Death of a Salesman is a play

theatrical of the playwright and writer Arthur Miller. It is viewed by many as an attack on the dream
Americans progressing in life without considering ethical principles, in contrast to tragedy.
of Aristotle.

He received the Pulitzer Prize in 1949, as well as the Tony Award and the New York Critics' Award.

Index

1 Synopsis

2 Characters

3 Estlo

4 Themes

5 Outstanding representations

5.1 In English

5.2 In Spanish

5.3 In other languages

6 Adaptations

7 References

8 External links

Synopsis

The protagonist is Willy Loman, a traveling salesman by profession, 63 years old, a worker.
unstoppable who feels that he should retire and live a well-deserved quiet life, surrounded by his
family and their friends. Willy thinks that if people like him, everything is easier and he succeeds in life; without
embargo, few people remember it after many years in the profession. Willy instills these ideals in his
sons, Biff and Happy, who follow him blindly until one day Biff discovers his father cheating on
his mother in Boston. Biff gets angry with his father and runs away, losing his chance to go to the
university, which will lead him to great resentment towards his father and a tumultuous life that
will lead to jail.

In order to pay off his debts, Willy is going to ask his boss, Howard, for money, but in return he
he is laid off because his sales in recent years have decreased considerably, so he turns to
asking for help from his neighbor and only friend, Charley. He offers him a job, but Willy rejects it because
Accepting that job would mean acknowledging that I was wrong.

Meanwhile, Biff tries to get a job, but he does not succeed and steals a pen from the boss.
the company, and when he meets with his brother and his father to talk about what they are going to do in the
future Willy loses consciousness and has hallucinations. Happy and Biff leave him at the restaurant and
They leave. When they return home, Biff and Willy argue, and instead of listening to what his son tells him...
He thinks that Biff has forgiven him for the Boston incident and decides to commit suicide so that Biff and Happy...
they can collect the money from the life insurance and start a new life as sellers.

Only his family attends the funeral. It is at this moment that Biff realizes that neither he nor his father are
extraordinary men and detaches from his father’s ideals, thus opening the only way
hopeful of the work. In contrast, Happy does not accept that his father was wrong, and the same
it happens with the mother, Linda, who wonders where all her husband's friends are.

Characters

Willy Loman: he is a failure obsessed with achieving success, a fanatic devotion that he imposes on his
children. He lives on false hopes and illusions; he deceives himself. Willy, a salesman of about 60 years, has
developed throughout his life a personal theory about personal attraction and being liked by others
People: if you please people, all doors will open. Willy has built his life around this.
dream. But to live according to these ideas, one is forced to tell many lies that
they end up charging reality in their mind: they start to lie about their importance in the company,
even though he knows it is not so. The need to reinforce his personality will lead him to commit adultery
on one of his trips to Boston. From a very early age, Willy instilled in his children the idea that it was necessary to
to please people, as if he recognized his failure and wanted to live his dreams through them,
especially of Biff, a good football player but a poor student. When he fails math, Biff
he will go to Boston so that his father can convince his teacher with his personal charm, but there he will discover
Willy's infidelity, and she will reject him and flee. In the following fourteen years, Willy isolates himself in
his dreams, which is why he doesn’t realize that he lives in an illusory world. Ridiculous at times, a
despite living in falsehood, Willy will be able to die for his dreams, which endows the character with
a deep pathos.

Linda Loman: Willy's wife, whom she loves and defends even with his mental illness. Sheltered in
the lonely and helpless, lives in a bubble. Linda Loman represents the eternal figure of the
wife. Willy often misbehaves with her, but her life revolves around her husband, since
she is always willing to believe in him. Linda is also partly to blame for Willy's tragedy, for
whenever he made an attempt to appear more realistic, Linda encourages his ego by rejecting
those realistic observations and reinforcing her husband's illusions about himself, even when
his children begin to see the reality about their father. We see it in the flashbacks mending socks,
in order not to spend, but we know that Willy gives new socks to his lover, which reinforces his
image of a suffering wife.
Biff Loman: Son of Willy. Since he discovered that his father was unfaithful to his mother, he has shown
resentful with him. He tries to live a life opposite to the one he was taught. Despite the fact that throughout
throughout the work, Biff rejects his father's ideas, when we observe him closely, we see that
the opposition between appearance (he seems to have nothing to do with his father) and reality is false: Biff
he has lived according to Willy's ideas. Therefore, he places a lot of importance on pleasing people,
so he will come to steal (what is tolerated by his father), and he will not endure any work and even
spends a season in jail. Biff's problem is nothing other than having taken on
he completed his father's values and did not create his own values. Upon discovering the infidelity
from his father, he realizes that Willy is a fraud, and his world collapses. For fourteen years
he will struggle with paternal ideas until he realizes that neither he nor his father are people
exceptional, just normal people, and start to see life with realism, which constitutes the only
hopeful fact of the work.

