Reading Order
Death of a Salesman Reading Order
Death of a Salesman (1949) by Arthur Miller is the definitive American tragedy — Willy Loman's terrible final two days, as the life of the sales road unravels and the past intrudes into the present in the form of his memories of his brother Ben and the afternoon in Boston when his son Biff discovered him with another woman. The play is organized around two questions that Miller refuses to disentangle: Is Willy Loman a victim of the American Dream that promised success to those who are well-liked? Or is he a man destroyed by his own self-deception, his refusal to accept reality, his substitution of charm and confidence for substance? Miller, who read Ibsen as his theatrical model, gave the play the form of the Ibsenian retrospective revelation — the past breaking through the present as Willy's memory intrudes — but inflected it with American Expressionism (the memory scenes are played on the same stage as the present scenes, with the house's walls disappearing when the past enters). The play won the Pulitzer Prize, the Tony Award for Best Play, and the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, and has been continuously produced since its premiere.
Where to start
Death of a Salesman (1949) — the complete play. Most editions include Miller's essay 'Tragedy and the Common Man,' which is essential for understanding his argument that a common man can be the subject of tragedy. Best Arthur Miller reading order: All My Sons → Death of a Salesman → The Crucible → A View from the Bridge → After the Fall
Complete Death of a Salesman Book List
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Death of a Salesman
Arthur Miller·1949·The definitive American tragedy — Willy Loman, Biff, Happy, Linda, and the terrible final two days. Won the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and established Miller as the most important American playwright of the postwar generation - 2Buy
The Crucible
Arthur Miller·1953·The companion Miller play and the most enduringly political — John Proctor, Abigail Williams, and the Salem witch trials as an allegory for McCarthyism and the Red Scare. Where Death of a Salesman is about private self-deception and the dream of individual success, The Crucible is about public hysteria and the cost of individual integrity in the face of collective pressure - 3Buy
All My Sons
Arthur Miller·1947·The earlier companion — Joe Keller's wartime sale of defective airplane parts and the consequences for his family. All My Sons is the most Ibsenian of Miller's plays: the gradual revelation of a crime, its consequences for the family, the question of what responsibility requires. Reading it before Death of a Salesman shows the development of Miller's formal method - 4Buy
A Streetcar Named Desire
Tennessee Williams·1947·The companion American tragedy of 1947 — Blanche DuBois, Stanley Kowalski, and Stella in New Orleans. A Streetcar Named Desire and Death of a Salesman are the two plays that established postwar American drama; both are organized around the conflict between a romantic self-conception (Blanche's southern gentility; Willy's being well-liked) and a brutal reality (Stanley; the actual facts of Willy's career) that eventually destroys the romantic - 5Buy
Long Day's Journey into Night
Eugene O'Neill·1956·O'Neill's companion (published 1956, premiered 1956) in the tradition of the American family play about the past in the present — the Tyrone family's terrible day and night of accusation and recognition. Long Day's Journey into Night and Death of a Salesman are the two greatest American family plays: both are organized around a father whose self-deception has damaged his sons, and both are organized around the revelation of what has been concealed - 6Buy
The Glass Menagerie
Tennessee Williams·1945·Williams's companion — Tom Wingfield's memory play about his mother Amanda and his sister Laura, and his escape from them. The Glass Menagerie and Death of a Salesman are companion memory plays: both are organized around a protagonist whose memories intrude on the present (Tom's retrospective narration; Willy's expressionistic flashbacks), and both are about the damage done by a parent's romantic self-deception to the children who must live with it - 7Buy
Ghosts
Henrik Ibsen·1882·The Ibsenian precursor that Miller most directly inherited — Mrs. Alving's revelation of the truth about Captain Alving's life. Ghosts and Death of a Salesman are organized around the same formal technique (the past pressing into the present, a concentrated time frame, the gradual revelation of what has been concealed) and the same thematic concern (the cost of living in illusions, the damage done to the next generation by the parents' self-deception) - 8Buy
A View from the Bridge
Arthur Miller·1955·Miller's 1955 one-act companion — Eddie Carbone's obsession with his niece Catherine and his betrayal of the illegal immigrants Marco and Rodolpho. A View from the Bridge and Death of a Salesman are companion Miller tragedies about the working-class man's inability to see himself clearly — Eddie's self-deception about his feelings for Catherine mirrors Willy's self-deception about his sales career
Death of a Salesman — Frequently Asked Questions
What is the American Dream in Death of a Salesman?
In Death of a Salesman, the American Dream is Willy Loman's belief — absorbed from his culture, his brother Ben, and the mythologized figure of Dave Singleman (the old salesman who died in the smoker of a train car with buyers all over New England at his funeral) — that success in America is available to anyone who is well-liked, who has the right personality, who makes the right contacts. The play shows this belief as a lie: Willy has followed the American Dream all his life and ended up borrowing money from his neighbor Charley, returning his car before it's paid off, and unable to pay his insurance. His sons Biff and Happy have inherited his belief in personality over substance, and both are failing. Miller's argument is not simply that the American Dream is a lie (though it is) but that the Dream's lie is structural: a society that defines success in terms of individual charm and likability will always produce Willy Lomans — people whose failure is the result not of moral defect but of the gap between what the Dream promises and what the actual economy delivers.
Is Willy Loman a tragic hero?
Miller argued in his essay 'Tragedy and the Common Man' that Willy Loman is a tragic hero — that tragedy does not require kings or nobles, only a person who insists on his dignity in the face of forces that deny it. In this view, Willy's tragedy is his refusal to accept his diminishment: his insistence on living by the standard of the American Dream even as the evidence accumulates that he cannot meet it. Against this reading is the view that Willy is pathetic rather than tragic — that his inability to see himself clearly (his refusal to acknowledge his own mediocrity, his infidelity, his damage to his sons) is a defect of character rather than a tragic flaw in the classical sense. The play is designed to hold both these readings simultaneously: in the sections set in the present, Willy appears as a deluded, sometimes contemptible man; in the memory scenes, he appears as a man of vitality and hope whose destruction is genuinely moving.
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