Ashes of American Dreams
Ashes of American Dreams: An Analysis of Death of a Salesman
by
Varo Borja
The jungle is dark but full of diamonds – Arthur Miller
The American Dream, according to Arthur Miller, is a type of ubiquitous delusion, fueled by the fumes of the Reformation, leaving in its wake the bones of the Willy Lomans of this world to bleach in the setting sun of the modern age. However, Mr. Miller’s vision was almost assuredly clouded by his resentment of the white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant path to success. In Death of a Salesman, the victors are those devoted to efficient study—not just the perusal of mathematics books and law treatises, but the profitable study of human nature. Willy Loman’s brother Charles and his son Bernard, if not for the implied ties of blood to the other Loman’s, could easily be mistaken for Brooklyn Jews: shrewd, studious, and devoted to the realistic conquest of the Almighty Dollar, be it through a game of casino or a case tried before the highest court in the land. This stereotype is at first misleading and ultimately erroneous. However, Mr. Miller portrays Willy Loman and his sons as red-blooded, pugilistic, yet foolish Anglo-Saxon social warriors bent on the appropriation of the American Dream to their hot-tempered wills—a much more harmonious characterization. Whatever Mr. Miller’s motives for the way he crafts his characters, there seem to be forces at work within the play other than that of race. Socio-economic, psychological, and religious connotations abound throughout Death of a Salesman. In reference to these determinants, I have selected an article titled, “Is There a Science of Success?” by Nicholas Lemann that explores these elements from the point of view of a social scientist, the noted Dr. David McClelland. Dr. McClelland propounded that, in light of certain personality tests that he created, the American psyche is composed of three distinct elements: the needs for achievement, power, and affiliation. Furthermore, in Death of a Salesman these three underlying personality motivators are displayed quite distinctly in the characters of Willy Loman and his nephew Bernard, and contribute on the one hand to Willy’s eventual demise and Bernard’s ultimate success.
The need for achievement, or more properly termed, the ability to be efficient, is considered by Dr. David McClelland to be of prime importance to the young man or woman determined to succeed in the American system (Lemann 88). Dr. McClelland compares the man or woman driven by the need for achievement to be like a person competing in a ring toss who takes the position from the goal with the maximum prospect of success (Lemann 95). In Death of a Salesman, Willy Loman’s focus on achievement is low, based on the qualifications that Dr. McClelland sets down, and Willy’s achievement is based almost solely upon the attainment of money, material comforts, and personal glory: a goal that Dr. McClelland deprecates as an end in itself (Lemann 92). By contrast, Bernard’s character in the story is highly focused on achievement, as set down by Dr. McClelland’s principles, and consequently Bernard succeeds where Willy Loman and his progeny fail. In Death of a Salesman, Willy Loman asks of Bernard regarding the latter’s success,
Willy (small and alone): What—what’s the secret?
Bernard: What secret?
Willy: How—how did you? Why didn’t he [Biff] ever catch on?
Bernard: I wouldn’t know that Willy.
Willy (confidentially, desperately): You were his friend, his boyhood friend. His life ended after that Ebbets Field game. From the age of seventeen nothing good ever happened to him.
Bernard: He never trained himself for anything. (Act II)
This quiet conversation between Willy and Bernard is quite revealing. Willy, the once proud purveyor of charm and physical prowess cowers at the feet of his erstwhile despised, yet now successful nephew, pleading with Bernard to pass on to him the secret of success that is almost self-evident after reading Dr. David McClelland’s principles. Bernard valued achievement through patient study and training, while Willy Loman and his sons placed their bets in the gamble of life on fleeting displays of vainglory such as the Ebbets Field game, thereby equipping themselves poorly for the quest for success and engendering their eventual failure in the race for the American Dream.
