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How Does Arthur Miller Present Willy Loman

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On Wednesday April 26, 11 grade English students took a field trip to the O'Reilly Theatre in Pittsburgh's Cultural District for a special performance of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. Students in all 11th grade English classes read Miller's play as part of their drama unit. The show stars Zach Grenier as the main character, Willy Loman. The play follows Willy Loman, a salesman who struggles to provide for his family even as he dreams of making it big and creating a better life for his sons. Arthur Miller's play Death of a Salesman addresses loss of identity and a man's inability to accept change within himself and society. The play is a montage of memories, dreams, confrontations, and arguments, all of which make up the last 24 …show more content…

Throughout the play, Miller describes Willy as becoming lost in the past or trailing off thoughts as Willy loses focus. Grenier portrayed this absent mindedness and nostalgic flashback with great skill. Scenes flowed seamlessly from the present in the play to the past. The role of Biff Loman, Willy's estranged son, was portrayed by Alex Mickiewicz. The stage chemistry between Mickiewicz and Grenier was phenomenal - the many confrontations between their two characters were incredibly convincing. The interaction of Biff and Willy was phenomenally genuine. As an audience member I could easily have believed the conflicted relationship between Biff and Willy was in fact legitimate hostility between the actors had I not known otherwise. Another great pairing was between Mickiewicz and actor Maxwell Eddy, who portrayed Biff's brother Happy. The dialogue and interaction between Mickiewicz and Eddy made the audience believe the two characters were brothers. The slightly conflicted dynamic between Biff, the favorite son who did not want his father's attention, and Happy, the less favored son who wanted nothing but his father's recognition, was very evident at appropriate

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In his seminal work, Death of A Salesman, Arthur Miller portrays wretched conditions inflicting the lives of lower class people amid class-struggle in 1940s America. Miller sets the story during the great financial depression in the US , in between times after World War I and around World War II, though his characters hardly speak about the trauma of two World Wars. Miller earns an enormous success by putting an ordinary salesman as the protagonist in his play instead of putting a man of social nobility. In the play, Miller depicts his central character, Willy Loman as a destitute salesman struggling to rise up the social ladder in a capitalist society, who remains deluded by a 'dream of success ' and takes on a relentless pursuit of happiness that eventually brings his tragic demise. Though some critics speak in favor of the popular account of the cause of his death being his excessive obsession with so called the American dream and the 'capitalist oppression ' ; however, many still refuse to ascribe the cause of his death to capitalist oppression, which I will use synonymously with American dream here.

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