Expressionism in Death of Salesman Essay

From the opening flute notes to their final reprise, Millers symphonyal themes express the competing influences in Willy Lomans mind. Once established, the themes need only be sounded to lambast certain time frames, emotions, and values. The first sounds of the drama, the flute notes sm wholly and pretty, represent the grass, trees, and horizon objects of Willys (and Biffs) longing that argon tellingly absent from the overshadowed home on which the curtain rises. This melody plays on as Willy makes his first appearance, although, as Miller tells us, he hears but is not aware of it (12). Through this music we are thus tending(p) our first sense of Willys estrangement not only from nature itself but from his own deepest nature. As Act I unfolds, the flute is linked to Willys father, who, we are told, made flutes and sold them during the familys early wanderings. The fathers theme, a high, rollicking tune, is differentiated from the small and fine melody of the natural ornament ( 49).This distinction is fitting, for the father is a salesman as well as an explorer he embodies the conflicting values that are destroying his sons life. The fathers tune shares a family resemblingness with Bens idyllic (133) music. This false theme, like Ben himself, is associated finally with death. Bens theme is first sounded, after all, only after Willy expresses his enfeeblement (44). It is hear once more after Willy is fired in Act II. This time the music precedes Bens entrance. It is heard in the distance, then closer, just as Willys thoughts of felo-de-se, once repressed, now come closer at the loss of his job. And Willys first words to Ben when he finally appears are the ambiguous how did you do it? (84). When Bens idyllic melody plays for the third and final time it is in accents of dread (133), for Ben reinforces Willys wrongheaded thought of suicide to bankroll Biff.The fathers and Bens themes, representing selling (out) and abandonment, are thus in opposition to the small and fine theme of nature that begins and ends the play. A whistling motif elaborates this essential conflict. Whistling is lots done by those contentedly at work. It frequently also accompanies outdoor activities. A whistler in an office would be a distraction. Biff Loman likes to whistle, thus reinforcing his ties to nature rather than to the business environment. But Happy seeks to stifle Biffs true voice HAPPY . . . Bob Harrison said you were tops, and then you go and do some damn fool thing like whistling whole songs in the elevator like a comedian. BIFF, against Happy. So what? I like to whistle sometimes.HAPPY. You don t raise a guy to a responsible job who whistles in elevator (60) This conversation reverberates ironically when Howard Wagner plays Willy a arrangement of his daughter whistling Roll out the Barrel just before Willy asks for an advance and a New York job (77). Whistling, presumably, is all right if you are the thickening or the bosss daughter, but not if you are an employee. The barrel will not be rolled out for Willy or Biff Loman. Willys conflicting desires to work in sales and to do outdoor, independent work are complicated by another longing, that of sexual desire, which is expressed through and through the raw, aesthetical music that accompanies The Womans appearances on stage (116, 37). It is this music of sexual desire, I suggest, that insinuates itself as the first leaves cover the house in Act 1.5 It is heard just before Willy reliving a past conversation offers this ironic warning to Biff Just wanna be careful with those girls, Biff, thats all. Dont make any promises.No promises of any kind (27). This raw theme of sexual desire contrasts with Linda Lomans theme the maternal hum of a loco lullaby that becomes a desperate but monotonous hum at the end of Act I (69). Lindas monotonous drone, in turn, contrasts with the mirthful and fulgent music, the boys theme, which opens Act II. This theme is associated with the g reat times (127) Willy remembers with his sons before his adultery is discovered. Like the high, rollicking theme of Willys father and like Bens idyllic melody, this gay and bright music is ultimately associated with the false dream of materialistic success. The boys theme is first heard when Willy tells Ben that he and the boys will get rich in Brooklyn (87). It sounds again when Willy implores Ben, How do we get back to all the great times? (127).In his final moments of life, Willy Loman is shown struggling with his furies sounds, fonts, voices, seem to be swarming in upon him (136). Suddenly, however, the faint and high music enters, representing the false dreams of all the low men. This false tune ends Willys struggle with his competing voices. It drowns out the other voices, rising in intensity almost to an unbearable telephone as Willy rushes off in pursuit. And just as the travail of Moby Dick ends with the ongoing flow of the waves, nature, in the form of the flutes small and fine refrain, persists despite the tragedy we have witnessed.SetsIn the introduction to his Collected Plays, Miller acknowledges that the first image of Salesman that occurred to him was of an enormous face the height of the proscenium arch the face would appear and then open up. We would see the inside of a mans head, he explains. In fact, The Inside of His Head was the first title. It was conceived half in laughter, (60) for the inside of his head was a mass of contradictions (23). By the time Miller had completed Salesman, however, he had found a more subtle plays correlative for the lusus naturae head a transparent setting. The entire setting is wholly, or, in some orchestrates, partially transparent, Miller insists in his set description (11). By substituting a transparent setting for a bisected head, Miller invited the audience to examine the social context as well as the individual organism. Productions that eschew transparent scene eschew the nuances of this invitat ion. The transparent lines of the Loman home allow the audience physically to sense the city pressures that are destroying Willy. We are aware of towering, angular shapes behind Willys house, ad marry it on all sides.The roofline of the house is one-dimensional under and over it we see the apartment buildings (11-12). Wherever Willy Loman looks are these encroaching buildings, and wherever we look as well. Willys subjective vision is expressed also in the homes furnishings, which are deliberately partial. The furnishings indicated are only those of importance to Willy Loman. That Willys kitchen has a circuit card with three chairs instead of four reveals both Linda Lomans unequal status in the family and Willys obsession with his boys. At the end of Act I, Willy goes to his small refrigerator