Synopses & Reviews
The Pulitzer Prize-winning tragedy of a salesmans deferred American dream
Since it was first performed in 1949, Arthur Miller's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama about the tragic shortcomings of an American dreamer has been recognized as a milestone of the theater. Willy Loman, the protagonist of Death of a Salesman, has spent his life following the American way, living out his belief in salesmanship as a way to reinvent himself. But somehow the riches and respect he covets have eluded him. At age 63, he searches for the moment his life took a wrong turn, the moment of betrayal that undermined his relationship with his wife and destroyed his relationship with Biff, the son in whom he invested his faith. Willy lives in a fragile world of elaborate excuses and daydreams, conflating past and present in a desperate attempt to make sense of himself and of a world that once promised so much. This Penguin Classics edition features an introduction by Christopher W. E. Bigsby. "By common consent, this is one of the finest dramas in the whole range of the American theater." Brooks Atkinson, The New York Times
"So simple, central, and terrible that the run of playwrights would neither care nor dare to attempt it." Time
For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Synopsis
Hailed as the first great play to lay bare the emptiness of America's relentless drive for material success, Death of a Salesman is Miller's classic portrait of an ordinary man's struggle to leave his mark on the world.
Synopsis
Arthur Millers Pulitzer Prizewinning play that forever changed the meaning of the American Dream
Willy Loman, the protagonist of Death of a Salesman, has spent his life following the American way, living out his belief in salesmanship as a way to reinvent himself. But somehow the riches and respect he covets have eluded him. At age sixty-three, he searches for the moment his life took a wrong turn, the moment of betrayal that undermined his marriage and destroyed his relationship with Biff, the son in whom he invested his faith. Willy lives in a fragile world of elaborate excuses and daydreams, conflating past and present in a desperate attempt to make sense of himself and of a world that once promised so much.
Widely considered Arthur Millers masterpiece, Death of a Salesman has steadily seen productions all over the world since its 1949 debut, including the multiple Tony-award-winning 2012 Broadway production directed by Mike Nichols and starring Philip Seymour Hoffman as Willy Loman and Andrew Garfield as his son Biff. As the noted Miller scholar Christopher Bigsby states in his introduction to this edition, If Willys is an American dream, it is also a dream shared by all those who are aware of the gap between what they might have been and what they are.”
About the Author
Arthur Miller (19152005) was born in New York City and studied at the University of Michigan. His plays include
All My Sons (1947),
Death of a Salesman (1949),
The Crucible (1953),
A View from the Bridge and
A Memory of Two Mondays (1955),
After the Fall (1963),
Incident at Vichy (1964),
The Price (1968),
The Creation of the World and Other Business (1972) and
The American Clock (1980). He also wrote two novels,
Focus (1945), and
The Misfits, which was filmed in 1960, and the text for
In Russia (1969),
Chinese Encounters (1979), and
In the Country (1977), three books of photographs by his wife, Inge Morath. His later work included a memoir,
Timebends (1987); the plays
The Ride Down Mt. Morgan (1991),
The Last Yankee (1993),
Broken Glass (1994), and
Mr. Peter's Connections (1999);
Echoes Down the Corridor: Collected Essays, 19442000; and
On Politics and the Art of Acting (2001). He twice won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, and in 1949 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Miller was the recipient of the National Book Foundations 2001 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the Prince of Asturias Award for Letters in 2002, and the Jerusalem Prize in 2003.
Christopher Bigsby is a professor of American Studies at the University of East Anglia. He edited the Penguin Classics editions of Miller's The Crucible, Death of a Salesman, and All My Sons.