Happy Loman: The other son, confused and disoriented, obsessed with success, supports his father.
and tries to obtain his approval by all means. Since he was little, Happy has been overshadowed by
his brother, although he never expressed any resentment; however, he tries to call the
his father's attention constantly ("I'm losing weight" is the phrase he repeats), as he feels
abandoned. When, at the restaurant, Biff asks him for help communicating with his father, he
he confronts his brother, but it will be Happy who denies to the girls that Willy is his father,
rejecting him as Willy did with him. Deep down, Happy is the most affected by his ideas.
Father, he won't even acknowledge that Willy was wrong at the funeral.

Charley: He seems like a rather inflexible person who appears not to care about anything, although
try to help Willy. Be clear with him and try to open his eyes to the harsh reality. Although in the
retrospective scenes the boys call him 'to Charley', he doesn't seem like a relative, but rather a neighbor and
friend, old acquaintance of the family. His dramatic function is to provide the counterpoint to the fantasies of
Willy, because he (just like his son Bernard regarding Biff) is the antithesis of Willy Loman. That this
A type of man, who does not believe in personal attraction, has succeeded, is more than what he can.
support Willy, because it would mean admitting that his whole life and his ideas have been a fallacy. Our
the protagonist rejects the job that Charley offers him, although we know that every week he
He requests loans to pay off his debts. In the end, Willy, despite having often spoken out against
he realizes that the only friend he has is Charley. Charley is the voice of realism, which tells us
gives a very accurate view of Willy; his dramatic function is to show the falseness of the
ideas of the protagonist.

Bernard: He is Charley's son, and the antithesis of Biff. He is good at math, so he helps him.
but Biff never goes to his review classes with him. Bernard, unlike Biff, will be successful in life.

Ben: Brother of Willy, now deceased, only appears in the flashbacks. He is a dark figure that functions
as a symbol or illusion rather than as a character. They have succeeded economically in life.
Represents for Willy all the dreams he has not yet fulfilled; that is why, when Willy...
feels deeply depressed, when he cannot cope with the problems of life, it is
when Ben appears: that's why it works as a symbol of Willy's frustrations.

The Woman: is the one who deceives Linda; she only wants Willy because he is successful or at least has it.
apparently. He always gives her new socks.
Howard: He is Willy's boss, and according to him, it is he who gives him the name, although in reality only
he says he likes that name. When Willy goes to ask for a raise, Howard fires him, which is
I had been trying to do this for a long time, because their sales had decreased too much.

estlo

Miller makes a constant, which is the use of flashbacks throughout the work, where the
characters from the past interfere in the action.

This provides a dreamy feeling in which the past explains and provokes the present.

Topics

The Consumer Society

The idealism of the 'American Dream'

The economic defeat

The fervent cult to aesthetics

The errors of parental upbringing

The insignificance of virtues and moral principles

The distortion of the family nucleus

Machismo

Highlighted representations

In English

The play premiered in the U.S. at the Morosco Theatre on Broadway on February 10, 1949.
Directed by Elia Kazan and starring Lee J. Cobb, Mildred Dunnock, Arthur Kennedy, and Cameron.
Mitchell.

It premiered in London on July 28, 1949, with a cast including Paul Muni, Katharine
Alexander and Kevin McCarthy.

George C. Scott starred in the new Broadway version that was performed in 1975. The cast
I completed with Teresa Wright, Harvey Keitel, and James Farentino.

Back on Broadway in 1985, Michael Rudman's production featured Dustin in the cast.
Hoffman as Willy Loman, along with John Malkovich (Biff); Kate Reid (Linda), and David Huddleston
(Charley).
Mathew Warchus directed a version at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in the English city of Leeds.
with Ken Stot (Willy Loman), James Purefoy, Jude Law, and Ellie Haddington.

Alun Armstrong leads the cast of the 1996 version at Lytelton (London).

Brian Dennehy heads the cast of the 1999 Broadway version.

Again at the West Yorkshire Playhouse a production was staged in 2010, featuring the performance of
Philip Jackson.

