DEATH OF A SALESMAN

Rating:
Summary: Read it twice for a full appreciation.
Review: I'm sure that this play would be much more powerful acted out, but reading it gets the message across fine enough. Arthur Miller was the author that I had to read three books of for my AP English class. I was not disappointed with my choice. Sometimes it can become confusing, and yeah, it drags on in some places, but it creates a MOOD! You feel a little nutty because you have to deal with Willy just like poor Biff, Happy, and Linda. American drama doesn't get much better than this. You must expose yourself to this extraordinary play. If you open your mind and heart, this play can totally transform your view of life.

Rating:
Summary: Very Listenable
Review: I have listened to this tape over and over. It is a good recording of a very good cast and is one of my favorite tapes. If you are studying the play or just have some free time to listen, I would definitely recommend it. Dustin Hoffman's small part is so good! It is ironic that many years later he plays Willy Loman in the made for TV movie.

Rating:
Summary: Land of the free and the disillusioned
Review: Arthur Miller's _Death of a Salesman_ is classic Americana. It should be read by anyone wanting insight into the citizen-soul. This has always been the raw material of Arthur Miller's art. And it's more than that. _Death of a Salesman_ is an angle on the American Dream from a vantage of mistaken values. Willy Lohman, it seems, was a natural salesman. He could take a piece of truth and spin it into illusion. He could craft a dream with skill and genius and then cement the whole with stern conviction. To the salesman truth does not matter much anyway, it is all an illusion. Willy knows that people WANT to believe. So he tells them. But it rings hollowly within his own family after time. And that's the tragedy of Willy's life. He took the salesman home. You see, Willy knew the truth about himself, but kept it concealed. It only occassionally bared itself to his wife, Linda. This drama of Miller's is not about the death of Willy Lohman, but about the death of that "salesman" within him, that mirage of courage and conceit which sought to camouflage the real man even to his own sons. And that death should have occurred some years earlier when young Biff showed up at Willy's Boston hotel room and shattered his boyhood illusion of the father-hero. Willy, the dreamer of great things, was defeated by his own life. He sought the rainbow's end. It was the one delusion of his own existence, idealized by the chimera of his dead brother Ben who "walked into the jungle at 17 and came out at 21--rich." The secret which eluded Willy was not to be found in that sad disillusionment, nor in the loss of his eldest son's pride, nor even in the final undeniable failure of his own acomplishment. It lay in the simple fact, unbeknownst to Willy, that he was a man loved for who he was, not for who he wanted to be.

Rating:
Summary: To be...well liked?
Review: Often praised by too-sentimental audiences as being a modern-day tragedy, Death of a Salesman attempts to bring the situation of tragedy to the affairs of an average man, a simple salesman. Miller himself intended for his play to be a 'tragedy of the common man', as he wrote in an essay in the NY Times in 1949. Unfortunately, the play falls sadly below the tragic mark, being a tale, not necessarily 'signifying nothing', but certainly signifying nothing of the tragic condition of man. Willy Loman, fashioned as 'hero', is a man whose aspiration is to be 'well liked', not an aspiration to be frowned upon, but not a desire that would catapult him to tragic action. No, Willy Loman is a miserable and pathetic character, whose situation is to be pitied immensly, but he has not the greatness of character nor strength of will, nor anything akin to the Hellenic notion of Hubris, that can put him into the tragic category. He does not offend the heavens, his struggle is one of flesh alone, there is no transcendence. A stomachable play in its own right, and a fine job of characterisation, but not the stuff that tragedy is made of.

Rating:
Summary: One of the greatest plays of all time.
Review: This is, without a doubt, the greatest American play ever written. In writing it, Arthur Miller set out to recapture the emotional power of Greek tragedy in a contemporary setting. And he succeeded. The play illuminates the lies inherent in the American dream in an emotionally shattering manner, by following one man's tragic failure to live up to his own ideals. It's one of the most powerful pieces of dramatic literature I've ever had the joy of reading.

