relationship. The use of rhetorical questions suggest how Willy takes no ownership for his sons’ failures and does not support Biff in a parental way but knocks him down like another member of everyday society. However, from Biff discovering the truth about Willy’s affair, the division in their relationship becomes evidently clear. The shame and guilt that Willy feels from this causes a natural drift in their relationship and the shame overpowers any bond that the father and son had prior to this event taking place. Once Biff discovers the reality of Willy’s double-life, a heated debate takes place after Willy tells Biff, “I gave you an order! Biff, come back here or I will beat you!”. The use of violent language shows the turning point in their relationship and is the guilt-trigger that causes it to degrade; Miller uses this line to draw attention to the shame that Willy experiences as well as his feelings of fear.

In a similar way, it could be argued that both Lycius and Lamia’s sense of shame overwhelm Keats’ tragic story. For example Lycius, who is originally characterised as ‘gentle’, a metaphor for ‘the poet’ immersed in the creative imagination, becomes disillusioned with his love for Lamia. Here Lycius begins to revel in the patriarchy and ultimately becomes a hyper masculine figure, antithetic to the man he was before. We can see this through his treatment of Lamia when he not only begins to adhere to gender stereotypes by upholding a domineering persona over her, before his lack of recognition towards her at their wedding ceremony yet displaying her to their ‘herd’ of guests like a ‘trophy’. This heightens an elements of shame towards the end as, not only is he still wilfully ignorant to her true form, in order to maintain a more idealistic illusion, Lycius’ myopia towards his one tragic transformation could be perceived as shameful from a reader’s perspective as he is so blinkered to the man he had now; ‘blinded Lycius’. On the contrary, one could also argue that there is a great amount of shame in Lamia’s transformation from a potent, ‘palpitating’ Goddess to a ‘real woman’; subservient to get male counterpart – illustrated by how ‘she nothing said’- implying she is trapped in the domestic sphere. This may evoke disappointment for a feminist reader, regarding the shameful diminishing Lycius exerts upon her, on-top of how here newfound stature in the mortal world requires her to submit herself to the patriarchy, and she sadly does so passively. Yet optimistically, her tragic demise could be interpreted as her empowering liberaration, as it allows her to escape – which Keats so craved- and be free from a world that did not accept her sovereignty and femme fatale force.

Predominantly, the ‘money bag’ brothers in ‘Isabella…’ epitomize the embodiment of capitalistic views in the way that they exploit ‘tortured minds’ in ‘noisy factories’. Their Florentine origins may be a factor contributing to their anthropocentric stance as they are a product of their environment. ‘these men of cruel day’ succumb to toxic masculinity and the pressures of societal norms. To uphold their reputation, they flee their guilt which acts as a barrier to the reality of abandoning their sister. This act of folly illustrates the underlying shame and deflection of their emotions. Therefore, shame does act as an overwhelming internal conflict that completely consumes ‘the brethren’, as they feel remorseful towards Isabella. However, their shame is halted in regards to the disposable ‘Lorenzo!’ through his working-class status.

On the other hand, it could equally be argued that it is not shame but Willy’s shameless behaviour that is the primary catalyst for the tragic events of Death of a Salesman. Throughout Miller’s play, Willy participates in a number of hypocrisies and immoral activities, concerned not with the morality of the actions themselves but the risks and consequences of being caught. One such example of this is the affair that Willy has in Boston with the nameless “woman”, as it demonstrably has a profound impact on Biff. Whilst Willy’s anger and outbursts towards Biff are ostensibly a coping mechanism for his failure to raise his “star” of a son effectively, it is the consequences of getting caught that inspired such feelings rather than regret towards the indecency of his actions.  During his moment of analepsis in Frank’s Chop House, in which he reflects upon the affair, it is made clear that he is primarily concerned with any potential consequences of the affair to himself. Before engaging the extramarital affair, an act which both modern and contemporary audiences would largely view as wrong, Willy’s first thought is that there may be “a law in Massachusetts about” affairs, not the hurt that he might and ultimately does cause to his family. Therefore, in his lowest moment in the play, and in the moment that catalyses the play’s tragedy, it can be said that Willy was entirely shameless.

Equally, it might be questioned as to whether shame is truly at the heart of the tragic experience in ‘Isabella’. Here it is surely love that is overwhelming and that which brings about Isabella’s terrible grief. This can be portrayed in the initial passivity of their relationship when they ‘spake they to their pillows’. Furthermore, Lorenzo’s blinkeredness and inaction can be evidenced when ‘her full shape would all his seeing fill’. The fixation of their love contributed to the naivety and ignorance towards the societal dangers of their forbidden love. ‘The brethren’ saw ‘many signs’ which could indicate the futility and inevitability of the lover’s downfall, which Isabella and Lorenzo were blindly unaware of due to their myopic ‘sick longing’ for one another. Therefore, shame plays an important role of acting as a catalyst for the brothers attempt at fleeing. Despite this, love is the ultimate driving force for their societal subversion and the reason for their shame.

Although it can be said that an overwhelming sense of shame is at the heart of the tragic experiences in both ’Death of a Salesman’ and Keats’ stories, perhaps it is fairer to say that it just one element contributing to the sadness that audiences feel, with other factors such as a lack of shame and a fixation on love causing myopia at play.