CHAPTER II BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR AND SYNOPSIS OF THE STORY A. Biography of Author Arthur Miller was born in New York City on October17, 1915. His father, Isadore Miller, was prosperous as a shop owner and a manufacturer of women s coats; however, he lost his fortune in the stock market crash of 1929. The young Miller was forced to work a number of odd jobs to support himself, including being a farm hand. The years after the Depression were formative years for Miller, during which the formerly indifferent student began reading on his own and developing a strong social conscience and sense of justice. He eventually entered the University of Michigan, where he began writing plays and worked on the college newspaper. After graduating in 1938, he moved back to New York, where he continued writing, primarily dramas. Arthur Miller s plays met with great success. The Man Who Had All the Luck, produced in 1944, won a prize offered by New York City's Theatre Guild. His first major success, however, came in 1947 with All My Sons, which won a Drama Critics Circle Award and was made into a film the following year. Death of a Salesman, Miller's most famous work produced in the 1949, won a Pulitzer Prize and was made into a film in 1952. Death of a
Salesman casts a cold eye on the American Dream and the moral compromises necessary to achieve it. Its hero, a salesman named Willy Loman, is a man struggling to make sense of his place in a society that has chewed him up and is preparing to spit him out. The Crucible, a Tony Award winning play produced in 1953, is one of Miller s finest works, which also shows the playwright s strong social conscience. Set during the Salem witch trials at the end of the 17th century, it is written as a critique of the extremes and evils of McCarthyism. The play offers a vision of a society consumed by paranoia, in which the age-old problem of doing goods in the face of evil becomes a matter of life and death. Miller's political activities in the 1950 s led him to be called before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1956. Like Proctor, the protagonist of The Crucible, he refused to testify against his friends and associates. He was convicted of contempt, but this ruling was later overturned on appeal. After the investigation, Miller continued to be politically active. In 1965, he was elected president of PEN, an international organization of writers dedicated toward world peace and free expression. Miller has been married three times. He married Mary Grace Slattery in 1940. They had two children, Robert and Jane, before their divorce in 1955. Miller married Marilyn Monroe in 1956. They were divorced in 1961, following the filming of The Misfits, for which he wrote the screenplay and in
which she starred. In 1962 he married the photographer Inge Morath. They have one child, Rebecca Miller, who is an actress. Miller's works are known for their strong commitment to social justice, their concern for the ordinary person, and their intricate explorations of the inner lives of their characters. Other plays by Miller include A View from the Bridge (1955), After the Fall (1964), Incident at Vichy (1964), The Price (1968), The American Clock (1980), and The Last Yankee (1993). He has also written several travel narratives and a novel. His autobiography, Timebends A Life, was published in 1987. Miller continued to be active in the arts and to receive accolades. He won a Kennedy Center award for lifetime achievement in the arts in 1984, and in 1993 he received the National Medal of the Arts from President Clinton. Broken Glass, published in 1994 and written for his late father, received the 1995 Oliver award. On February 10, 2005, Miller died of congestive heart failure at his home in Roxbury, Connecticut at the age of 89. The date of his death happened to be the 56th anniversary of the Broadway opening of Death of a Salesman (http://www.biography.com/people/arthur-miller-9408335).
B. Synopsis of the Death of Salesman The story of the Death of a Salesman is told partly through the mind and memory of Willy Loman. The times of the play's action were between 1942 and 1928. Willy Loman has been a travelling salesman for thirty-four years, and he likes to think of himself as being vital to the New England territory he works. He constantly compares himself to Dave Singleton, a salesman who is very popular and hugely successful salesman. The important thing is that Dave s funeral was well-attended. As the play opens, Willy returns home early from a failed business trip. He tells his wife, Linda, that he just can't seem to keep his mind on driving anymore. Willy recalls about Biff when Biff was a senior in high school some fourteen years ago. Biff was playing in a great football game, and people were coming from all over the country to offer him scholarships. But, something happened to Biff. He never fulfilled the potential Willy felt after Biff had caught him with another woman in his motel room in Boston. While, Willy often speaks on his hallucinating with his long lost older brother named Ben as an adventurous entrepreneur. Now, after some fourteen years of wandering and working odd jobs, Biff returns home. He and his brother, Happy, decide to ask Bill Oliver, whom Biff used to work for, for a loan of $10,000 to begin a business of their own. The boys tell Willy about their plans, and Willy thinks that together the two could absolutely conquer the world. He goes on to explain that the important thing in life is to be well-
liked. The next day, Willy is to meet his boss to ask his boss for an office job in New York, to get him off the road. But his boss tells him there is no room, and then fires him instead. Thus, suddenly, Willy's day has reversed, and he has to go to an old friend, Charley, to borrow enough money to pay his insurance premium. While, When Charley offers Willy a job, he refused and turns Charley down. Meanwhile, Biff meets Happy in the restaurant early, waiting to meet their dad. Unfortunately, Biff has bad news that he fail to meet with Bill Oliver, he also swiped the man s fountain. Willy does not want to hear Biff s bad news. Willy gets furious and reminds his memory about his affair that is discovered by Biff. Willy wants to find a way for his son to stop hating him. After that, Biff comes home and finds Willy out in the backyard, apparently losing his wits planting seeds and talking to his brother, Ben, who has been dead for nine months. Biff explains to Willy that it would be best if they break with each other and never see one another again. He tries once again to explain that he is no leader of men and that he is a common person. But Willy refuses to believe him and tells Biff once again how great he could be. He then resolves on suicide, which he has hinted at before, because with $20,000 in insurance benefits, Biff could be such a magnificent person. Thus, Willy commits suicide. But, Willy s dead is that unwell-liked, nobody attends to his funeral (www.bard.org/education/studyguides/death/deathsyn.html).