Good Evening Friends,

The question before us is: why didn't Willie Loman force himself to become a salesman? Why did he insist on banging his head against the wall? Why didn't he simply do something else?

This is crucial because this is the path that Willie Loman started down in creating his false self. The first thing to remember is that Willie Loman views selling as the means of becoming well liked, above and beyond anything else. Its not really about the promise of making a fortune.

The selling trade, to Willie, is about selling oneself. Willie would have considered himself a success if he could have had a funeral as "massive" as that of Dave Singleman, Willie's "father," who was, perhaps, a mentor to a young Willie Loman, when he was just starting out in the "business world."

The "business world," is a word and concept invoked with reverence throughout the play, as if this "world" was Mt. Olympus, the very height of human civilization. But it was the fifties, after all.

Since selling was the profession of his "father," Dave Singleman, then perhaps Willie Loman had a feeling about the trade, that it somehow "ran in the family." And since most sons seek to gain the respect and approval of their fathers, eventually, then Willie must do the same with his "father," by being a successful salesman, he must sell himself successfully such that when he dies his funeral will be of a similar magnitude as that of Mr. Singleman's.

If Willie is not as naturally skillful at selling as Mr. Singleman and others in the profession, why then he will just have to dig in, bear down, hang tough, keep a stiff upper lip and work harder, as hard as he needs to to make his numbers, work those ten, twelve hour days and all with a big smile on his face.

Willie cannot give up selling because to do so would be, in a sense, to deny (in the vaguely Biblical sense) his "father," and to do so would be, in a way, to deny himself.

Remember what we said the foundational principle of Existentialism is: consciousness is not what it is but what it is not - something any Buddhist could tell you. In thinking about identity, this principle makes us aware of the lifelong, highly dynamic, assimilative, synthesizing process and reality of identity. In other words, we get stuff from other people all our lives (facial expressions, figures of speech, mannerisms, and the like), as we have mentioned before.

I have argued that this process is natural and necessary. Willie Loman's assimilation of the identity of a salesman is this healthy, natural process multiplied by a factor of one hundred - most unhealthy in this case, because this kind of accumulation, for lack of a better word, precludes even the opportunity of self realization.

Also, just in case Willie proves to be personally incapable of fulfilling his "father's" legacy, he hopes to do this vicariously through his favored older son, Biff, the Golden Boy, high school football hero (quarterback), by always, incessantly preaching at him the gospel of being well liked.

For a while there it looks like it's going to work. All is on target with Biff, he will ride an athletic scholarship to college, do the student-athlete thing, date more cheerleaders undoubtedly, and so on and so forth. But it all falls apart when Biff catches his father romantically involved with a woman not his mother in a hotel room in Boston.

Biff suddenly makes up his mind that he is not going to college and without a college education he will not have the necessary background to make a success of himself in the "business world," and so on and so forth.

It is this double failure of Willie Loman, both to personally honor the legacy of his "father," Dave Singleman, and the failure to do this through his son, Biff, that causes his complete psychological disintegration in my opinion, that culminates in Mr. Loman's suicide.

The tragedy of Willie Loman is summed up quite nicely in the last scene by Biff - the only character in the play the shows any growth - with his words "He [Willie] had the wrong dreams," which were completely misunderstood by every other character in that scene.

But by now I think we understand exactly what those words meant. And one cannot help but be shaken with the force of their truth.

Alright, until next time, then.

wingedcentaur

Good Evening Friends,

We are trying to figure out why it is that Willie Loman shoehorned himself into a career - "selling" - that he was not suited for, was never really good at, and arguably never actually liked (he liked the idea of being "well liked," which he saw as a reward for being a good salesman - I will return to this point).

Let us return to the "We're gonna do it here!" scene, where Willie rejects his brother Ben's offer to go to work for him "managing" some properties for him in Alaska. Well before his outburst explained to Ben why he went into the field of selling.

The reason was, in a word, Dave Singleman. Dave Singleman was a beloved old salesman with the Wagner Company. He was very good at selling. Willie admired the way Dave Singleman could, at the age of eighty four, go to any hotel in any city, put on his slippers and get on the phone, and then without ever leaving his hotel room, he could make his living.

Presumably he could do this because of relationships with buyers and other concerned personnel he'd built up over a period of decades. "And when he died," said Willie, "the funeral was MASSIVE." It had been attended by multitudes of buyers, secretaries, salesman, and the like. This was a dramatic demonstration of how universally admired and loved Dave Singleman had been. Willie wants to go out like that.

It's important to remember that Willie's father abandoned the family when he was "just a baby." And so did Ben. Willie Loman had to get a father figure from somewhere.

