The Emergence of Hope in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman

In a documented conversation with Mel Gussow, Arthur Miller describes Death of a Salesman as “suffused, oddly enough, with hope” (195). Such an optimistic description might cause some surprise, if not confusion, especially for those viewers who leave productions of the play knotted into depression or anxiety by Willy Loman’s consum- ing materialism and pathetic delusions of grandeur. What hope can one glean from the life and death of a man with such apparently hol- low values and such an obsessive desire for recognition and financial success? Furthermore, if Willy Loman, as some critics suggest, sym- bolizes the “everyman” of a commercialized culture, what hope does his suicide offer to modern viewers? Perhaps none. Yet, Miller’s play explores far more than Willy Loman’s failures and losses; it explores the depths of filial love, the freedom of self-actualization, and the tri- umph of honesty. It does far more than portray financial failure; it cel- ebrates spiritual success. In fact, to understand fully why Arthur Miller considered his play “suffused . . . with hope,” one must first be willing to view it as Miller does, through the eyes of a moralist. Gussow describes Miller as a playwright “aware of all sides of a dis- pute but clear about where he stands: for an essential moral truth” (8), and Miller himself readily admits to Gussow in another of their many recorded conversations that his plays “implicitly or explicitly . . . create a moral universe” (70). Even Harold Clurman, the acclaimed director of many of Miller’s plays, comments on Miller’s fundamental morality: “He is, as we shall see, sufficiently imbued with the skepticism of modern thought to shy away from the presumptions implicit in . . . [the word ‘sin’]. But that Miller is willy-nilly a moralist—one who believes he knows what sin and evil are—is inescapable” (xii–xiii). When discussing Death of a Salesman in particular, Miller admits that “by showing what happens where there are no values, I[,] at least, assume that the audience will be compelled and propelled toward a more intense quest for the values that 138 Deborah Cosier Solomon are missing” (“Death of a Salesman: A Symposium” 47). This fundamen- tal acknowledgement of the existence of right and wrong values is vital to one’s understanding of the play’s hopefulness primarily because it brings into focus the spiritual development of Willy’s oldest son, Biff, the only one in the Loman family who seems to feel the inadequacy of his father’s values. If Willy represents the emptiness of materialism, Biff represents the struggle against it, the struggle for a sense of self-awareness and integ- rity. As Jeremy Hawthorn remarks, “although Death of a Salesman attacks the American Dream through Willy, there is a certain amount of ideo- logical recuperation through Biff” (95). Biff embodies, as Miller argues, the “system of love” that gradually counteracts Willy’s “law of success” (“Death” 42), and despite the often overwhelming anxiety generated by Willy’s sense of failure, Miller maintains a steady thread of hope by con- stantly drawing parallels between father and son. Both, for instance, feel a deep attraction to the beauty of nature, but while Willy chooses to lead a life bound by materialism, Biff chooses a life of simplicity in the open reaches of the West. Both encounter the opportunity to sacrifice, but while Willy’s sacrifice hints of cowardice, Biff’s sacrifice demonstrates a will- ingness to suffer for the sake of his father’s happiness. Both face rejection, but while Willy refuses to acknowledge his failure and struggles to sustain his delusions, Biff strives for the courage to see himself as he is and thus struggles toward the truth. Thus, as the narrative progresses and compari- son between the two becomes increasingly more inevitable, Biff’s struggle toward self-actualization grows ever more promising. The first similarity between father and son appears in their lyric praise of nature. In the very first scene of the play, Willy recounts “with wonder: . . . it’s so beautiful up there, Linda, the trees are so thick, and the sun is warm. I opened the windshield and just let the warm air bathe over me . . .” (14). A little further on in the conversa- tion he continues, “Lost: More and more I think of those days, Linda. This time of year it was lilac and wisteria. And then the peonies would come out, and the daffodils. What fragrance in this room!” (17). Biff, in his first conversation, also eulogizes the beauty of nature: “This farm I work on, it’s spring there now, see? And they’ve got about fif- teen new colts. There’s nothing more inspiring or—beautiful than the sight of a mare and a new colt” (22). As the play continues, however, and Miller begins his deft fluctuation between the present and the past, Willy’s professed love of nature shows itself to be tainted by ulterior motives; he lauds the wilds of Alaska and Africa not for their beauty