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THE DARK SIDE: Tavern talk: Death of a Lawyer

By: David Ziemer, [email protected]//May 24, 2011//

THE DARK SIDE: Tavern talk: Death of a Lawyer

By: David Ziemer, [email protected]//May 24, 2011//

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David Ziemer
David Ziemer

My team and I were sitting at the tavern after softball recently, and our first and second basemen were talking about seeing Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” at the Rep, and how good it was.

I couldn’t listen to that garbage, and had to set them straight about why “Death of a Salesman” is the worst play ever written.

Let’s start with the conceit that this play is somehow an indictment of the American Dream, and how Willy Loman has this great blind faith in the American Dream, yet is a failure.

In truth, Willy doesn’t believe in the American Dream at all. He encourages his sons to cheat and steal, and assures them that being “well-liked” rather than working hard is the be-all-end-all key to success.

The second ridiculous conceit of this play is that it is a tragedy of the common man – proof that a great tragedy need not be about kings and queens, but can be about a common man.

I agree with the theory, but this play is no tragedy.

Here is how a tragedy works: In Act I, a good but flawed man commits an act of hubris; in Act II, the man loses everything through some consequence of a consequence of that act of hubris; in Act III, the man loses everything, most importantly his sense of self; in Act IV, the man searches within himself to discover who he really is, if he is not who he thought he was; in Act V, he dies.

That’s the plot of King Lear and every other great tragedy.

The most important part of that formula is that the hero be a good man, not a liar and a cheater. Second is that there be some substance to the hero that he can find when he loses everything.

But Willy Loman is not a good man, and he has no substance, so he can’t be the hero of a tragedy. The play fails as a tragedy, not because Willy Loman is just a salesman, rather than a king, but because he is not a good person.

Let us imagine two plays about attorneys, one a tragedy in the style of King Lear, and another a mockery of a tragedy in the style of “Death of a Salesman.”

In the first, a great, hardworking, but arrogant, attorney commits an act of hubris, and loses everything. The attorney’s entire self-worth is based on the fact that he is the great Attorney X from the respected law firm of Smith & Jones LLP. Now that he is no longer an attorney with the respected firm of Smith & Jones, he is nobody. He is naked in the storm. But stripped of all status, and all the markers of that status, he finds his true self. Then he dies.

Now, here’s Miller’s version: A lousy and dishonest attorney, good at nothing but getting countless continuances from the court, loses everything, not from some act of hubris, but because he is a lousy and dishonest attorney. He goes mad, tries to plant vegetables at midnight, and kills himself.

Which play would you rather read?

At the end of “Death of a Salesman,” Willy’s neighbor Charley, whose son Bernard has just argued a case in the U.S. Supreme Court, declares, “Nobody dast blame this man.”

Well, I dast blame the man. And I dast blame Miller for writing a horrible play. To not blame Willy Loman is to deny him his humanity and his moral autonomy. We wouldn’t stand for Miller denying an attorney his humanity; so how is it that Miller is praised as a great dramatist for abusing a salesman in this fashion?

Anyway, that’s the sort of thing we talk about at the tavern after playing softball.

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