Sure Willie wanted Ben's respect. Sure Willie wants to think of himself as the kind of man his father would have respected. But what he really wants is to meet the standard set by his "father," Dave Singleman.

Okay, so Willie was motivated to be like this other salesman; couldn't he have realized after the first decade, at least, or the second in the selling game that he was just no good at it; and couldn't he have done something else for a living, something more of a match with his actual innate abilities and talents, thus developing a different, more workable - for him - lifestyle model which he might have advocated to his sons?

No. Absolutely not. Willie Loman could have done no such thing.

Why not?

We'll talk about that next time.

wingedcentaur

Good Evening Friends,

You know, I have slowly come to realize that a principal driving concern of mine in philosophy are what I shall broadly refer to as the mechanisms of the Self (capital S): the ways that the Self tries to hide from itself; the ways the Self tries to escape from itself; the ways the Self tries to deceive itself; the ways the Self tries to divide itself into two or more parts (as we have discussed elsewhere); and the ways that the Self tries to cope with Absurdity (capital A).

To that end let me say that in an upcoming series of reflections, we shall be discussing Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. This - as well as Oscar Wilde's The Portrait of Dorian Gray, which we shall also consider - is emblematic of and epitomizes of what I think of as the focus of my speculative inquiry (if I was a professional philosopher I might say "the focus of my work").

This time I promise to do it properly. I will actually have the text before me as we work through it. And so on and so forth. Aren't you excited? Well aren't you? I know I am.

Good Evening Friends,

Let me say first that I have gotten a few messages in my e-mail box saying a few people are starting trickle in and "follow" our speculations. I call up the person's box and type up a little thank you and welcome note. Then I hit 'Send' and a message comes up saying 'you must confirm your account to use this feature.'

Can anyone please tell me what this means and what I am supposed to do?

Thanks,

wingedcentaur (otherwise known as William Thomas)

Good Evening Friends,

We are now continuing with our analysis of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. I don't know if I mentioned this but Willie Loman is a liar. He is a man with two faces. I know I previously mentioned that the subject Willie Loman would, in my opinion, be considered a borderline paranoid schizophrenic today.

One of his faces is his false Self. This is the face of the gladhander, the backslapping, good time-having, jocular, gregarious good old boy who is "well liked," and as a consequence of this he is wildly successful as a salesman for the Wagner Company. This is the image he presents to his two sons and to a lesser extent, the rest of the world.

But of course, the exact opposite is true. Willie is a wildly unsuccessful as a salesman. He is not well liked. Let us return to the very first flashback scene in the play. This is the one in which his oldest son, Biff, the high school football hero quarterback, promises that at a certain point during the big game, he will "break out" for a touchdown "just for you," Willie. At the right moment Biff intends to signal his intention to his father with the extraordinary thing of removing his helmet.

That is the scene I'm talking about. Obviously we are talking about decades prior to the current action in the play. Willie has just returned from a sales trip in New England (he's a road man for the Wagner Company) and he is on the back porch with Linda, his wife, and his two sons, the Golden Boy, the first son, Biff, and the second barely noticed, it must be said, second child, Hap or "Happy" (real name Harold) Loman.

In front of his two boys Willie Loman is the happy warrior. When Biff asked him if he "knocked 'em dead" ... someplace, Willie replied that he had indeed "killed 'em" somewhere and "slaughtered them somewhere else, and other figurative homicidal verbs to indicatethat he had sold lots of stuff wherever he went in New England.

Linda asked Willie how the Chevy ran, in front of the boys. Willie ebulliently proclaims that the Chevrolet is the "... greatest car ever built!" Then Biff and Hap go back to rejoin the fellows from school that they brought home.

With the boys out of earshot suddenly the magnificent Chevrolet becomes that "goddamned Chevrolet. They ought to prohibit the manufacture of that car." Linda asks him how much he made and Willie first tries to bluff, making out rather expansively. But the act collapses in a millisecond. He made a fair amount... but really, when it comes down to it he really didn't make that much at all.

He finally, eventually, after an interminable amount of hedging around, quotes the true figure, or something resembling the truth - which itself is probably exaggerrated upward. Linda assures him that he did very well and he will certainly do better next time.

Willie says that other men seem to do it (selling) easier. Willie has to be at it ten, twelve hours a day. Linda says something consoling and Willie tells her that she is his foundation and support. But Willie is lying to himself (though not at that precise moment) and Linda is lying to him and they both know it.

The point I want to leave you with is this: Willie preaches an approach to life based on a model of being "well liked," which does not work for Willie himself. No doubt he believes that his two sons, the personable, near-perfect physical specimens that they are, and especially Biff, the Golden Boy football hero, will be able to execute this far more effectively than Willie ever could.