Rating:
Summary: The first true modern American tragedy. A Masterpiece.
Review: Arthur Miller once said he wrote plays for people who didn't go to the theater. In "Death of a Salesman," pehaps his greatest play, Miller examines the life of Willy Loman, a traveling salesman at the end of his career, so wrought with regret, he lives in a theater of his own worst memories. After returning exhausted from a unsuccessful trip, Loman begins to break down under the burdens he carries: twenty years of secret affairs, his eldest son's terrific failure, and a lifetime of burned bridges and missed opportunities. Unable to find other work and incapable of accepting the modest successes in his life -- keeping a family together, finishing off a mortage -- Willy insists on measuring himself against an impossible yardstick and punishes himself by reliving the baleful trajectory of his life. "Death of a Salesman," is a poignant, sad, and moving work about the bottoming out of American promises, and unattainable pinnacle of masculinity.

Rating:
Summary: In business? Know anyone in direct sales?
Review: The stark reality is haunting. I have a
relative who fits poor Willy's description.
Business can be disasterous on those who don't
succeed. It is really a tragedy that I
recommend to fully pity the loser's point of view.

Rating:
Summary: Salesman in the story is us.
Review: As time go by, I could understand my father's position. My father isn't a salesman. I'm not a salesman, either. I didn't think that I'm gonna be .. when I was little. salesman! salesman! We are gonna be the position like the salseman in the story. We are forgotten it. I guess We should realize it. for survival.

Rating:
Summary: The book was depressing, but vividly so.
Review: An old, decaying traveling salesman, Willy Loman, has warped reality so incredibly in his mind that his family must present him with nothing but lies to keep him from utter insanity and suicide. He has two sons, Happy and Biff, who have of course been seriously deprived of reality themselves. Both of them know that their lives are not as they should be, and that they are living a lie, but Happy goes along with it. Biff wants to escape from his family, but Willy's need for control opposes Biff's desire for truth. Willy's wife Linda has a concept of reality, but represses it to keep Willy from killing himself. A book about misery should have some kind of hope within it, just as a dark cloud must have a silver lining. Death of a Salesman was great in relating human suffering and the nightmare that can arise from far too much lying, but it exaggerated the negative side of life, and for that reason it did not satisfy me as much as it could have.

Rating:
Summary: Death of the American Dream
Review: The play, "Death of a Salesman", by Arthur Miller, is a classic representation of the strife that the so-called pursuit of the American Dream can bring. The main character of the play is Willy Loman, who is found trapped by his old fashioned beliefs of how the business world should operate. It is found in the play that often times a smile and good appearance is not enough to get the job done. Willy was never successful in fufilling his ultimate dream of becoming a successful salesman. While he tried to attain his dream, he began to realize that his family life was unraveling. He was a victim of the "Heratio Alger" mentality, which stated that success would come to those who pursued their goals diligently. As high school students, we found the issues brought up in the play to be extremely relevant to everyday life. People like Willy are very common in today's society, in which people try so hard and still have troubles taking care of their family and fufilling their responsibilities. For a man that places so much importance on being successful it is hard for Willy to deal with the consequences he is faced with when his dreams fail to come true. The American Dream for some people is not easy to attain. This play is a good example of the everyday struggle that people face when trying to live up to something that they are not. Whether Willy liked it or not, he could not achieve the level of success and recognition he would've wanted for himself and his family. The true tragedy of the play is the gradual decline of which the Loman family is faced with. Some people have touble surviving in today's society becuase they just don't have what it takes to stay in the game. This play makes you think about the value that our society places on something we know we cannot attain. We felt that this play was informative and offered an in-depth look at the obstacles that people face when trying to attain something that is important for themselves to achieve. We would recommend this play to people who want to pursue a certain goal in life. It shows the struggle of a man with a good heart, who in the end has nothing but his life insurance to show for it. We must ask ourselves then, what it is that makes a man successful. Perhaps after reading this play the reader will begin to realize that there is more to life than the American Dream.