The Critics

• Eric Bentley

  For Eric Bentley, the play is not a satisfactory tragedy.
• Lack of terror

  • Bentley argues that, although audiences may feel “pity”, Willy is too lowly and pathetic a figure to inspire “terror”.
• Lack of resolution

  • Bentley also argued that the play never resolves the question of who is responsible for Willy’s death: is Willy the victim of his own tragic flaw or is he brought down by external (e.g. socio-economic) forces?
• No man's land

  • For Bentley, Miller’s play falls between two stools – the tragedy and the socio-political play – and, as a result, ends up being neither.
• Harold Bloom

  For Harold Bloom, the play is a tragedy “despite itself”.
• Not a tragedy

  • The play does not work as a tragedy in that Willy never achieves self-knowledge and the society of the play is not “cleansed” by Willy’s death.
• A tragedy

  • But Willy’s death leads to Biff’s path to self-knowledge, while also “releasing” Biff from following Willy’s destructive dream.
• Stephen Barker

  Stephen Barker sees the play as a Nietzschean tragedy.
• Nietzsche

  • The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) argued that human life was essentially meaningless and that “God is dead”.
  • Nietzsche saw tragedy as an art-form allowing audiences to recognise this truth.
• Lack of closure

  • For Nietzsche, tragedy does not offer closure or understanding and Barker argues that Death of a Salesman conforms to this.
  • Willy kills himself for nothing and that Linda is the key figure in the play’s closing Requiem in that she does not understand Willy’s final act: “Why did you do it?”
• Lies

  • Barker also sees the play as a Nietzschean tragedy in that it conforms to Nietzsche’s views that, as life was often unbearably cruel and painful, human beings essentially lie to each other in order to survive.
  • For Barker, Willy has spent his life lying to himself about who he really is and the Requiem shows that Happy will continue to follow Willy’s delusions (“he had a good dream”).