By Arthur Miller Death of a Salesman: Certain Private Conversations in Two Acts and a Requiem

When Willy Loman says, “Work a lifetime to pay off a house. You finally own it, and there’s nobody to live in it.” he’s laying bare the hollowness of American capitialism. Work a job you don’t like, to buy stuff you don’t need, and end up “a hard-working drummer who landed in the ash can like all the rest of them!” Arthur Miller’s masterpiece Death of Salesman was first performed in 1949, but it feels vital to me today, as I grapple to redefine my definition of success in 2017 and beyond.

If you want to read a depressing story, go ahead and read this. I got 80 or so pages in and wanted to hang myself. The only reason I read it at all was for English Comp 2. Thanks college

I teach Death of a Salesman every year, so I love the original play. Buy it in hard copy, though! The kindle edition doesn’t have any formatting or paragraph breaks. It is impossible to read.

This review is of the kindle edition and NOT for the play itself. The kindle edition is unreadable. There are no hard returns between character lines so you can't follow what's happening. Avoid if you want to read this on the kindle.

I love this play, but not because it shows that the American Dream isn't possible. Willy Loman is a fundamentally dishonest man, and the tragedy isn't his life, it's how he's inflicted that dishonesty on his sons. Biff is the only person who is self-aware enough to see the damage done, but he doesn't blame his father. At the end, Linda and Happy are both clinging to their illusions about Willy and their lives and goals, but Biff is at peace because he knows who he is and why.

Granted I was supposed to have read this in class and I did and it was well worth the read. I didn't feel as though I wasted my time. It's a great story presented as one characters obvious mental health issues that never get spoken to and the inflammation of those issues. It was a cool little play. Great characters, the void of superficiality is never latent in this play. The characters lie to themselves and each other, alas, the Death of a Salesman.

Arthur Miller wrote an outstanding play on the human condition as it pursues the traditional American dream. Willy Loman is a man of high self-esteem and expectations, who always waited for the big hit to occur, yet it never did. He then gets to late in life and looks around to find all those whom he admired and didn't had made something of themselves, while he was still in the same salesman position he was in as a young man.The book switches between his memories and reality, which reflects his true state of mind, being linked to what is perceived as a glorious past in many different ways:- He was an extremely well liked person, had great connections, which was the basis of his self-esteem.- His sons were outstanding and capable of taking on the world.That glorious past was pitted against the crude reality:- The world changed and he knows no one anymore, which coupled with his old age, makes him unproductive and leads his to be fired from his long time job. He is fired by the son of the company founder, who had made him many promisses and kept his hopes up, hopes which were not fulfilled.- His son is a poorly adjusted man, never being able to focus on anything, preferring to go west for long stretches without accomplishing anything meaningful in Willy's eyes.Willy gets trapped in an imaginary world, swithcing from the reality of his and his family's shortcomings and the potential that layed before them as young men (his and his sons'). This is a short but densely written story, one of those few that will open a small window into a failed man's heart and let you peek inside.

This edition provides a powerful edge to versions that contain the script only. The introduction is insightful and well-written, providing commentary on the most salient undercurrents of the play. In addition, the essays that follow provide further insight although their caliber is slightly uneven.