“Death of a Salesman” is probably America’s most well-regarded play – such a part of our heritage that “Biff” and “Willy Loman” are universally known even to those who haven’t read the play. I didn’t read it in high school or college, but finally got around to it at age 27. Even though I knew the plot and main characters from pop culture references, it was still a moving experience to read it for the first time. Now, if I can just get to see a good production of it.

i just didn’t like it. i tried.

One can see that the style and stage setting was the basis for many contemporary theatre techniques. The duality of the characters is exhibited only as the play draws to a close, and yet one cannot help feeling that the characters are often unidimensional, and seen from a third person’s perspective. Of course, one can easily attribute that to the lifestyle and nature of the family unit in America when the play was set. All in all, a good read, even if not enthralling. Much is left to the peformances of course, and I would love to see it on stage.

One of the reasons I set out to read it was to draw analogies to a play I had abandoned last year, “The Death of an MBA”. Yet, after reading Miller, one feels that the whole capitalist-world-is-actually-inhibitive-to-individualism has been done to death and a more personal angle needs to be developed to make the audience relate to the characters at a deeper level. Not that I dare to take anything away from Miller’s work, for in itself it is a brillant piece – “nobody dast blame this man”. One hopes though, that there are more buckets in life where one can dwell.