for life-sustaining milk (cf. Brechts parallel use of milk in Galileo). Later, however, we learn that this repository of nourishment, like Willy himself, has broken down.That Willy Lomans bed room contains only a bed, a straight chair, and a shelf holding Biffs silver athletic trophy also telegraphs much about the man and his family. Linda Loman has no object of her own in her bedroom. Willy Loman also travels alight. He has nothing of substance to sustain him. His vanity is devoted to adolescent competition. Chairs ultimately become surrogates for people in Death of a Salesman as first a kitchen chair becomes Biff in Willys conflicted mind (28) and then an office chair becomes Willys dead soul boss, Frank Wagner (82). In, perhaps, a subtle bow to Georg Kaisers Gas I and Gas II, Millers gas heater glows when Willy thinks of death. The scrim that veils the primping Woman and the masking hiding the restaurant where two women will be seduced suggest Willy Lomans repression of sexuality.LightingExpressionism has done more than any other movement to develop the communicatory powers of stage lighting. The German expressionists used light to create a strong sense of mood an d to isolate characters in a void. By contrasting light and shadow, and by employing extreme side, overhead, and rear lighting angles, they established the nightmarish atmosphere in which many of their plays took place. The original Kazan Salesman made use of more lights than were used all the same in Broadway musicals (Timebends 190). At the end of act 1, Biff comes downstage into a golden pool of light as Willy recalls the day of the city baseball business when Biff was like a young God. Hercules something like that. And the sun, the sun all around him. The pool of light both establishes the moment as one of Willys memories and suggests how he has inflated the past, given it mythic dimension. The lighting also functions to instill a sense of irony in the audience, for the golden light glows on undiminished as Willy exclaims, A star like that, magnificent, can never really fade awayWe know that Biffs star faded, even before it had a chance to shine, and even as Willy speaks thes e words, the light on him begins to fade (68). That Willys thoughts turn immediately from this golden vision of his son to his own suicide is indicated by the blue flame of the gas heater that begins immediately to glow through the wall a foreshadowing of Willys desire to gild his son through his own demise. Productions that boot out either the golden pool of light or the glowing gas heater withhold this foreshadowing of Willys final deed. Similarly, productions that omit the lights on the empty chairs miss the chance to reveal the potency of Willys fantasies.Perhaps even more important, the gas heaters flame at the end of Act I recalls the angry glow of orange surrounding Willys house at the plays beginning (11). Both join with the red glow rising from the hotel room and the restaurant to give a felt sense of Willys twice articulated cry The woods are burningTheres a big blaze going on all around (41, 107). Without these sensory clues, audiences may fail to appreciate the despai r of Willys state.Characters and CostumesMiller employs expressionistic technique when he allows his characters to split into younger versions of themselves to represent Willys memories. Young Biffs letter sweater and football game signal his age reversion, yet they also move in the direction of social type. The Woman also is an expressionistic type, the plays only generic wine character other than the marvelously individualized salesman. Millers greatest expressionistic creations, however, are Ben and Willy Loman. In his Paris Review interview, Miller acknowledged that he purposely refused to give Ben any character, because for Willy he has no character which is, psychologically, expressionist because so many memories come back with a simple tag on them somebody represents a threat to you, or a promise (Theater Essays 272). Clearly Ben represents a promise to Willy Loman. It is the promise of material success, but it is also the promise of death.6 We dexterity consider Uncle Be n to be the ghost of Ben, for we learn that Ben has recently died in Africa. Since Miller never discloses the cause of Bens death, he may be a suicide himself.His idyllic melody, as I have noted, becomes finally a death march. In Willys last moments, the contrapuntal voices of Linda and Ben vie with each other, but Willy moves inexorably toward Ben. Alluding to Africa, and perhaps also to the River Styx, Ben looks at his watch and says, The boat. Well be late as he moves slowly into the darkness (135). Willy Loman, needless to say, is Millers brilliant intro that expressionistic techniques can express inner as well as outer forces, that expressionism can be used to create felt, humane character. The music, setting, and lighting of Salesman all function to express the world inside Willy Lomans head, a world in which social and personal values meet and merge and struggle for integration.As Miller writes in the introduction to his Collected Plays The plays expressionistic elements wer e consciously used as such, but since the approach to Willy Lomans characterization was consistently and strictly subjective, the audience would not ever be aware if I could help it that they were witnessing the use of a technique which had until then created only coldness, objectivity, and a highly styled branch of play. (39) In 1983, when Miller arrived in Beijing to direct the first Chinese production of Death of a Salesman, he was pleased to find that the Chinese had created a mirror image of the original transparent set. Seeing this set, and observing that the kitchen was furnished with only a refrigerator, table, and two (not even three) chairs, Miller felt a extraordinary boost to his morale (Salesman in Beijing 3-4).Teachers and directors might offer a similar boost by giving full weight to the expressionistic moments in Death of a Salesman. For directors, achieving such moments may be technically demanding, but they should not be abandoned simply because they are chall enging.7 Similarly, the expressionistic devices should not be considered too obvious for postmodern taste. In truth, the expressionism in Salesman is not intrusive. Its very refinement of German expressionism lies in its subtlety, in its delicate balance with the realistic moments in the drama. This ever-shifting tension between realism and expressionism allows us to feel the interpenetration of outer and inner forces within the human psyche. The expressionistic devices also elevate Willys suffering, for they place it in the context of the natural order. To excise the expressionism is to diminish the rich chord that is Millers drama