This is very strange. First, let us be clear. One should not preach any particular approach to life to anyone. But why didn't Willie at least develop his true inclinations and natural talents to develop a personalized approach to life and values that would have brought him actual success, and which he could have inculcated his boys with with more justification.

We will look at that next time. This question involves the issue of why Willie Loman ever became a salesman in the first place instead of a carpenter or stone mason.

Until next time, then.

wingedcentaur

Good Evening Friends,

We're back again after a brief pause. It is good to be back with you all and welcome to to those on Blogged.com who appear to be "following" our discussions. And let us hope that they will soon be moved to join in.

We have been examining the Arthur Miller play Death of a Salesman in connection with our larger conceptual project. I am suggesting that religion is based on something real whether or not one believes in "God" or not. I have maintained that the ancient masters, those various founders of the world's religions made certain observations about the natural world, human nature, psychology and the like, that were revolutionary and unable to fit within the conceptual framework of the time.

In other words, the scientific, clinical, empirical method of understanding did not exist within which these observations could be placed. This is my theory anyway. So these commentaries were placed within the only method of understanding available at the time, the religious and mythological. Moreover, these observations, placed as they were, within the ancient mythological and religious traditions at the time, served to "bloat," if I can put it that way, those religions, exaggerate their claims.

But understand this is not a criticism. As I have said before, in my very first post, as a matter of fact, for me, philosophy as I have broadly defined the term, and of which religion is a component, is the unmanned space probe of human knowledge. We should send the probe out and when it returns, collect the data and send it out again, next time farther out.

So that is what this discussion is all about. As we try, in our limited fashion, to reconcile religion and humanism, we are simply trying to collect the data to be retrieved from religion before we send that probe out again. These series of reflections, therefore, is an attempt - to a very limited degree and scope - at a naturalistic analysis of religion.

Out of the totality of the world's religion and spirituality, the easiest aspect for me to deal with is that of reincarnation. This is an ontological belief that we most usually associate with the far east, with Hinduism, Buddhism, and so on. You will recall that I offered a small possible example from the New Testament (I'm horrible about citations, sorry).

Anyway this passage concerned a question asked of Jesus by one of his followers. There was a man with some disfiguring skin condition or something (I don't recall if it was leprosy or some such). One of Jesus's followers asked him what sin had the man committed to have brought that on himself.

I said before that if we were to take that at face value we must conclude that "God" punishes children for the sins of their parents regardless of the guilt or innocence of the children. This is the same kind of thinking that allowed extremists in the fundamentalist (I'm sure not all fundamentalists are extremists) tradition of Christianity to say, in the late seventies and early eighties that AIDS was God's punishment for homosexuality.

You will remember I compared this passage (wherever it is) with a story told by family therapist, John Bradshaw, in his book Family Secrets. There was a man, who, every year around Feburary 14, Valentines Day, he got a red rash around his neck. Both his mother and his grandmother had killed themselves (one of them by hanging, if I recall correctly) near or on Valentines Day.

This man was what Bradshaw calls the "symptom bearer" of the family. These suicides were the "Family Secret" he was carrying and physically manifested.

Also, I held up these two stories and suggested that the same family dynamic was in play. When "Jesus" (I am unclear as to whether this was a verified historical figure) answered the question he probably did not want to suggest the idea of "sin" but maybe intergenerational angst or deep dread and anxiety or some such. This is part of the data collection we are attempting.

So I am claiming that there is a perfectly secular, empirical, basis, of no small psychoanalytic interest by the way, for reincarnation. You may recall, also, that I had cleverly termed this secular phenomena psychological reincarnation and partial psychological reincarnation.

I claim that Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman is emblematic of and epitomizes this. Because the influence that Willie Loman exercises over his two sons is way beyond the usual way that parents influence their children. We are talking about a control over his sons that is different in degree to such an extent that it is actually different in kind.

We are talking about a form of emotional, psychological, and "spiritual" control over Willie's two sons that we usually see, in what Bradshaw calls "cultic" families.

I don't know what interest or knowledge Arthur Miller may or may not have had about psychology. But here's the thing about great writers: they are keen observers like prophets and sages, and always see what is critical even if they cannot name it at the time.

Lastly, I will be relating this to the Tibetan procedure of choosing the next Dalai Lama. Again, I am no authority. I merely saw a documentary, once, on the National Geographic Channel (Channel 43 in my area) about this. I will suggest then, to whom this may benefit, that the procedure is, therefore, not absurd.

Alright then, this concludes my reintroduction to the discussion. Next time we'll jump back into the analysis of Death of a Salesman.