Comparison of “Death of a Salesman” by Arthur Miller and “Fences” by August Wilson
Both plays are works that question the right of the average American to be a tragic hero. The central conflict of both works is consistent with the laws of tragedy. Thus, they assert the possibility of an irreconcilable and acute conflict that arises in the everyday life of “average Americans,” a conflict that reflects the contradictions of the essential sides of the “big life.” Both plays show that a tragic hero can be a person of “low rank,” polemically asserting the right of any person to a tragedy, in which large-scale issues of concern to humanity are resolved. If the conflict of the play is connected with the laws of social life, which are no less powerful in their influence on the personality than any “laws of the genus subject to the gods,” this conflict, regardless of the “rank” of the hero, can be truly tragic. The tension and intensity of action, a passionate desire to overcome obstacles, and fanatical perseverance in solving the task at hand – are the inherent features of a tragic hero. They cannot arise in every day-to-day setting.
The main difference between the plays is the social issues raised in the plays. Miller and Wilson’s heroes are products and hostages of different social environments and their corresponding social laws. At the time of writing of Miller’s play, the so-called “American Dream” then collapsed, artists associated with American culture, still worn with their illusions, experienced a feeling of bitter disappointment in the “country of equal opportunities for all,” which was the central part of the concept of “Americanism” (Gamage). Miller’s work is associated with the traditions of “socially conscious” playwrights (Chakousari et al.). The conflict in “The Death of a Salesman” is a direct social conflict (Gamage). The author portrays the inevitable collapse of the illusory notions of “Americanism” such as “private initiative” and “private enterprise” as a guarantee of prosperity and advancement to wealth, using the example of Willy Loman, a 60-year-old who has lost his footing, an unlucky traveling salesman.
“The Death of a Salesman” expresses the author’s desire to show those facts and psychological collisions in the prehistory of the heroes that would most clearly, without the subtexts and memories formulated in the words of the heroes, explain the essence of the tragic conflict. This is how a peculiar construction of the play is created, where the real world of the existing and acting Willie, his two sons, and his wife is invaded by another world, the stage design is vague – “subconscious and semi-conscious” (Chakousari et al.). Violation of the usual composition of the play in time – turning from the present to the past, and then returning to this present, illuminated in a new way by the past – gives rise to a feeling of cracking, the broken integrity of Willy’s mental world. The people around him, especially his wife, see the outward signs of Willy Loman’s departure to the past: strange conversations, gestures, and alike. Miller emphasizes in his remarks the fragility and fragility of the world he depicts, saying that everything here seems to be a dream.
Perhaps Wilson’s best-known work, “Fences,” explores the life and relationships of Troy Maxson, a trash collector, and former baseball hero. The protagonist represents the struggle for justice and fair treatment during the 1950s (Baharvand). This moving drama earned Wilson his first Pulitzer Prize. In “Fences,” Wilson describes a simple African American family. Vicious but completely mundane secrets, savings, the need to work hard and hard, creating home comfort with all our might, taking care of children’s future, and trying to maintain parental authority.
Comparison of Troy and Willy
The main difference between Troy and Willie is their attitudes towards being liked. Although they have similar views on success, Troy looks inward to his family and those around him, while Willie does everything for show and looks into the outside world. Growing up with his father, who paid attention to his son only when he got in the way, passed through a bag and prison, experienced the collapse of all the hopes of his youth, Troy firmly learned the rule: one cannot wish for too much, but one needs to take what they can reach. All life for him is a struggle with an opponent who is obviously superior in strength, from whom he can only win several battles, but the final defeat is inevitable (Baharvand). The fears driven into him in the literal and figurative sense are so intense that he prefers to break the life of a loved one, to prevent him from experiencing the pain that does not subside in himself.
Willie Loman is prone to illusions and self-deception, which become useless weapons in his struggle for self-affirmation. His wife Linda still, as the remark says, “admires him” and even considers his “involuntary cruelties” to be a manifestation of high passions. This feeling of Linda even more sharply emphasizes the tragedy of Willie, who suffers not only from real material, life difficulties but also from the feeling of his “heavy guilt,” shameful failure and inability to reach the blessed standard of a traveling salesman, successful, famous, easily distributing samples. He is confused because all traditional ideas about the inevitability of prosperity for the so-called “average American” are falling apart (Gamage). Willy Loman is a far cry from the average American businessman who is “the foundation of American prosperity” (Gamage).
At the very first appearance, Willie Loman looks tired and confused. He came back halfway on his business trip because driving, he almost got into the army. This idea of the possibility of a car accident until the very end of the play hangs with some weight over the characters and the viewer in order to eventually become a tragic denouement. Willy Loman’s confusion, business failures, doubts, and overestimations arise against the backdrop of painful relationships within his family. His sons – not only the returned Biff, who lived outside the family and achieved nothing in life, but also the younger – Happy, who has a particular position – also feel the world’s fragility and hostility. In scenes from Willy Loman’s memories, Miller brings the world of bourgeois existence closer to the viewer. This is the eternal waiting for the timing of payment for the comfort items bought in installments, and this is the lack of confidence in the strength of the “position” and, most importantly, the growing feeling in Willy Loman’s soul of his inferiority, of his offending human dignity. He is humiliated in equal measure by his own business failures and the painful attention with which he listens to the jokes, hints of the businessmen around him, who, it seems to him, scoff at his failure.
Troy, an African American, formerly up-and-coming baseball player who has never made a career in the sport due to racial prejudice. Now he is a simple scavenger who pays his wife’s salary every Friday, drinks beer in a pub with a white friend nicknamed “nigga” and looks after his brother, shell-shocked in the war. Yes, his life is not easy, and there are few reasons for fun. Nevertheless, he has a home, a family, a job – at that time, the “colored” could not dream of more. However, something still gnaws at him; for some reason, he continually talks about death, about how he had encountered it more than once, but he managed to drive it away. He speaks of fear for his son since his baseball career can be as abruptly interrupted as his own, which he constantly mentions (Baharvand). However, he is not sure that his happiness will become happiness for everyone else as well. He has to live as a society, rules, morality requires; he has to fulfill his duties and quietly rejoice in what he has. No matter how unhappy he may seem, he is imperfect. He has a harsh and tyrannical character, which his wife constantly has to put up with. Almost all the film’s action takes place either in the house of the protagonist or in the backyard, which does not allow the viewer to be distracted from the dialogues of the characters by a beautiful picture. Everything is quite simple and monotonous, however, as in the life of Troy. The reader is supposedly given the opportunity to spy on the relationship in his family, so the topic of racism is not the main one here, although it sometimes slips into conversations (Baharvand). His formidable disposition and strict, but not indisputable, moral principles often become a headache both for all family members and for himself. Year after year, Troy builds his household’s life according to outdated rules of life, erecting virtual fences between himself and the world around him.
Works Cited
Baharvand, Peyman Amanolahi. “The Failure of the American Dream in August Wilson’s Fences.” International Journal of English Language and Translation Studies, 2017: 69-75.
Chakousari, Marjan Salehi et al. “A Sociocultural Study in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman.” Journal of Applied Linguistics and Language Research, vol. 5, no. 2, 2018: 228-240.
Gamage, KG Swarnananda. “Selling or Being Sold:‘Eat the Orange and Throw the Peel away’-Reading ‘Death of a Salesman’ By Arthur Miller as a Modern Tragedy.” GSJ, vol. 8, no. 12, 2020.
Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman: Revised Edition. Penguin, 1996.
Wilson, August. Fences: a play. Vol. 6. Penguin, 2016.