“I made the last payment on the house today.”

Oh my god! Someone kill me. I can’t handle this play.

Today, I finally made the last payment on the house. It feels like a huge burden has been lifted off my shoulders.

But at the same time, I also feel a sense of disbelief and excitement.

After years of hard work and saving, I now own this house outright.

It’s a dream come true, but it also makes me realize how much I’ve sacrificed to get here.

However, this moment of joy is short-lived as I am suddenly hit with a wave of exhaustion.

The stress and pressure of making those payments every month have taken a toll on me.

I just want to lie down and sleep for a week.

But I know I can’t. There’s still so much to do.

I need to celebrate this achievement with my family and friends.

And I need to start planning for the future of this house.

What renovations do I want to do? How can I make it even more comfortable and beautiful?

These are the questions that are running through my mind as I sit here, still in shock from making that last payment.

But one thing is for sure, I’m going to enjoy this moment and be grateful for all that I have.

A tragic story unfolds, revealing the shattered dreams of a salesman.

He had such high expectations, not only for himself but also as the provider for his family.

The events of this heart-wrenching play are compressed within the span of just 24 hours.

During this short time, we witness his desperate attempts to succeed, to meet the demands of his family and society.

However, despite his best efforts, failure looms large.

The weight of his unfulfilled dreams and the pressure to provide prove to be too much.

In the end, this tragic tale concludes with a death, leaving us to ponder the harsh realities of life and the price we pay for our dreams.

It serves as a powerful reminder of the fragility of our hopes and the importance of finding true meaning and happiness in life.

Update:

It occurred to me that over the years, I have paid less attention to the neurological state of the aging Willy Loman than I do now. I think of that because a couple of years ago, the Chicago Shakespeare Company at Navy Pier launched a production of King Lear that theorized Lear had dementia, which was responsible for part of his terrible behavior towards his daughters, especially the honest Cordelia. Lear had become an autocratic father, demanding absolute and total loyalty and allegiance from his daughters, and she challenged him on this point. He only wanted to be surrounded by "yes" women as the Head of His Family.

Will does not demand such allegiance from his sons, but he is obviously in neurological decline, forgetting he is driving, driving off the road, wandering off, talking to himself, raging, and delusional. This is not just his being tired or old. He is in neurological decline and "attention has to be paid" to that issue.

I say this in part because we are observing the undeniable neurological decline of two leading politicians, one of whom our country re-elected to lead. You may recall Reagan's last stretch in office, suffering from Alzheimer's, with his wife Nancy whispering guidance to him as he addressed his audiences. I have two siblings with Alzheimer's who no longer know anyone in their families, and a dear friend neighbor suffering from early onset dementia. In an aging population, we are going to see more and more of this insidious condition. But it is here in these plays, Lear and Death, unnamed.

Original review:

“I don't say he's a great man. Willie Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper. He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. He's not to be allowed to fall in his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person.”

I have seen, read, and taught Death of a Salesman many times, and loved re-reading it again as part of my tour this year through what I think are his best plays, including The Crucible, All my Sons, and A View From the Bridge. (In college, I tried out for the part of Biff but was runner-up, curse you Bruce Mulder! I worked on the lighting for the production, which I loved). I tend to think of this play as one of the greatest plays in American theater and a kind of dramatic pair with The Great Gatsby as a treatise on The American Dream/capitalism, featuring sad, misguided people (Jay Gatz/ Willy Loman) who use money/appearance/material goods as a means to their ideas of success, both of them involved in infidelity as a central flaw/part of their downfall.

Death is a dream play, very lyrical, moving from past and present as Willy’s fraying sense of reality in the last 24 hours of his life leads to what the title of the play reveals will happen. So it’s not about plot, it’s a sociological/psychological study that features father-sons and a strong woman, Linda, who tries to keep the family together.

Hap is the guy most like Willy, and they are never not deluded in their pursuit of the material dream:

“Happy: All right, boy. I'm gonna show you and everybody else that Willy Loman did not die in vain. He had a good dream. It's the only dream you can have—to come out number-one man.”

Both Hap and Willy are (mis)guided by the image of the materially successful Ben, Willy’s older brother who left Brooklyn for Africa and Alaska:

“When I was seventeen I walked into the jungle, and when I was twenty-one I walked out. And by God I was rich.”

Biff and Willy can point to one moment when he was in high school where everything began to unravel, but whereas Willy never sees what he is, Biff comes to a realization:

“I stopped in the middle of that building and I saw—the sky. I saw the things that I love in this world. The work and the food and time to sit and smoke. Why am I trying to become what I don't want to be? What am I doing in an office, making a contemptuous, begging fool of myself, when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am!

“I realized what a ridiculous lie my whole life has been.”

Such great language, terrific characters, great dialogue. I was saddened once again by this story of lost American values. It also reminded me a bit of a graphic novel by Seth, also about a salesman, Clyde Fans, though the (lost) American salesman is a staple of American literature and worth reading more deeply into: Glengarry Glen Ross (Mamet), John Updike’s Rabbit books, and so much more.

There is no doubt that "Death of a Salesman" is a very profound work. Arthur Miller, in this short play, has shown a huge range of human emotions. The people in his world are adrift between hope and despair.

The strange relationship between Willy Loman, the salesman, and his father and son, around which the amazing story has developed, is a demonstration of Mr. Miller's supreme art in depicting human relationships. With great skill, he has shown the relationship between these two from love to hatred.

The problem of Willy Loman is that he builds his house on illusion and lies. The unlucky salesman seems to have built his house on water. He has built a paper house that is destroyed by a gentle breeze, but what Willy expects is a storm, not a gentle breeze.

Willy Loman is a representative of the lower-middle class in America. He represents those people whose wealth is in the bank, those who know their identity and value in their work, in what they sell, those who think that friendship with rich and powerful people also gives them wealth and power.

In the end, Willy Loman, the salesman who has been a proponent of capitalism and believes that America is a land of opportunities, becomes a victim of the system. His share of all the opportunities is only frustration.

He mentioned several other films and plays, from "Glengarry Glen Ross" and "Jake's Women" to "A Streetcar Named Desire" and "Marlon Brando" - was this style ever of interest to American intellectuals in a certain period? I don't know.

The truth is that I liked "Glengarry Glen Ross" much more. I felt empathy with both salesmen (Willy Loman and Shelly Levene), and in both plays, reality hit every person hard and brutally. But the story of "Glengarry Glen Ross" had fewer emotions in my opinion. In the death of the salesman, the father and son had a hint of a Hollywood-like quality.

(In the first comment, I posted a translation of an article comparing the two works.)