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Arthur Miller Death of a Salesman Narrative Technique |
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Arthur Miller Death of a Salesman Narrative Technique |
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| In telling his story Miller returned to a narrative technique
he had found useful before. The father's guilt in All My Sons becomes apparent to the
audience and to the antagonist after being hinted at in a succession of fragmentary
references to a hidden crime. Though in Death of a Salesman the son already knows his
father's sin, the audience again learns the truth in a climactic revelation that follows a
series of covert allusions. "There's one or two things depressing him," Biff
says in the opening scene, beginning the series; later he adds, "I know he's a face
and he doesn't like anybody around who knows!" Linda, blindly loyal, suspects
nothing: "what has [Biff] got against you?" she asks her husband. Bernard, a
neighbor, inquires into the secret shared by father and son: "what happened in
Boston, Willy?" Whilly's reponse, "I can't tell you," sums up his
retiecence on the topic. Suggestive references of this kind, however, are relatively unimportant in this work. The chief narrative method of developing tension, temperament, and fact is dramatized memory, which allows Miller to represent time as a melding of the past and the present into one rather than a sequence of events. This subjective approach to delayed exposition brings to light not only crucial past events but also the emotional charges associated with them; Willy Loman wig wags between current and past guilt feelings. The memories, generally concerned with the disintegration of his family and his professional aspirations, are released by events in the past that are dramatized on stage in his mind. Thus, after he is fired by Howard in Act II, Willy remembers his refusal of a vocational opportunity that might have led to success in Alaska instead of the present humiliation of being fired. And Biff's unfavorable report on an attempt to get financial backing from Bill Oliver turns Willy's mind back to the hotel room in which Biff discovered him with his mistress -- a discovery that the father fears has initiated his son's failures. Transitions in place and time are cleverly implemented by ingenious stage effects, a skeletonized house-set, mulitiple playing areas (apron, forestage, and two levels of the house), and the repetition of key words or topics (motifs) before, during, and after each recollection. Miller's skill in executing imaginative, meaningful transitions is apparent in the opening scene, which introduces the subject of family disharmony. A conversation with Linda about his driving that day reminds Willy of the old "Chevvy" he owned when his boys still loved and obeyed him. As he "loses himself in reminiscences," sitting in his kitchen, interest moves to another playing level, the upstairs bedroom, where the brothers too have been discussing their father's careless driving. Then, when they recall their popluarlity with girls in their youth, they in turn are interrupted by Willy "mumbling" downstairs to an imaginary Biff on the same subject: "the girls pay for you?...Boy, you must really be makin' a hit." Musical motifs, lighting arrangements, and scenic changes complete the preparation for the first vision, which opens, appropriately, with Willy admiring his popular teen-age sons as Biff polishes the "Chevvy." During this transition, as in others, recurring themes are grouped in psychologically significant combinatgions. While Willy visualizes a joyful, affectionate family group, another intimate but less innocent scene from a still earlier time -- again involving a "girl" -- breaks in on the word "make"" Willy [to Linda]: There's so much I want to make for The Woman: Me? You didn't make me, Willy. I picked you. Willy's family-dream returns, with Linda mending stockings (his mistress had asked for "a lot of stockings".); but, since innocience has been corrupted, shame colors the recollection. Now the mention of girls and cars, punctuated by "The Woman's laugh," denotes Biff's (and by implication, Willy's) irresponsibility, not worth. Changed to waking nightmare, the daydream disappears and leaves Willy alone in his kitchen, guiltily denying responsibility for his son's failure. Two motives impel Willy to conjure the "reminiscences." First, he seeks escape from his problems by reliving a happier time ("how do we get back to all the great times? . . . Always some kind of good news coming up"). Disturbed by recurring troubles, however, he involuntarily recalls bad news; then he seeks the origin of his and Biff's difficulties. "Why?" he continually asks "what -- what's the secret? . . . Why? Why! Bernard, that question has been trailing me like a ghost for the last fifteen years." Yet the same lack of self-awareness that caused his failure as a father keeps him from learning the "secret" contained in the visions. In contrast to Biff, who finally accepts his limitations, Willy remains unalterably determined that his son shall show the world "all kinds of greatness." His hallucinations thus measure the blind intensity of his ambition, which is strong enough to withstand not only galling indignities in the presnt but also agonizing internal re-creations of his inadequacy in the past. As circumstances become more threatiening and as his remembrances become more real, leading Willy back to the central trauma of his life, his resistance to fact the truth grows correspondingly more desperate. he stubbornly refuses to admit defeat; for example, when Charley offers him work as a way to salvage his pride, he "furiously" refuses. The effect of his growing anxiety is to steadily increase tension as the action prgresses: Willy's agitated justifications gradually cumulate great excitement. When dealing with an intense character who concentrates his energies "upon the fixed point of his commitement," Miller wrties, a playwright must design "scenes of high and open emotion, and plays constructed toward climax rather that the evocation of a mood alone or of bizarre spectacle." Got questions or comments? Contact Jay Edwards [Verbal and Symbolic Technique] |
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