Imprisonment in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman

Abstract

This research paper investigates the theme of imprisonment in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. This play demonstrates persons who are crushed and stifled by society which filled its citizens' mindswith certain myths, values, and systems that may contrast with honour and ethics. As a result, they appear to be formed of a number of contradicting selves, and sometimes torn between two worlds: the internal world of fantasies of a lost past and the external reality of an unwelcoming present world.The clash, between these two worlds, grows unstable and volatile till pushing its victim to submersion or even death.
 As Death of a Salesman begins, the audience would notice the existence of two time lines or plots. The first is that of the present time during the year1948 which moves on through a series of scenes that ends with Willy Loman’s suicide. The second is the 1931 action which moves on through a series of scenes that ends with Biff’s discovery of his father with a woman at a hotel in Boston. This play is concerned with the tension between the external reality and the protagonist’s private inner world. The original title chosen by Arthur Miller for this play is The Inside of His Head. Under his friends request, he changed it to the present title with a subtitle, “Certain Private Conversations in Two Acts and a Requiem”. Taking into consideration the play’s three titles, one would guess how far Miller relies onmemories and present events to reveal not only what his protagonist, Willy Loman, suffers from but the American society as well.