Miller could have constructed his play so that the dream dissolves and reality is faced directly. Hence, Miller tells us, an ‘air of the dream’ clings to the Lomans’ house and yard: ‘a dream rising out of reality’. That life, represented by the motif of melody, is the one Willy has failed to find or realise for himself. It is small and fine, telling of grass and trees and the horizon.’ Willy’s late father, we will learn, made and sold flutes, travelling across the wide-open spaces of North America as his own man, an embodiment of the pioneer spirit. These are indicated in Miller’s stage directions at the beginning of the play: ‘A melody is heard, played upon a flute. As such, he has fantasies of a better life. But he is certainly an oppressed figure, a victim. Willy Loman is not strictly speaking a ‘working-class hero’: more a ‘lower middle-class hero’, which of course makes him less likely to become the subject of a protest song. Arthur Miller’s most famous play, Death of a Salesman (1949), seems to me a singular example of this. Sometimes one work can do both things at the same time. There again literary works cannot always be simply categorised according to whether they confirm ideology on the one hand or challenge ideology on the other. Literary texts are often engaged with exploring the inner life, so can be a useful way of showing the way in which ideology works. Ideology consists of our routine responses to the world it is that view of ourselves and society that we take for granted as given. What is actually involved is a largely internal, unconscious process. But ideology functions in ways more complicated than those at which Lennon’s lyric hints. The ‘working-class hero’ of its title is told that if he is sufficiently ruthless, he too will be able to make it to the ‘top’ in the rat race.Īt first sight this song might seem to sum up the way in which ideology works: indoctrination by an external force which programmes the individual to behave according to certain patterns and expectations. If you want to be like the folks on the hill … There’s room at the top, they are telling you still,īut first you must learn to smile as you kill, John Lennon’s song ‘Working-Class Hero’ has a verse which runs as follows: Willy Loman sacrifices himself for exactly those beliefs and values which are the ‘common sense’ of our own competitive society. Laurence Coupe argues that the clue might be ‘ideology’. The hero of Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman is nobody special, yet we feel his life and tragic death to be deeply significant. The English Review, 5, 4 (April 1995), pp. Death of a Salesman: What’s Wrong with Willy Loman?
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