The Dream Technique used by Miller in Death of a Salesman

Examine the view that the dream technique used by Miller in Death of a Salesman enhances the tragic effect.

Let us first consider why Miller made use of the dream technique in Death of a Salesman. Miller himself has told us that the Salesman image was from the beginning absorbed with the concept that nothing in life comes "next", but that everything exists together and at the same time within us. According to Miller, there is no past to be "brought forward" in a human being, but "a man is his past at every moment and the present is merely that which his past is capable of noticing and smelling and reacting to." In writing this play, says Miller, he wished to create a form which would literally be the process of Willy Loman's way of mind. He wished to speak of the salesman most precisely as he felt about him. The form of the play seems the form of a confession, for that is how it is told, now speaking of what happened yesterday, then suddenly following some connection to time twenty years ago; then leaping even further back; and then returning to the present and even speculating about the future.

This play, says Miller, was begun with only one firm piece of knowledge, and this was that Willy was to destroy himself. If only Willy were made to remember enough, Willy would surely kill himself. The structure of the play was determined by what was needed to draw up Willy's memories. Willy is at that terrible moment when the voice of the past is no longer distant but quite as loud as the voice of the present. There are no flash-backs in this play, says Miller. The play has only "a mobile concurrency of past and present," and this is "because in his desperation to justify his life-Willy Loman has destroyed the boundaries between now and then." Miller had to keep the past constantly alive. The friction, collision, and tension between past and present was the central point of the construction of the play. Hence the value of the dream technique

Commenting on one of his plays, Strindberg, the Swedish dramatist. wrote: "Time and space do not exist; on an insignificant ground work of reality, imagination spins and weaves new patterns: a mixture of memories. experiences, unfettered fancies, absurdities, and improvisations." In other words, Strindberg used certain devices by which time and space were dissolved and logical process abandoned, as in a dream, so that imagination could more freely dramatise the complexities and contradictions of consciousness. Miller in Death of a Salesman was also concerned with finding a mode of dramatisation so that Willy Loman's contradictions of consciousness might be fully revealed. It was to this end that Miller employed the "expressionist" technique of dream sequences in this play. The tragic effect is, by this device, inevitably heightened.

Willy Loman's dreams occupy nearly half of the play. They are the dreams of all the world, the dreams of a happy, hopeful past, and the inescapable dream of past guilt. The recollections are not straight flash-backs in the manner of cinema films, but they are distorted, speeded up, and accentuated by repetition and selection. These recollections merge with the present reality, but they are at the same time distinguishable from present reality. One figure who appears in these recollections seems to have no existence in the real world-Uncle Ben, who is the embodiment of the American will to succeed. Long ago this man set out for Alaska to dig gold, but he found himself instead in Africa and so he made his fortune in diamonds. When Willy last sees him, he is going to Alaska. During the dream-sequences, Willy himself seems unable to distinguish between truth and fantasy, between the past and the present. He loses himself in his recollections, interrupting a conversation with his neighbour Charley to address the absent Ben; and he loses all sense of the present in a restaurant toilet when he recalls his past exposure by his son. Willy is a sick man: his mental breakdown is proved by the hold which his recollections have on him and by the great amount of obvious distortion in them. Willy's dreams are a symptom of schizophrenia, and thus they deepen the pathos of the situation.

