Death of a Salesman Context

• In 1925, President Coolidge said, ‘the chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with buying, selling, investing, and prospering in the world.’

• Miller may have wanted to present the idea that not everyone can prosper and achieve the American dream.

• He was impacted by the Wall Street Crash.

• Born in October 1915 into a prosperous Jewish family in NYC
• 1929 – Wall Street Crash – Miller’s family lost everything – family had to move to a smaller house in Brooklyn
• Worked in a car parts warehouse to earn money to attend the University of Michigan
• He enrolled on a journalism course but wrote plays
• They were earning him student awards and so he switched to study English and complete playwriting courses
• He married Mary Slattery in 1940 and had 2 children
• 'All my Sons’ (1947) – first successful play
• Death of a Salesman’ (1949) – outstanding success
• Divorced wife and married Marilyn Monroe in 1956 – divorced by 1961
• In 1957 he was called in front of House Committee on Un-American activities to explain his association with communist groups
• In 1962 he married his third wife, Inge Morath, a photographer
• Died February 2005 at 89

• August 1929 – March 1933
• DOAS written a few years after the war ended
• Willy Loman is in his 60s and has lived through the Great Depression following the Wall Street Crash
• Mass unemployment and all non-essential spending had to be stopped – families would borrow money to buy household items
• They would make regular instalments spread over many years
• At the time of the Great Depression, the US was the only industrialised country in the world without some form of unemployment insurance or social security
• In 1935 the Social Security Act was introduced and provided Americans with unemployment benefits
• The start of WW2 saved America’s economy
• Manufacturing industry given a huge boost due to producing modern weaponry
• The late 1940’s saw a huge increase in car ownership and household goods, such as washing machines, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners

• First coined by historian James Truslow Adams in his 1931 book ‘The Epic of America’
• He didn’t create the concept
• It was based upon the Declaration of Independence which stipulates that ‘all men are created equal’ with the right to ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’
• For many, the American Dream was focused on acquiring and cultivating their own land
• Raising crops, sheep or cattle was seen as a desirable occupation
• America was considered to be a land of opportunity
• By early 20th century, the American Dream included the opportunity for all well-motivated and hard-working citizens to achieve prosperity and success – upward mobility
• Miller does not condone the American Dream – he exposes it for the corrosive force it can become

• When DOAS was written at the end of the 1940s, the career of a travelling salesman was well established
• Huge surge in number of travelling salesmen at the start of the 20th century, when large numbers of new firms were set up by enterprising manufacturers of business machines, domestic appliances, and pharmaceuticals 
• The job didn’t demand academic qualifications but did need the ability to charm and sell
• Many young men saw a career in sales as the pathway to personal success and many successful CEOs began by being a travelling salesman for another company 
• Each salesman would be given a territory
• Their job was to encourage people to buy products they otherwise would have had no interest in