Death of a Salesman: Genre 1 key example

Arthur Miller released Death of a Salesman in 1949, though tragedy’s origins trace themselves as far back as ancient Greek playwriting. Plays of this kind featured protagonists brought low by a combination of their circumstances and a tragic flaw, or hamartia. Tragic heroes realize their flaws too late, but they invite the audience to sympathize with them and learn from their demise.

As the play’s ambitiously optimistic hero, Willy is doomed by his faith in the American Dream yet also brought low by his arrogance. He is proud and philandering, at once unwilling and unable to navigate the changing realities of 1940s America. He spins tales about his imagined successes as a traveling salesman and urges his son Biff to follow in his footsteps. He ultimately takes his own life in a last-ditch bid to secure some fragile semblance of success: a $20,000 life insurance policy whose payout the play never specifies.

Besides its bleak social commentary, the work is notable for its use of flashback. Death of a Salesman is partly about Willy’s failing memory as much as it is his hubris. Miller weaves in elements from the past to surrealist effect.  People and places from the past—his Boston mistress, dead brother Ben Loman, and formerly football-famous son—float through the story to stretch the narrative’s sense of reality. Through its exploration of time, Miller’s tragedy disturbs and disorients the audience.