About the work
Arthur Miller's „Death of a Salesman" was premiered on Broadway in 1949 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It is regarded as the most important American play of the twentieth century and a critical analysis of the American Dream.
Plot
Brooklyn, late 1940s. Willy Loman, a 63-year-old travelling salesman, is at the end of his career — exhausted, deluded, drowning in debt. He returns home to his wife Linda and his two adult sons Biff and Happy. Biff, once a promising football player, has drifted from job to job since discovering his father's affair in a Boston hotel as a teenager. In flashbacks woven through the present action Willy's life is reconstructed: his idolisation of his successful brother Ben, his ruthless competition for status, his fantasy that his sons will become rich. Willy is fired by his young boss. Biff and Willy confront each other in a shattering scene; Biff weeps in his father's arms. Willy decides to kill himself in a staged car accident so that Biff can collect the life-insurance and start a business. The play closes with Linda alone at the grave: „We're free."
Cultural significance
Death of a Salesman is the great American family tragedy. Lee J. Cobb's Broadway Willy (1949) was iconic; Dustin Hoffman, Brian Dennehy and Philip Seymour Hoffman all played the role. The play has been performed worldwide; a famous production by Mike Nichols (2012) brought it back to Broadway. Miller's portrayal of the failed salesman became the symbolic image of the American working middle class.