Death of a (Semi)Certainty

If someone put a gun to my head and made me give a definite opinion on what style of play "Death of a Salesman" is, I would probably say it was realistic. The characters are recognizable as people from our own world; they speak like we speak, they fear and love and hate like we do. You don't get a resolution that turns on insurance money in "Six Characters in Search of an Author."

But then you've got a character like Ben. And this is why, in order to make me give a definite opinion on what kind of play this is, you would have to put a gun to my head. Ben's presence keeps the play from being firmly realistic, in the way that "A Doll's House" is realistic; instead it throws us headlong into Willy's mind, into the ways that Willy sees the world. Ben skews perception and time - whenever he appears, he triggers some kind of flashback for Willy (although some are more full-fledged than others). Ben's in the play partly so that we understand Willy - so that we're with him, and not Charley or Biff or even Linda, when he can't hold on to reality. But he's also there to throw us off-kilter, to put us on edge, to make us aware that Willy's world of dreams is NOT reality, and that Willy's mistake is in treating it like it is real.

Admittedly, this sort of thing is easier to do onscreen than onstage. Here's a series of clips from the 1985 made-for-TV "Death of a Salesman," with Dustin Hoffman as Willy and Louis Zorich as Ben.



The quick cuts, the pastel colors in the flashbacks, the uses of camera angles to remind us that Ben is not in fact present in any physical sense - it gets the point across that we are in Willy's head, that this is how he sees the world. And that he does not, cannot, differentiate between what he dreams and what is actually there.

Here's this, too. Not a clip of a staged performance, alas, but close - a set of stills FROM a staged performance, in order from the start of the play to the end.



They're some lovely stills, and it's well worth looking at them all, but here are the ones with Ben: 1:05-1:15, 2:13, 4:00. Every time he appears, there's a dramatic shift in the lighting. He's dressed in white, which stands out better than neon. And it's interesting to see him invading the space of the stage, in a way that he can't in a filmed version - a presence without being a reality, since no one but Willy acknowledges him.

And since Ben embodies the American dream, at least for Willy, what are we to make of the fact that his existence in the world of the play is profoundly disturbing? Every time he appears, Willy gets even more unable to cope with the real world - in fact, his appearances always happen at moments when Willy NEEDS to grasp what's actually going on, moments when Ben's presence and influence is a real detriment. The unreality he offers Willy is beautiful, yearned for, and ultimately destructive. Miller's not just critiquing the American dream - through Ben, and Willy's interactions with Ben, he's actively condemning it as a negative influence on the entire country. We're MEANT to find Ben disturbing - we're meant to become aware of our own Bens, our own imaginative constructs that we cling to, that do us more harm than good. And while there's certainly a kind of metareality in that idea, Miller can't convey it except through the unrealistic device of a phantom character. If Ben is the American dream, his hovering presence over the play is truly ominous, and absolutely necessary to the drama.

So which is it - a realistic or unrealistic play? Please put the gun down, I really can't decide.