Next, Dr. McClelland propounds that the desire for power is one that can either lead to extreme fortune or abject poverty (Lemann 92). Dr. McClelland uses an analogy of two gamblers to contrast the seeker of achievement and the pursuant of power. Dr. McClelland relates that at a hypothetical roulette wheel, the seeker of achievement would bet on a color, while the power hungry person would bet on a number, therefore lowering his/her odds dramatically, but raising the possible stakes of a win exponentially (Lemann 95). Furthermore, Dr. McClelland states those primarily in need of power are, “more likely to have glamorous lives” (Lemann 94), but that they also, “want the world to beat a path to their door” (Lemann 95). Willy Loman is certainly a devotee of the power cult in America, but his quest for power turns on him like a boomerang and all but cuts him to pieces. Willy Loman, in Death of a Salesman, is akin to the man who bets all he has on a number on the roulette wheel (his sons, his ability to physically dominate, and his ability to sell himself, or be “well-liked”) and loses in pathetic fashion, taking his fortune and his family down into the abyss together (Requiem). Conversely, Bernard channels his desire for power into a patient and determined, yet educated effort to succeed by surer measures. Bernard doesn’t count on his ability to be liked or to physically dominate other men and women; he counts on his training, his ability to perform his job, and ultimately on his aptitude for achieving realistic, worthwhile goals (Act II). In Death of a Salesman, while Biff, Happy, and Willy are indulging in dreams of pomp, power, and the subjugation of others by their overly-masculine dominance, Bernard seeks more realistic aims,
Bernard: Biff, where are you? You’re supposed to study with me today.
Willy: Hey, looka Bernard. What’re you lookin’ so anemic about, Bernard?
Bernard: He’s gotta study, Uncle Willy. He’s got Regents next week.
Happy (taunting, spinning Bernard around): Let’s box, Bernard!
Bernard: Biff! (He gets away from Happy.) Listen, Biff, I heard Mr. Birnbaum say that if you don’t start studyin’ math, he’s gonna flunk you, and you won’t graduate. I heard him!
Willy: You better study with him, Biff. Go ahead now.
Biff: Oh, Pop, you didn’t see my sneakers! (He holds up a foot for Willy to look at.)
Willy: Hey, that’s a beautiful job of printing!
Bernard (wiping his glasses): Just because he printed University of Virginia on his sneakers doesn’t mean they’ve got to graduate him, Uncle Willy!
Willy (angrily): What’re you talking about? With scholarships to three universities they’re gonna flunk him?
Bernard: But I heard Mr. Birnbaum say—
Willy: Don’t be a pest, Bernard! (To his boys.) What an anemic! (Act I)
Bernard is cast off as a harbinger of doom by the Lomans, when in reality Bernard seeks a much surer path to victory in the American system than Willy and Biff with their fancied sense of entitlement based on dominance, or Happy with his foolish boxing antics in the midst of a real crisis. This “channeling of the Power motive” by Bernard and contrasting lack of balance displayed by Willy, Happy, and Biff is fully in line with the McClelland system, and at least in Bernard’s case, results in long-term success within the American system (Lemann 98).
Finally, the need for affiliation is evident in Death of a Salesman through the constant and unsuccessful attempts of Willy Loman and his offspring to be both “well-liked” and exert undue influence upon their peers (Act I). Throughout the story, Willy Loman is obsessed with who he is connected to and with how other people feel about him and about his ability to sell himself. Dr. David McClelland, in his book The Drinking Man, explored the need for Affiliation and likened it to the ability to “love and be loved” or “a feeling of optimism and of being in control of one’s life” (Lemann 96) expressed through interaction with one’s family and society at large. Willy Loman certainly places a high rating on the need for affiliation, but overly so. Willy Loman is not only interdependent with his wife, sons, brothers, and with society, he is ultimately in abject dependence upon them for both his livelihood and his sense of well-being (Act II). When Willy Loman pays his final visit to his brother Charlie to ask for money, this abject dependence, coupled still with the desire to exert the power motive, is quite evident,
Willy (moving toward the chair): I’m keeping an account of everything, remember. I’ll pay every penny back. (He sits.)
Charley: Now listen to me, Willy.
Willy: I want you to know I appreciate…
Charley (sitting down on the table): Willy, what’re you doin’? What the hell is goin’ on in your head?
