Expressionism in Death of Salesman Essay

From the opening flute notes to their final reprise, millers musical stalks express the competing influences in Willy Lomans mind. Once complete, the themes need b bely be sounded to evoke certain time frames, emotions, and values. The initiative sounds of the period of play, the flute notes gnomish and alright, represent the grass, trees, and horizon objects of Willys (and Biffs) longing that ar tellingly absent from the overshadowed home on which the curtain rises. This melody plays on as Willy makes his first appearance, although, as milling machine tells us, he hears provided is not aware of it (12). through this music we are consequently tending(p) our first sense impression of Willys estrangement not still from nature itself but from his own deepest nature. As be I unfolds, the flute is linked to Willys father, who, we are told, do flutes and sold them during the familys early wanderings. The fathers theme, a high, sport tune, is differentiated from the sm any and fine melody of the inhering landscape (49).This property is fitting, for the father is a salesman as surface as an explorer he embodies the conflicting values that are destroying his sons life. The fathers tune shares a family equalness with Bens perfect (133) music. This delusive theme, ilk Ben himself, is associated fin onlyy with death. Bens theme is first sounded, later on all, only after Willy expresses his exhaustion (44). It is heard again after Willy is fired in make believe II. This time the music precedes Bens entrance. It is heard in the distance, then closer, on the button 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 self-destruction to bankroll Biff.The fathers and Bens th emes, representing selling (out) and abandonment, are thus in opposition to the small and fine theme of nature that begins and ends the play. A pennywhistle motif elaborates this essential conflict. Whistling is often done by those contentedly at work. It frequently as easily accompanies outdoor actionivities. A whistling marmot 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 ab exercise to a responsible job who whistles in elevator (60) This conversation r invariablyberates ironically when Howard Wagner plays Willy a recording of his daughter whistling Roll out the tympan only ahead Willy asks for an advance an d a New York job (77). Whistling, presumably, is all right if you are the boss or the bosss daughter, but not if you are an employee. The barrel go extraneous not be furled out for Willy or Biff Loman. Willys conflicting desires to work in sales and to do outdoor, independent work are complicated by an separate longing, that of sexual desire, which is expressed through the raw, sensuous 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 ho work in Act 1.5 It is heard just before Willy reliving a past conversation offers this ironic word of advice to Biff Just wanna be careful with those girls, Biff, thats all. Dont make any agreements.No promises of any kind (27). This raw theme of sexual desire contrasts with Linda Lomans theme the maternal chirp of a soft lullaby that becomes a desperate but monotonous hum at the end of Act I (69). Lindas monotonous drone, in t urn, contrasts with the gay and bright music, the boys theme, which opens Act II. This theme is associated with the great 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 tush to all the great times? (127).In his final moments of life, Willy Loman is shown struggling with his furies sounds, faces, voices, count 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 scream as Willy rushes off in pursuit. And just as the travail of Moby Dick ends with the on-going 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 composed Plays, milling machine acknowledges that the first image of Salesman that occurred to him was of an enormous face the height of the proscenium archway 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 giant head a candid checkting. The completed setting is wholly, or, in some places, 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 conte xt as well as the individual organism. Productions that eschew transparent scenery eschew the nuances of this invitation. 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, surrounding it on all sides.The roofline of the house is one-dimensional under and over it we see the flatcar 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 table with three chairs instead of four reveals twain Linda Lomans incommensurate 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 bedroom 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 light. He has nothing of substance to sustain him. His vanity is devoted to adolescent competition. Chairs ultimately become surrogates for people in remainder of a Salesman as first a kitchen chair becomes Biff in Willys conflicted mind (28) and then an office chair becomes Willys deceased boss, dog-iron Wagner (82). In, perhaps, a subtle bow to Georg Kaisers tout I and Gas II, Millers sport heater transmits when Willy thinks of death. The scrim that veils the primping Woman and the blanket hiding the restaurant where two women will be seduced suggest Willy Lomans repression of sexuality.LightingExpressionism has done more than any other movement to start out the expressive powers of stage lighting. The German expressionists used light to create a strong sense of mood and 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 even in Broadway musicals (Timebends 190). At the end of act 1, Biff comes downstage into a golden puss of light as Willy recalls the day of the city baseball championship when Biff was like a juvenile 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 ridicule in the audience, for the golden light fires on undiminished as Willy exclaims, A star like tha t, magnificent, can never really fade awayWe know that Biffs star faded, even before it had a outlook to shine, and even as Willy speaks these 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 prognosticate of Willys desire to ordering his son through his own demise. Productions that omit 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 T he woods are burnTheres a big blaze going on all around (41, 107). Without these sensory clues, audiences may fail to appreciate the hopelessness of Willys state.Characters and CostumesMiller employs expressionist technique when he allows his characters to split into junior versions of themselves to represent Willys memories. Young Biffs letter pinny and football 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 character other than the marvelously individualized salesman. Millers greatest expressionistic creations, however, are Ben and Willy Loman. In his Paris brush up interview, Miller acknowledged that he purposely refused to give Ben any character, be causality for Willy he has no character which is, psychologically, expressionist because so many memories come okay with a simple tag on them somebody represents a scourge 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 might consider Uncle Ben 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 vivid demonstration that expressionistic techniques can express inner as well as outer forces, that expressionism can be used to create felt, kind 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 run into and merge and struggle for integration.As Miller writes in the introduction to his Collected Plays The plays expressionistic elements were consciously used as such, but since the orgasm to Willy Lomans characterization was consistently and rigorously 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 sort 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 marvelous 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 challenging.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 elegant 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