Carnegie Book Club and Death of a Salesman

In today's post, Mrs Wilkinson brings us an update on the latest meeting of the Carnegie Book Club, and Adrian Sevanot Davis reviews last term's production of Death of a Salesman.

Door of No Return by Kwame Alexander

Eleven-year-old Kofi Offin has dreams of water, of its urgent whisper that beckons with promises and secrets. He has heard the call on the banks of Upper Kwanta, West Africa, where he lives. He loves these things above all else: his family, the fireside tales of his father’s father, a girl named Ama, and, of course, swimming. But when the unthinkable – a sudden death – occurs during a festival between rival villages, Kofi ends up in a fight for his life. What happens next will send him on a harrowing journey across land and sea, and away from everything he loves. Yet Kofi’s dreams may be the key to his freedom…

Mrs Wilkinson writes: 'This week’s book for Carnegie reading group received our first 10 of the year! Although this book is written in verse, which did put some readers off, we felt overall it didn’t inhibit our enjoyment. The story is told through the eyes of an 11 year old boy. The first half of the book sets the scene, describing his happy childhood with family and friends. When writing a book about slavery the author Alexander Kwame “wanted to speak the truth about the history of African Americans because while most of us are aware of the American part, it’s time for us to know more about the African part”. 

This setting of a happy childhood creates dramatic contrast as his life takes a very different twist which lead him to experience death, violence and finally slavery. Traumatic in its content, the book shows how the boy is captured, held and finally loaded onto a slave ship. In a dramatic storm at sea, the ship breaks up we are led to believe that he has perished. However this is part of a trilogy so maybe there is hope for him. But what will be his future?  The group felt this would be suitable for 11-18 year old readers.'

Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Reviewed by Adrian Sevanot Davis

The play Death of a Salesman was exhumed by St Paul’s School for a revival that delves once more into the spiralling final days of the titular salesman, Willy Loman. The central focus of the play is to dissect the struggles faced by the everyday people in a realistic world where ideas of capitalism slowly deteriorate the relationships between our main characters and obliterates the fictitious American Dream. This is done through a mixture of thoughtful design, incredible physical expressions and an especially effective use of the space.

The play was surprisingly inspired by a chance encounter at a theatre between the playwright Arthur Miller and his uncle Manny Newman, a salesman. He seemed an enigma to Miller as echoed by the first words he said, "Buddy [his son] is doing well”, seemingly unaware of the place he was and simply presenting his success in everything, defending his son instantly as if the world was against him but presenting a friendly character perhaps wanting to be well-liked. As can be seen many of the characteristics of Willy were already crawling forward towards Miller. A final parallel was to be revealed a few weeks later when Miller found out his uncle committed suicide, the same fate another two salesmen Miller had known had succumbed to, likely determining the ultimate end of the play. 

Arthur Miller (photo: New York Times)

After two years of overviewing these lives Miller finished writing Death of a Salesman and premiered it on broadway in February 1949. Willy was played by Lee J Cobb, 38 at the time, a far cry from Willy’s age of 63. A meta contextual reading might suggest Willy lost his years to his work and likely emphasising Willy’s need to return to older times in moments of pain: this was further emphasised in the St Paul’s revival where Willy was played by an 18 year old. The director of the original production was Elia Kazan. He was skilled at bringing out the characters in his actors and was excellent at directing complex personal situations, a skill lending itself perfectly to the personal troubles caused by an overarching social structure of Death of a Salesman.

Lee J Cobb (centre) in the original production of 'Death of a Salesman'

Last term's adaptation of the play used a surface level naturalism presenting a home straight out of the early 20th century for its set and costume, disguising a symbolic dark side mirroring and emphasising Willy’s facade to the outside world of normalcy hiding his problems, worried about his ultimately worthless image. Willy wore the same grey and white suit throughout the entirety of the play including the flashbacks showing how he has not changed all throughout his life almost as if his shirt and thus his work are part of his skin. Only after his sons abandon him in the restaurant did he remove his jacket, leaving it on the coat rack of the restaurant, the place he wants people to remember him at, a glamorous restaurant where he eats fine food due to his wealth rather than at his home where he does not perceive himself to have that feeling anymore. Ironically, the restaurant had the same background as the house with the only difference being lighting, reflecting how Willy wants to see himself in this new light but can never escape his past mistakes. The removal of his jacket suggested he might change his ways which gave us as the audience hope that he might avoid his fate but also strengthened the sense that his death is unavoidable. It showed an unchanging attitude throughout the play until his final moments.

Rufus Goodman in 'Death of a Salesman'

This revival of the classic play starred Rufus Goodman who performed excellently, conveying a tired and beaten down man who is constrained by his connection to capitalism. Physically, Willy had a slow gait and held himself in a slightly bent position showing us throughout the play that he is worn out. His mouth was often agape as if his jaw was too tired to hold it up after all the years of trying to convince people to buy his goods. His posture also betrayed his talk of being well liked: hunched over, unaccepting, his hand movements were small and business-like rather than the large friendly gestures that would be expected of a character like this. In flashback scenes Biff, played by Felix Maywas consistently upright and tall with a leaning toward his father, demonstrating a sense of confidence and support directed by Willy’s perceived affection. This continued into the present but now as a way to differentiate himself from Willy. In the scenes performed in the present Biff stayed far from his father but seemed to get closer and closer to him throughout the play, their distance emotionally reflected in their distance on stage. This distance was established in the scene with The Woman where Biff runs away from his father, disgusted at the truth, to the opposite side of the stage. All of this made it even more effective when Biff goes up to Willy and returns to that child-like posture at his side, hugging his legs in the first time they touch again after all the time they had been separated.

In comparison to its earlier performances, the St Paul's re-iteration was performed in the much more compact Milton Studio. The set was a cross section of the house Willy lives in mirroring how the audience looks into it, and interestingly creating a similar effect to the original set of this being the life of a normal person we as the audience and thus the public peer into. In the original this was done via the roof being open with high rise buildings. This illustrated an idea of answering to the original play showing that things have only become more centralised in capitalism with it now being able to peer into our safe spaces.

The set of 'Death of a Salesman' (Milton Studio)

The main stage was divided in two: one part was a wooden flooring and the other half was a dull green carpeting (which is a similar colour to dollar notes). These both functioned as representations of Willy’s life: his wish for the rural American home in the wooden flooring and a symbol of the encroaching suffocating reality that threatens to destroy this impossible dream. Notably Willy’s arm chair, a symbol of power over Biff and Happy that he uses to stop them apologising to him, was on the carpet representing the cause of the rift between him and them. This carpet was used multiple times over the play to show capitalism overpowering Willy and eventually driving him to his suicide, such as when Howard steps back onto it after consoling Willy, returning to a cold business state when he fires his employee.

The house was in disrepair as well with shelves falling due to the trophies stacked upon them. This stacking up of Biff’s trophies might have been by Linda to attempt to get them to reconcile or by Willy as a way to visualise the younger Biff: either way the shelf being broken by the weight of them both shows how Biff was crushed by the expectations of his father, a person he discovered to be a liar, and how their relationship has fallen apart while also reminding us of how Willy spends all his money on fixing everything in the house, never getting his moment to experience that American dream that he was so fixated on throughout his life due to capitalism.

This adaptation of Death of a Salesman was able to effectively reintroduce the fears of capitalism that were so prevalent at the time of its writing and reminded us to live in the real world without having it consume us aiming for some lofty and whimsical dream, in a time where it feels like being a consumer and being a person are becoming increasingly difficult to separate.