I just saw the 1963 version of DOAS by Arthur Miller. It is a classic (Lee J. Cobb as Willie Loman, and a very young Gene Wilder as Bernard). I’ve always enjoyed the play, but I’ve always been conflicted about Willie Loman-on one hand you feel sorry for the guy-he’s worked all of those years, and gets fired at the end, facinf poverty with his two sons who are bums. On the other hand, he was a cad-he cheated on his wife, and raised his sons to be blowhards. His son Biff was all set to be a pro football player, but lost it when he learns of his dad’s infidelities. So it is a complex play-Willie Loman has lived his life of fantasy so long that he isn’t sure of what is real anymore. You have to have a heart of stone to not feel for him…but in the end, his life was one big lie.
Do others feel this way?
I haven’t read DOAS in a long time, but I think that “pathetic” is the best way to describe Willy Lowman. I think folks are meant to empathise with how Willy feels, and yet realise that his method of dealing with his problems is self destructive.
I think he is one of the saddest characters in literature.
Yes… you are supposed to laugh. Or cry. Maybe both.
Strong characters usually take on lives of their own, and assume dimensions that the creator may not have consciously intended. Arthur Miller based Willy Loman on his own father, and pictured Willy as a little runt (the very name “Loman” is supposed to convey the image of a short guy who’s “low man on the totem pole”). Dustin Hoffman portrayed THAT Willy Loman well. Wehn you see Hoffman’s WIlly Loman talking and dreaming big, you get the feeling he was ALWAYS a little schnook who NEVER stood a chance of becoming a big shot.
But when Lee J. Cobb (or, later, Brian Dennehy) took on the role, he turned Willy into a very different person. When you see the “young” WIlly talking about his big plans, you get the feeling he’s really going to make them come true… which only makes his subsequent downfall more tragic.
What you think of Willy can changed drastically depending on who plays him. He can come across as a total jerk without any redeeming qualities, a creep who brought his problems on himself. Or he can also come across as a likeable, charming guy, a guy not so different from us. He can come across as a selfish boor who ruined his son’s lives… or as a basically decent guy who really wanted the best for his kids, even if he was misguided.
You may laugh, cry, cringe, or even get angry, depending on the actor playing WIlly, and the quality of the production.
The way I have always seen Loman is something of an Everyman. He indeed had been a someone earlier his life. But the man he later became grew out of his flaws rather than his strengths, which I think Miller felt was pretty much the rule for most of mankind, not the exception.
I think Miller wanted us to identify with Willie, seeing ourselves as people who would someday become this man who watched everything he valued fall apart around him (his family, his job, his marriage), this man who by the time we meet him was a shadow of whom he had once been.
He was (in a quasi-biblical format) Job, and his God was (like so many men of his generation) the company, but unlike Job, his God never took him back. All he had left at the end of the play was to kill himself on that tool that created him, “the road.”
Then the final irony stepped in. Even that part of life (the taking of it) cheated him because of the lapsed life insurance.
The play always saddens me, and it is one I am never comfortable watching too often.
TV
Gee, I just raised this topic between 7 December and the day the board died, so that thread is gone for good. My take on it was that Willy was a real dweeb, and everytime you started to feel sorry for him, the author portrayed his unsavory side, showing how he was the author of his own failings.
Of course, I just read the play, and didn’t see it portrayed on stage, so that may account for my feelings.
I also think that the most pathetic part of the play is when Wiilie’s sons abandon him in the italian restaurant. The dinner was supposed to be an affirmation of wayward son Biff’s desire to make good. (He is somehow supposed to set up a sporting goods business out of thin air!). Anyway, some pretty girls shows up, and Biff and Hal take off, leaving dad in the wash room. It is hard to conceive that sons would do this to a father. Anyway, the sporting goods pipedream is over, and Willy decides to take his own life (hoping that his $20,000 life insurance will be enough to set Biff up). My question=-how come Willy could never swallow his pride and just take the job with Bernard’s dad? Willy surely cannot escape the truth-his sons are bums and his career was over long ago. I guess the message i got was that those who ignore reality usually come to a bad end…and Willy Loman could never face reality-his pathetic pleadings to his boss were the most humiliation a human being could ever endure, and yet they bought him nothing.
Willy should have just told his sons to support him!