Saturday, December 29, 2012

What kind of closure does the Requiem provide to the play Death of a Salesman?

There are two possible ways to look at this.  For one, Willie's dream of hundreds of buyers coming to his funeral, celebrating his life, comes to the end we all knew it would come to.  No one comes; he is buried by his family and a couple friends.  It's unclear whether Linda knew this was coming; she laments that no one is there, as though she somehow expected them to come.  If there were ever any suspicion that Willie's dream may have had some substance to it, it ends at the Requiem.


The other thing that we are having a Requiem for is an idea, in a way Willie's idea, that the business world works on a handshake, that personality can carry the day, that being "well-liked" will get it done.  Bernard is the new man; Bernard has no personality and Bernard is successful.  This is (may be?) a new world, and it works on new principles.  In Willie's old world, "a man is not a piece of fruit."   In our world, he certainly is.  You can eat the fruit and throw away the peel.  Giant corporations, symbolized by the apartment houses that surround Willie's "world," relate to people differently than the corner store that might loan you money is you were short.


So we say goodbye to a man and to an idea ... all in one short act.

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