Willy: Why? I’m simply…
Charley: I offered you a job. You can make fifty dollars a week. And I won’t send you on the road.
Willy: I’ve got a job.
Charley: Without pay? What kind of a job is a job without pay? (He rises.) Now, look, kid, enough is enough. I’m no genius but I know when I’m being insulted.
Willy: Insulted!
Charley: Why don’t you want to work for me?
Willy: What’s the matter with you? I’ve got a job…
Charley: Then what’re you walkin’ in here every week for?
Willy (getting up): Well, if you don’t want me to walk in here—
Charley: I’m offering you a job.
Willy: I don’t want your goddam job!
Charley: When the hell are you going to grow up? (Act II)
Such dependence could only lead to an unbalanced life, and eventually, to the ruin experienced by Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman. In opposition to this sort of dependence stands Bernard, the once quiet, shy and socially unacceptable lad who becomes, through the relinquishing of this sort of dependence for a healthier interdependence with co-workers and family, a man brimming over with self-assurance and quiet contentment. Perhaps the starkest contrast between the McClelland-type healthy, successful man and that of the man suffering from a “cruel delusion” (Lemann 98) is in the last meeting of Willy and Bernard before Bernard leaves to try a case before the Supreme Court (Act II). Willy Loman’s high reliance on affiliation, in the end, places him in the position of both a beggar of money from his brother Charlie and a humble, broken and nearly psychotic flatterer of the nephew he once regarded as a “pest” (Act II).
In conclusion, the “cruel delusion” (Lemann 98) suffered by Willy Loman throughout Death of a Salesman is all too accurate, but still quite pessimistic. Dr. David McClelland, although well-meaning in his attempts to define human motivations and train men to, “become the kind of people economists think everybody is” (Lemann 92) still falls far short of defining what truly makes life worthwhile. Perhaps Willy Loman and his kind are too aware of the systems laid down by Dr. David McClelland and his brood of social scientists. McClelland’s system, like most of the social propaganda of the 20th century, is based on the tenets of Charles Darwin and his “process of natural selection” (Lemann 98) which likens men more to beasts of burden than intelligent, compassionate, and loving sons of God. Perhaps the greatest fault of Dr. David McClelland’s theories and of the American system is the absence of grace and mercy found in the writings of the men whom Dr. McClelland ascribes the promulgation of the American Way: the fathers of the Reformation (Lemann 89). To go back even further, the writings of Solomon might be ascribed to the competition of man against man when he said, “Do you see a man skilled in his work? He will serve before kings; he will not serve before obscure men” (Proverbs 22: 28-29). However, it is in the words of Jesus of Nazareth that we find the solution to the infinite and vain struggle for achievement, power, and affiliation, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39). Perhaps the trouble with Willy Loman and his like is the ultimate absence of the ability for true relation to both man and God. Bernard, in Death of a Salesman, seeks neither to dominate nor to manipulate Willy Loman and his sons—Bernard seeks only to love Biff and humbly “carry his shoulder guards” (Act I). Near the end of the play, Bernard fistfights with Biff after Biff’s return from New England, not out of a desire to dominate Biff, but out of a sense of brotherly concern for his failing hero (Act II). In a final act of generosity and magnanimity, Bernard seeks to cheer Willy Loman when Willy’s metaphorical roulette number had finally cost him all (Act II). It is chiefly in this aptitude of Bernard for quiet, humble service and genuine concern for his fellow man that he dignifiedly lives out the American Dream, and not only is he a winner in the American system, but in the grander scope of Creation as a whole.
Works Cited
Holy Bible. New International Version. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1985.
Lemann, Nicholas. “Is There a Science of Success?” Atlantic Monthly 1072
(1994): 83-98. MasterFile Premier. EBSCO. Caldwell Community College
and Technical Institute Learning Center, Boone, NC. 25 March 2008
Miller, Arthur. “Death of a Salesman.” The Bedford Introduction to Literature.
Ed. Michael Meyer. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2008. 1908-1972.
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