Death of a Salesman saw its first performance on February 10th, 1949 on Broadway. It ran for two years, with 742 performances. In various interviews Miller suggests the original seeds of the play are to be found in the summer employment he had with his father's company, when the young Miller was only seventeen. Indeed, that summer Miller completed a short story version of Death of a Salesman. In that story the young Miller introduces us to an aging salesman who cannot sell. He is berated by his company bosses and must borrow money for the subway from the young narrator. The end of this early manuscript contains a postscript that the man on whom the story was modeled had thrown himself under a subway train.

Miller reworked the idea for several years until 1947 when he began to conceive of it as a modern tragedy, something fit for the stage. After a chance meeting with his uncle Manny Newman, he began to see his play unfold. His uncle, a successful salesman, had two sons, Buddy and Abby. Miller describes the Newman household as one in which it was impermissible to lose hope. He said he based the four principal characters on his uncle, aunt and two cousins. Buddy, like Biff, was a renowned high school athlete whose grades were so poor that he failed to gain entrance to college. Miller has said on a number of interviews that he played the part of Bernard to his cousins Biff and Happy.

The original cast of Death of a Salesman included Mildred Dunnock, Arthur Kennedy, and starred Lee J. Cobb as Willy. The initial production was directed by Elia Kazan (who later would inform on Miller when the director was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee.) The play was an immediate success, winning the Pulitzer Prize for drama as well as the Tony Award for 1949. The New Yorker called the play "a mixture of compassion, imagination, and hard technical competence not found in our theatre."

Since the original 1949-51 run, the play has been revived numerous times on Broadway. Frederic March played Willy in the most successful screen version (1951). Dustin Hoffman gave a run at Willy in a 1984 Broadway revival and subsequent movie version. More recently, George C. Scott and Brain Dennehy have brought Willy back to the stage, Dennehy winning a Tony for his performance.

Death of a Salesman as a Tragedy

After the initial reviews of the play in 1949, Arthur Miller wrote a piece for the New York Times called "Tragedy and the Common Man." Much of the original critiques of the play asked whether Death of a Salesman was a tragedy, with most of critics arguing that Willy did not believe in enough that was noble to count as a tragic hero. Miller's essay is in response to those critics.

This exchange was not a purely academic one, a taking Aristotle out of the moth balls. It really rankled Miller, and it is, I think, a good entre into the significance of the play. One way to begin a discussion about Willy is to ask what it is he believes in. Does he start out more noble than the rest of us? Does he have ideals? If so, what are they? Is there a consistency to his stated and unstated ideals? How might the analysis of Godfrey Hodgson in his "The Ideology of the Liberal Consensus" help us chart Willy's set of beliefs. (See the fundamental assumptions about post-war America Hodgson lists on p. 78.)

Willy Loman is a modern man who has accepted wholeheartedly the post-war 20th century version of the American dream. But has the dream become contradictory and debased or does the fault lie with Willy? Willy's story is a tarnishing of the Horatio Alger story. But is it the Alger myth that is the problem or is it Willy's embodiment of it? In Alger there is no divide between his ideals and his life. Willy seems repeatedly to fall into multiple contradictions and a double standard, both of which he is not entirely aware. While preaching to his sons the virtues of clean living, friendliness, sportsmanship and honesty, his life regularly denies these qualities.

Death of a Salesman  as a Period Piece

In some ways Death of a Salesman is a companion piece to Miller's All My Sons. a play first produced on Broadway on January 29th, 1947, with a run of 328 performances. This play, which won the Drama Critics Circle Award, established Miller as a first class playwright. The story is of Joe Keller, a small manufacturer who during the war allowed some faulty engine blocks to be shipped to the air force. When a number of planes crashed, Keller and his partner were brought to trial. In the course of the trial Keller's partner is blamed, although it was Keller who was responsible. The action of the play centers around an attempt by Keller's son Chris to find out what really happened. The point of his father's guilt is brought home to Chris when he reads a letter proving that his father was responsible and suggesting that Keller's other son, Larry, dies in combat as an expiation for his father's sins.

Willy Loman, like Keller, shares a number of assumptions about the role of morality in business, as well as its role in the American Dream. This is fertile territory to explore with students. Another important area to explore is the relationship of athletics to the American dream. Biff is a star athlete. That fact seems to bestow a set of entitlements on him. What are they? What role do they have in charting the course of Biff's life? How might this be related to the way young men define themselves in contemporary America?

With all of Willy's faults-- his weaknesses, his density, his petty irritations and self-delusions-- he still nevertheless evokes in most of his audiences fear and pity. Perhaps we see much of ourselves in Willy. We are so often volatile compounds of weakness, self-delusion, and folly, while at the same time sincerely trying to do the good. This striving to do the good is finally what liberates Orestes and Hamlet, and in the Judeo-Christian story, the sons of Adam. If Miller condemns Willy, it comes with sorrow and pity.

All this brings us back to the end of the play. Why does Willy commit suicide? For whom does Willy act? In the end, is he successful?