Howards End
Howard's End - Death Of A Salesman?
Thursday, 26 April 2007
By Dr Frigmund Pseud
‘You gotta break your neck to see a star in this yard’
So muses ageing, anxious salesman Willy Loman sometime deep into act one of Arthur Miller’s second most famous play. The house Willy has nearly finished paying off was bright and open-spaced when he first signed for the mortgage; now it’s hemmed in on all sides by apartment blocks. More distressing to Willy than the neighbourhood’s decline, however, is that of his offspring. In his wayward sons is invested every one of Willy’s own unfulfilled ambitions; he dreams for them, and they are destined to fail him. Yes, that’s a bit gloomy. There’s a reason it’s not called ‘Deep And Lasting Satisfaction Amid Peak Physical, Emotional And Spiritual Health Of A Salesman.’
McCarthyism?
By comparison, I found Death Of A Salesman harder to summarise or read as simple analogy. Crudely put, the plot concerns Willy Loman losing the plot and winding up in one, but how he got there and why is far from that simple. As with many great tragedies, the audience knows the end at the outset: it’s in the title. That the curtain rises on a healthy-looking man with a job, a lovely wife and family, and a nice enough house, presents us with the mystery which drives the drama from page one: What’s wrong with this picture?
As I read through Miller’s script for the first time recently, I discovered what was wrong with Willy Loman, and it struck me that the playwright had once again hit the mark, but this time its prescience seemed almost spooky. What goes awry inside Willy Loman has been happening here, now, for some time. Modern scribes have coined a term for it – affluenza. As I doctor, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised; it’s a common cause of death, aspiration.
For Willy Loman’s burden is that great western birthright: The Dream. Born in a land where anyone can be anything they want, all you have to do is figure out what you want, and go and get it. Get a job, tan up, tone up, phone a friend, win big, and indulge yourself in some me-time. You’re worth it, remember? Aspirationalism, like a good solid war, is great for the economy, just ask John Winston Howard. The economy loves it when each tends to their own. Why bother sharing the wealth when you can have one of everything just for you? If everyone looks after themselves and just bloody well takes responsibility for their lives, then hey, who needs big government? Let the market, the only truly democratic process, reign supreme!
I agree - of course anyone can be anything they want, provided they pay highly selective attention to what everyone else wants.
But what if, like Willy Loman, you don’t get what you want? Or, like his sons, bowed beneath their father’s dreams for them, you don’t even know what you want? Willy is haunted throughout the play by the memory of his big brother Ben, an ‘If Only’ ghost. Ben went abroad and made his fortune in the diamond trade, inviting Willy to join him before he went, but our man had his mortgage, his family, those pesky obligations. Now Ben is but a memory, long gone into the stratosphere of success, leaving Willy craning his neck to get a glimpse of what he missed out on. A later scene is set in a restaurant, usual site for celebration, display of status, wherein Willy and his sons had planned to preen and strut after a day of go-getting. The jarring dissonance between dream and reality is sickening stuff; because of the day’s failures, what was meant to be public revelry turns to shock, disappointment and anger, but stays just as public. Always at the heels of The Dream is The Shame. Willy later refuses offers of financial help from a friend, because his Dream is his alone to realise, no-one else’s. Unable to reach out, his anger turns inwards. The tragic irony is that Willy’s life insurance pays off his home. He fulfils his Dream in death.
In my work I have met many Willy Lomans, older men bent double by their Dreams, eyeing off their life insurance payout as some kind of reverse-Faust manoeuvre. I have known good people who chose death over the shame of asking for help. Howard’s Australia lauds its winners, its battlers, even its Biggest Losers, but the message is clear: if you can’t do it off your own bat, you’re not welcome here. Tolerated, perhaps, but never celebrated. No Lamington for you.
I wasn’t expecting it, but my vision blurred somewhat as I read the end of Death Of A Salesman. It wasn’t quite an English Patient blubbery mess, or a Dead Poets lumpy throat sniffles situation, but then, it wasn’t a movie; there was no swelling orchestra, only the dog snoring peacefully nearby. As reading goes, the only thing that made me more of a girly cry-baby was Marley And Me. Dog people would understand.
After putting Miller’s script down and turning off the light, I did wonder what had struck at me so. We pre-shrunks know you respond most acutely to art that imitates life, be it your life or life around you. I’m not yet old enough to worry too much about the weight of my Dreams. Sure, they weigh plenty, but I’m young and free, wealth for toil, all that. No, it’s something about growing older in Howard’s Australia that has made me age faster than I should have, and it’s Dreams for my country that weigh so much. Long ago, like everyone else, I bought the Loman house as it was, bright and open-spaced. Nowadays, you gotta break your neck to see a star, encroached upon from all sides by stacked cages of salaried soloists shovelling down meals for one in front of Law And Order in Surround Sound.
I don’t need to list everything the government of Australia has done on behalf of its people since 1996, each of which has made me wince and feel that if that’s how Australians are represented to the world, maybe being unAustralian isn’t such a bad thing. You only need to open a paper to the letters and opinion pages to see people reeling off the long list of minor atrocities and major letdowns which might see John Howard’s coalition drummed out of office later this year. Sadly, for all Mr Howard’s eminent forgettability, I fear that the shadow his time as leader has cast on our future looks pretty long. Each of the little victories of that relentless Salesman has come at a price, a Death of some part of what made people like me proud to be Australian.
I’m not particularly hopeful that the Other Mob will do much better, but if anyone can convince us to pull our heads out of our arses and make more of an effort for each other and our world, I’ll vote for that. Sure, manage the economy. But there are many economies, fiscal and otherwise, all of which need our care and attention.
My Dream for the country I call home is that with Howard’s end comes the end of that priapic political alchemy, which shifts fiscal burden onto so many human shoulders. I want to live in a kinder Australia, sale or no sale.
- Dr Frigmund Pseud