Death of a Salesman - An Anti-Capitalist Perspective

Arthur Miller's social commentary

A commonplace interpretation of Willy Loman, the central character in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, is that his is the story of an old man gone senile experiencing psychological breakdown that causes turmoil in his family and culminates in him taking his own life. This is a fundamentally individualist interpretation, and it limits the scope of analysis so tightly to the surface that it misses key dynamics that the play more or less explicitly explores. This individualist interpretation also seems to stem from or produce a lack of sympathy for the character, as if Willy is somehow the villain of the story, when actually Willy is perhaps the story’s ultimate victim. He is the quintessential figure of the broken proletariat who has internalized the system that oppresses him, and his story is all about capitalist ideology.

Capitalist ideology has really taken a firm hold on Willy’s mind, as evidenced by the way he perpetually needs to justify the system. On page 17, he says, “That’s what’s ruining this country! Population is getting out of control.” He must blame other individuals for the problems the system has caused, because if his blame were properly directed to that system, his perspective would crumble and he would have to reconstruct his entire worldview. On page 15, after talking to Linda about how he’s worked his whole life to pay off the house that nobody will be there to live in by the time he owns it, he says that “some people accomplish something.” These people are, of course, capitalists, in the class sense, who do not need to work their entire lives in the way that Willy does. Willy desperately wants to become this ideal vision of a man that he holds in his mind, but without the class analysis, he still believes it is possible with personality. On page 33, he tells his sons, “Bernard can get the best marks in school, y’understand, but when he gets out in the business world, y’understand, you are going to be five times ahead of him. That’s why I thank Almighty God you’re both built like Adonises. Because the man who makes an appearance in the business world, the man who creates personal interest, is the man who gets ahead. Be liked and you will never want.” While not falling for the myth that education can get anyone anywhere, he does fall for the myth of personal appeal, completely missing the fact that it’s really the man who owns something who gets further ahead than any man he employs, no matter how much personal interest these men create.

Willy’s ideology is most explicitly revealed in the scene where he’s talking to Howard, his boss. From the start of the conversation, Howard’s disrespect for Willy is clear to see. He talks past him, ignores what he says, hushes him, and interrupts him, all while Willy listens to him, compliments him, and even lies to him in order to move the conversation more smoothly on page 78 where he says, “I think I’ll get one myself.” and Howard says, “Sure, they’re only a hundred and a half. You can’t do without it.” about the wire recorder. Willy obviously can’t afford that, and Howard is so obliviously affluent that he assumes he can. After Howard shoots down Willy’s request for a job in town, Willy says he only needs sixty-five dollars a week for his family. As the conversation goes on, he lowers his amount once to fifty dollars a week and then again to forty. He is willing to lower his standard of living just to keep a job, just to survive, because that is the class position he is in, while Howard is willing to continually deny him of this, no matter how low he goes, because that is the class position he is in. This is the conflict between worker and boss. And what is Howard’s justification for this? “Business is business” he tells Willy, “and everybody’s gotta pull his own weight.” on page 80, as if there was simply nothing he could do for him and no other way for things to be. Willy says on page 82, in his angry desperation, “You can’t eat the orange and throw the peel away—a man is not a piece of fruit!” That is exactly what the system has done to him. Howard responds to this by attempting to deny his accomplishments, and then by telling Willy, “Pull yourself together.” meaning, get back in your place and don’t complain. Still, Willy says, “My God, I was yelling at him! How could I!” He is guilty for standing up for himself after being exploited for so long, showing that he has entirely internalized the system that oppresses him. On page 36, he tells Linda, “I’m not noticed.” He doesn’t feel valued, and it’s no wonder he feels this way. He is alienated. It doesn’t matter that he worked his whole life for the company, it doesn’t matter how little he’s willing to work for, and it certainly doesn’t matter how tired he has grown after his decades of toil; he is just one of many disposable cogs in the machine, and the machine has now disposed of him.