In the first dream sequence in the play, we find Willy warning Biff against making any promises to the girls with whom he moves about, and urging him to watch his "schooling" first. Willy is very happy to know that Biff does not have to spend any money on the girls but that the girls themselves pay for him: "The girls pay for you ? boy, you must really bo makin' a hit." He then speaks of the big branch of a tree hanging over the roof of the house and needing to be cut off. There is a reference to the punching bag, with Gene Tunney's signature on it, which Willy has brought for his boys. We hear of Biff having stolen a new football from the school locker- room, and Willy not minding the theft because Biff has to practise with a regulation ball, and because Biff is not an ordinary boy. Then we find Willy expressing his intention to start his own business which will develop into something bigger than Charley's business, because Charley, though he is "liked", is not "well-liked". Willy promises to take his boys to the various towns of New England where Willy claims to be well-known and popular. Contrasting his own sons Biff and Happy with Charley's son Bernard, Willy says that, though Bernard may get the highest marks in the examinations, Biff and Happy will do much better in the business world because they are both "built like Adonises". There is yet another reference to Biff's potentialities when we are told of how Biff is obeyed by his mates who have come to his house. We also find Willy exaggerating his sales in his conversation with Linda. Immediately afterwards, however, Willy makes a pathetic confession of his shortcomings and tells Linda that she is his only consolation. Then the "other" woman is introduced, and we learn that Willy has had an "affair" in Boston. Finally, Willy asks Bernard to help Biff in the examination with the answers because Biff is weak in mathematics. Willy, however, does not take Biff's backwardness in mathematics seriously because he does not want his son to be a book-worm like Bernard. Biff, he says, has got "spirit" and "personality". Thus in this dream-sequence Miller has emphasised all the weaknesses of Willy by giving us glimpses into Willy's past. We find that Willy has been deceiving himself with the American myth that a man with a good appearance and an attractive personality can go up in life. Willy has been having extravagant and unrealistic hopes about Biff and about himself. He even confined Biff's thievery. He has loved, and still loves, Linda, but has not been faithful to her. He does not mind Biff's cheating in the examination. In other words, Willy is shown as having all the wrong values. At the same time, Willy is conscious that people do not take much notice of him. In the midst of all his optimism, he feels troubled and depressed by the thought that people do not take to him and that some of them even laugh at him. All this inevitably accentuates the tragic effect.

In the next dream-sequence, actuality and fantasy co-exist because Willy talks to both Charley (who is a real person) and to Ben (who exists only in Willy's imagination). This is followed by a long dream-sequence in which we learn much about Willy's family background. We are told that Willy's father was a manufacturer and seller of flutes and that he used to drive his wagon through the various territories, selling the flutes he had made. We learn that Ben has been Willy's ideal. Willy has always envied Ben who had walked into the jungle at the age of seventeen and came out as a rich man at the age of twenty-one. Two of the motifs of the play recur here. One is the theft motif and the other is Willy's belief in what he calls important "contacts". In the midst of his illusions, Willy's apprehensions are also perceptible because he feels "kind of temporary" about himself. One of Willy's consolations is that he is good at working with his hands because Charley and Bernard cannot even "hammer a nail". Willy would like his sons to follow their uncle's example by walking into a jungle and becoming rich. Thus the various scenes in this dream-sequence also add to the tragic effect.

Ben appears again in the next dream sequence. Here we are made to realize the opportunity Willy lost by failing to accept Ben's grand offer. We find Willy to be absent-minded and unstable in his thinking. But we also find that Willy is clinging to the American dream and entertaining extravagant hopes about Biff's future which, he thinks, will be determined by his "contacts", the "smile on his face", and Biff's distinction as a football player. Willy in this sequence again seems to us a pathetic, helpless person clinging to the American myth of success.

A brief memory scene deals with Biff's getting plucked in his examination. The scene that follows is a mingling of reality and dream. The reality pertains to the girls Happy has met in the restaurant and to Biff's efforts to tell his father the result of his interview with Bill Oliver, while the dream recalls the episode in a Boston hotel where Biff had unexpectedly arrived, after coming to know about his failure in the examination, only to receive the shock of discovering his father's "affair" with a strange woman. Biff's discovery alienated him completely from his father with the result that Biff took to a wandering life. In this sequence Willy's sense of guilt is revealed to us, and this revelation gives a further edge to his pathetic condition.

The final dream-sequence shows us Willy seeking Ben's support for his plan to commit suicide. Ben expresses some doubt about the propriety of Willy's intention but ultimately approves of it by saying: "It's dark there, but full of diamonds", and "A perfect proposition all around." Thus Ben, a dream figure, contributes to Willy's final disintegration and deepens the tragedy.