Mike Nichols directed the 2012 Broadway production, with Philip Seymour Hoffman as Willy,
Andrew Garfield as Biff and Linda Edmond as Linda.

In Spanish

It premiered in Chile in August 1950, by the cast of the Experimental Theater of the University of
Chile, with the performance of Anita del Valle, Roberto Parada, Domingo Tessier, Rubén Sotoconil, and Jorge
Lillo, among others 2

In Spain, it premiered on January 10, 1952, at the Teatro de la Comedia in Madrid, with translation.
by José López Rubio, directed by José Tamayo and performed by Carlos Lemos, Josefina Díaz
Artgas, Francisco Rabal and Alfonso Muñoz.

It was performed again in Spain in 1959 at the Teatro Español in Madrid, with Carlos Lemos.
Asunción Sancho, José Rubio, Fernando Guillén and José Bruguera.

Re-premiered in Spain in 1985, at the Teatro Bellas Artes in Madrid, once again under
Tamayo's address and with José Luis López Vázquez, Encarna Paso, Santiago Ramos, Miguel
Palenzuela and Juan Calot at the forefront of the poster, music by Teddy Bautista and scenic design by Gil Parrondo.

In 2001, it was performed at the La Latna Theater in Madrid, directed by Juan Carlos Pérez de la
Source and interpretation by José Sacristán, María Jesús Valdés, and Alberto Maneiro.

In 2008, it was adapted in Colombia by the director Jorge Alí Triana.

In 2012, it was adapted in Mexico City by director José María Mantlla.

It is represented again in Spain in 2021, at the Teatro Infanta Isabel in Madrid, with a performance
by Imanol Arias, Jon Arias, Jorge Basanta, Fran Calvo and Cristna de Inza.

In other languages

Premiered in Italy on January 21, 1949, at the Teatro Eliseo in Rome, under the title of Death of a
travelling salesman with direction of Luchino Visconti interpretation by Vittorio Gassman,
Marcello Mastroianni, Vivi Gioi, and Rina Morelli.

The Hebbel Theatre in Berlin was the stage for the German-language premiere in 1950, under the title of
Death of a Salesman.5 Performed by Fritz Kortner (Willy), Fritz Tillmann (Biff) and Inge
Cellar.

In 1961, the Swedish version "En Handelsresandes död," directed by Hans Abramson.
Premiered in France in 1965, at the Théâtre de la Commune in Aubervilliers, it was directed by Gabriel.
Garran and starred in the performance with Claude Dauphin (Willy Loman), Héléna Bossis (Linda Loman),
Gérard Blain (Biff Loman), Pierre Santini (Happy Loman), Pierre Vielhescaze (Bernard) and Juliete Brac
(The Woman).6

In 2009 it was adapted at the Teatre Lliure in Barcelona by director Mario Gas, in translation to
Catalan (Death of a Salesman) by Eduardo Mendoza, with Jordi Boixaderas (Willy Loman), Frank Capdet,
Maria Cirici, Carles Cruces, Pablo Derqui, Camilo García, Anabel Moreno, Guillem Motos, Rosa
Renom, Raquel Salvador, Víctor Valverde and Oriol Vila.

Adaptations

In 1951, László Benedek made a film adaptation, starring Fredric March.

In the United States, five television versions have been produced since 1966, directed by Alex Segal.
with Lee J. Cobb; from 1968, directed by Gerhard Klingenberg; from 1985 directed by Volker Schlöndorff,
with Dustin Hoffman and John Malkovich; from 1996, directed by David Thacker; and from 2000, directed by
Kirk Browning.

In the United Kingdom, two other adaptations have been recorded for the small screen. The first one in
1957, with Albert Dekker and Vera Cook for ITV; and the second in 1966, with Rod Steiger and Betsy Blair
for the BBC.

Narciso Ibáñez Menta starred in the adaptation made by Argentine television in 1957.

The Dutch television (The Death of a Salesman) and Finnish (The Traveling Salesman)
death) emiteron released two versions in 1961.

In Germany, it was broadcast on television in 1963, with Leopold Rudolf and Charlotte Schellenberg.
Later, the television channel ZDF aired a new version in 1968 titled Death of a
Traveling Salesmen, interpreted by Heinz Rühmann (Wily), Käthe Gold (Linda), and Christoph Bantzer.
(Biff).

In Spanish, for TVE, the program Estudio 1 made an adaptation broadcast in 1972 and starred
by José María Rodero, Juan Diego, Jaime Blanch, José María Caffarel, Charo López, and Berta Riaza.