Linda is the character with the most insight into Willy’s condition. On page 57, she says, “And what goes through a man’s mind, driving seven hundred miles home without having earned a cent? Why shouldn’t he talk to himself? Why? When he has to go to Charley and borrow fifty dollars a week and pretend to me that it’s his pay? How long can that go on? How long? You see what I’m sitting here and waiting for? And you tell me he has no character? The man who never worked a day but for your benefit?” She knows that it is the system that is to blame for Willy’s mental state. She says, “The man is exhausted.” on page 56, and that, “A small man can be just as exhausted as a great man.” The underlying piece that the characters miss is that who she describes as small men are really workers here, while who she describes as great men are owners. Our so-called small men are, really, bound to be more exhausted than our so-called great men. Linda describes these great men earlier on page 56 when she says, “I don’t say he’s a great man. Willy Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper. He’s not the finest character that ever lived.” She is also describing everything that Willy always wanted to be. The owner class takes home the majority of the wealth, and with wealth you can see your name not only in the paper but plastered on whatever it is you buy and own, and the reputation of your character is elevated as you have less stress and more time for etiquette, not the mention the fact that with wealth no one will want to cross you and you can practically buy fine character. But Willy belongs to the working class, and his tragedy is that of the worker. He spends his life wanting to be like the owners, toiling away at their behest even when they pay him nothing, naively admiring them as if they are somehow better than him all while the fundamental class divide that creates this situation in the first place is left obscured and unknown to him as he literally deteriorates away into nothing. And Willy does admire the capitalist class. His respect for Howard extends so far that it causes him to deeply disrespect himself, as delineated above. He’s desperate to impress his much wealthier brother Ben, even telling him on page 51, “Business is bad, it’s murderous. But not for me, of course.” even though it was, in a sense, the structure of business that murdered him. He spent his life chasing a capitalist definition of success which capitalism itself denied him of, and so the only way left to achieve it was death.

This tragedy began in Willy’s life with the denial of his dreams. Willy wanted to work with his hands, but he followed in his father’s footsteps as a salesman because that was the clearest way to make money, and the worker must take what work makes money in order to survive under capitalism. We see little hints of Willy’s dreams still showing themselves throughout the play, like on page 75 when he says, “Maybe beets would grow out there.” and Linda reminds him how many times he’s tried to plant them. The beets won’t grow in that soil just like his dreams can’t come to fruition under capitalism. Biff shares these dreams with his father, wanting to work with his hands and forego the business world entirely. “Screw the business world!” he even says on page 61, going on to say, “I don’t care what they think! They’ve laughed at Dad for years, and you know why? Because we don’t belong in this nuthouse of a city! We should be mixing cement on some open plain, or—or carpenters. A carpenter is allowed to whistle!” Biff wants him and his father to own their own labor and to be unrestricted by the social norms of business culture. He knows he doesn’t fit in business, as he says this on page 60, as no one who wants to retain their sense of joy and spirit untempered by corporate culture does. He is at odds with what the system, and by extension his father who has been ideologically possessed by the system, expect of him.

This brings us to analyze how capitalism is really the force behind the familial conflict. It is not some inner maliciousness that causes Willy to mistreat his family. His abuses stem from his stresses. He is described on page 65 as “beaten down, guilt ridden” after exploding at Linda, and earlier on page 18, “turning to Linda, guiltily: You’re not worried about me, are you, sweetheart?” “You’re my foundation and support, Linda.” It’s clear he loves her on some level. In Willy’s memory states, we see his idealized picture of Biff, who is not only a son who loves him but practically the picture of the ideal CEO. On page 34, he tells Biff to tell his friends what to do. He tells them to sweep out the furnace room, and they all listen unquestioningly, with Linda lauding “the way they obey him!” On page 62, right after yelling at Biff for losing a job by whistling in an elevator, he switches right back to praising him once he reveals that he’s going to see Bill Oliver in the morning; in other words, once he fits into his own internalized oppressive standard and vision of success. Linda and Willy have an exchange about Biff on page 16, where Linda says, “He’s finding himself, Willy.” and he responds with, “Not finding yourself at the age of thirty-four is a disgrace!” and “The trouble is he’s lazy, goddamnit!” Of course, this isn’t true. Not finding yourself, or finding a job in this case, at the age of thirty-four is only disgraceful from a capitalist viewpoint, and the trouble isn’t that he’s “lazy”, the trouble is that his desires are incompatible with what the system and his father it possesses expect of him.

Works Cited

Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman . Penguin, 1999.

(originally completed on October 12, 2020)