Miller, Arthur "Death of a Salesman"

Miller, Arthur "Death of a Salesman" - 1949

Plays, next to short stories another form of literature that doesn't belong to my favourites. I rather see them the way they were intended - performed.

Now, "Death of a Salesman", an interesting story, a salesman at the end of his career, what is he going to do, how is he going to support his wife, keep the house, etc. There are grown-up children and the usual problems you encounter in most of these stories, the kids never grow up into normal people with a job.

That is probably what bothered me most about this book, too much was so predictable, there weren't really any surprises. Granted, the style was good but the story seemed tedious. Not my favourite read.

From the back cover:

"Arthur Miller's extraordinary masterpiece, Death of a Salesman changed the course of modern theatre, and has lost none of its power as an examination of American life and consumerism, published in Penguin Modern Classics.

'A man is not an orange. You can't eat the fruit and throw the peel away'

Willy Loman is on his last legs. Failing at his job, dismayed at his the failure of his sons, Biff and Happy, to live up to his expectations, and tortured by his jealousy at the success and happiness of his neighbour Charley and his son Bernard, Willy spirals into a well of regret, reminiscence, and A scathing indictment of the ultimate failure of the American dream, and the empty pursuit of wealth and success, is a harrowing journey. In creating Willy Loman, his destructively insecure anti-hero, Miller defined his aim as being 'to set forth what happens when a man does not have a grip on the forces of life'."

Arthur Miller received a Pulitzer Prize for Drama for this play in 1949.