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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 812.52
EAN: 9780140481341
Edition: 1st
ISBN: 0140481346
Label: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 144
Publication Date: October 06, 1998
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Studio: Penguin (Non-Classics)
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Editorial Review:
Amazon.com Review:
Arthur Miller's 1949 Death of a Salesman has sold 11 million copies, and Willy Loman didn't make all those sales on a smile and a shoeshine. This play is the genuine article--it's got the goods on the human condition, all packed into a day in the life of one self-deluded, self-promoting, self-defeating soul. It's a sturdy bridge between kitchen-sink realism and spectral abstraction, the facts of particular hard times and universal themes. As Christopher Bigsby's mildly interesting afterword in this 50th-anniversary edition points out (as does Miller in his memoir, Timebends), Willy is closely based on the playwright's sad, absurd salesman uncle, Manny. But of course Miller made Manny into Everyman, and gave him the name of the crime commissioner Lohmann in Fritz Lang's angst-ridden 1932 Nazi parable, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse.
The tragedy of Loman the all-American dreamer and loser works eternally, on the page as on the stage. A lot of plays made history around 1949, but none have stepped out of history into the classic canon as Salesman has. Great as it was, Tennessee Williams's work can't be revived as vividly as this play still is, all over the world. (This edition has edifying pictures of Lee J. Cobb's 1949 and Brian Dennehy's 1999 performances.) It connects Aristotle, The Great Gatsby, On the Waterfront, David Mamet, and the archetypal American movie antihero. It even transcends its author's tragic flaw of pious preachiness (which undoes his snoozy The Crucible, unfortunately his most-produced play).
No doubt you've seen Willy Loman's story at least once. It's still worth reading. --Tim Appelo
Product Description:
The tragedy of a typical American--a salesman who at the age of sixty-three is faced with what he cannot face; defeat and disillusionment.
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
it reflect the reality after World War 2 and Cold War.My favorite character is Linda. she really loves her husband and ready to sacrifice for him.
Rating: -
Being an English major, this book was not one of my favorite works, but I wouldn't skimp on reading it either. Arthur Miller is a brilliant playwright/author but for some reason it just didn't grasp me like other works have in the past and I've read hundreds of books. If you need something to read to occupy your time, this book is a good read but it's not the best.
Rating:  -
Although most readers will develop an emotional attachment to the downtrodden family, the language is just too dry and dull. In short, the scenes are boring. The characters have very little physical action, no humor, and no eccentricity. The only upside is that it's easy to understand and a quick read. But clearly better seen than read.
Rating:  -
Arthur Miller's brilliant play Death of a Salesman is compelling and pertinent to the point of being painful. If anything, it is more timely today than when it was when first performed in the late '40's.
The protagonist, Willy Loman, is aging, damaged, and profoundly lost. His son, who once showed great promise on the football field, is reduced to living at home and trying to make a living doing work not unlike Willy's, if he works at all. The life of Willy's second son is summed up with excruciating irony when his mother tells him, "You're nothing but a philandering bum, my baby."
Willy's wife is long-suffering, but she loves him, and demands that her son's respect that. But Willy's world, if it ever existed in the form he imagined, is gone. He has been passed by. Promises of old have long been forgotten. Willy's sales pitch and to-be-well-liked prescription for success is hopelessly misguided. He searches pathetically for reasons why his family has not done better: his older son missed lost out on a good job because he whistled on an elevator ...
This is a man without anchorages to give him self-respect. He takes weekly handouts from a relative to feed his family. He can't go on like this, and he doesn't. A purposeful suicide, one that will provide his wife with a life insurance payoff, is all he's got left.
The French sociologist Emile Durkheim might have described Willy's life as bereft of durable cultural standards, deregulated to the point of chaos, and devoid of opportunities for membership which would give his a sense of belonging without fearing he might be stabbed in the back at any time.
The death of a salesman may speak even more clearly to us today because our world seems even more anomic and egoistic than Willy's.
Rating: -
Willy Loman, salesman, carries two sample cases. Linda is his wife, Biff and Happy are his sons. He tells Linda he is tired to death. He lives in New York but is the New England man. He is over sixty. Biff is finding himself at age thirty-four. Happy takes bribes, ruins girls, and Biff has had a number of jobs.
As parents often do, Willy recalls a time when the boys were younger. Untypically, Willy is talking to himself. He is having a breakdown. He couldn't get past Yonkers because he almost hit a kid. Linda says, "Attention must be paid." And she says that he is exhausted. Linda believes Willy is trying to kill himself. (This is the set-up.)
Miller's play has much immediacy and much resonance in our own economic crisis. A salesman has dreams enough to infect his whole family. Someone tells Willy he has always been so young, (so naive, in other words). The play is good, strong, undated.
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