Attention, Attention Must Finally Be Unpaid: Death of a Salesman and the Reputation of Arthur Miller

Abstract

This articles suggests that the divided impulse in Arthur Miller in Death of a Salesman, a division immediately noticeable in his choice of first names for his characters, between making his play and his protagonist Jewish, and making them universal or representatively American, was largely responsible for significant flaws in the drama that have hitherto mainly gone unremarked: uneven diction, thematic muzziness, unsure characterisation, historical myopia, and finally failed tragedy.