Willy Loman's Brother Ben: Tragic Insight in Death of a Salesman

WILLY LOMAN'S BROTHER BEN: TRAGIC INSIGHT IN DEATH OF A SALESMAN IN THE TIlIRTEEN YEARS since Arthur Miller's Death at a Salesman had its spontaneous Broadway success, critics have often cited as a deficiency in it the lack of tragic insight in its hero, Willy Loman. ceHe never knew who he was,"says his son Biff at Willy's grave; and by a like judgment critics can substantially discount the play's tragic claims. But Biffs chonc commentary on his father, like many other very quotable remarks in the scene of Willy's "requiem," is not quite true. Willy did struggle againstself..knowledge-trying not to know "what" he was; but he had alwaysasuperh consciousness of his own individual strength as a "who." "I am not a dime a dozen\" he shouts in the play's crisis; "I am Willy Loman . .. \" And it is this very sense of his personal force and high regard for it which qualify him as a hero. What turns this self-esteem into something tragic and self-destructive is his contrasting awareness that, in spite of his powers, he is not what he wants to be. Himself partially unaware that he actually desires simple fulfillment as a father, Willy dreams of being an'important businessman, greatly admired by his two sons. He has misconstrued the ideal of fatherhood, confuSing it with the ability to confer wealth and prestige. Because of this misplaced idealism-and his related commitment to the economic delusion known as "the American dream" -he seems not to have the stature of the traditional tragic hero. , That, as his son Biff says, Willy has "the wrong dreams" is certainly true. What criticism has to decide, in the light of the play's dramatic structure, is whether this common human defect does not increase rather than weaken his effectiveness as tragic hero. Because playwright Miller has buttressed the. basic realism of Salesman with strongly expressionistic elements, analysis of his play has to be made carefully. Willy's stage presence does not equal his characterization, as it would in a more conventional play. Instead of simply appearing in the events on stage,he himself-or rather, his confused mind-is the scene of much of the dramatic action. ConsideratiOI;I. of tragic insightrn Willy, ,then, leads one to notice an expressionist device which reappears with the regularity of a motif in episodes taking place in Willy's consciousness. This is the 409 410 MODERN DRAMA February stylized characterization of Willy's rich brother Ben who, when closely observed, takes shape less as a person external to Willy than as a projection of his personality. Ben personifies his brother's dream of easy wealth. Ben is the only important character not physically present during Willys last day. He is on stage only as he exists in Willy's mind. B1Jt he is the first person whom Willy asks in his present distress, "What's the answer?"; and in the end it is Ben's answer which Willy accepts. As one critic summarizes it: Ben "walked into the jungle and three years later came out with a million"; Ben shot off to Alaska to "get in on the ground floor"; Ben was never afraid of new territories, new faces, no smiles. In the end, Ben's last territory-Death-earns Willy Louwis family $20,000 insurance money, and a chance for them finally to accomplish his dream: a dream of which they have never been capable, in which they also can only be buried: the old "million" dream.1 Although Ben is dead before the play begins, the force which he symbolizes draws Willy to suicide. Ben also stands out as the plays only predominantly formalized characterization. That in him Miller combines realism with expressionism in a ratio inverse to that of the rest of the play seems another indication of his distinctive symbolic function. The audience first sees him when memories of a visit paid by him some twenty years before push themselves into Willy's consciousness. "William," he boasts, "when I walked into the jungle, I was seventeen. When I walked out I was twenty-one. And, by God, I was richl" This...