Biographical

    Arthur Asher Miller's Death of a Salesman is largely influenced by his life experiences and the people around him. Arthur Miller was born on October 17, 1915 in Harlem. His father owned a women’s clothing manufacturing business. Miller was raised in wealth, eg. his family owned a summer house in Queens. During the Wall Street Crash of 1929 his wealthy life fell apart when his father’s business closed. During Arthur’s teenage years he delivered bread to raise money for his family. When he entered college he worked a multitude of menial jobs to pay for tuition.

    In Death of a Salesman Millers childhood plight is illustrated in Willy’s misfortune, “Christmas time, fifty dollars! To fix the hot water it cost ninety-seven fifty! For five weeks he’s been on straight commission, like a beginner, an unknown!”. This echo his father’s failing in business and the effects it has upon the family. The stress that was placed up Linda can be seen as an echo of the effects upon his own mother, “Your hair got so gray.”.  Biff says this to his mother after Willy’s business starts to fail. Miller’s own family tension is played out in the characters of Death of a salesman.  

    “In the beginning, when he was young, I thought, well, a young man, it’s good for him to tramp around, take a lot of different jobs. But it’s more than ten years now and he has yet to make thirty-five dollars a week” Biff’s changing of jobs follows Miller’s own experience for when he was young. Miller worked in a auto parts warehouse and in a factory. Arthur’s views on the lower middle class and more impoverished families come from his personal experiences. The descriptions that he gives are vivid because he is describing what he has seen and puts them into his own personal world or play.. Through association we can see that the characters in Death of a Salesman follow Millers’ own beliefs about the American dream. Willy’s failure and Biff’s different working conditions are all introspection about his memories and his past. Willy’s problems may also be seen as Willy’s ‘what if’ thoughts on his own family life. 

The Death of a Salesman

"Biff reaches behind the heater and draws out a length of rubber tubing. He is horrified and turns his head toward Will's room, still dimly lit," (48).
What does the tubing signify, and why would Biff care if he is so disconnected from his father?

Walk reflection

Silence, is what strikes me when I began my walk. It wasn’t the scenery or the temperature but rather the lack of noise. It seems almost deafening when you’re seeking and looking for something to grab onto but there is nothing there to grab onto. It’s cold and snowing but that is not that important for me. I feel that this is kind of reflective of how I live there is not much there it is profoundly silent or empty. My actions are superfluous and it seems that the resolutions that I make are empty. I have terrible time management, and other problems, but I never change no matter how many times I promise to change. I speak these out trying to convince the people around me, but I’m never able to convince myself. I proclaim these empty words that are seemingly meaning something new or profound but have just become the status quo. I don’t know what to do because I want to do the same thing as in the past, make a promise that I don’t know I can keep. But what else can I do, how can I make it go from being empty noise to become something meaningful. Silence seems so profound in the moment but to me it means just empty, fake, or fragile. The beautiful thing can be shattered buy the smallest of things, all it takes is one loud step and it is gone. That is how I see my words, empty, fake, and fragile.

If I could paint a picture of 2015 then it would not be a happy picture, maybe it would be full of snow like my walk, but not of a happy scene snow. It would be full of ups and downs and manic swings. It does not have a happy meaning, or an overtly sad one, but rather meaningless. The picture would contain both joys and struggles, but never one of those individually for they are inadvertently linked together, inseparable.

Walking in a snow covered world is wonderful except when it is quickly melting before your eyes. It goes from a white winter to something dreary in a blink of an eye. The joys in my life seem like the snow it is there but a season, tangible but fleeting. It is there on the mountain tops but never in the valleys of life. I've realized in this past year that life is made up of mountains and valleys for one will always follow the other.