LETTERS FROM HOME: THE AMERICAN WAY OF LIVING AND DYING LIKE A SALESMAN

Oct. 15, 1998

Dear David,

On the very first night "Death of a Salesman" was presented in 1949, the audience met the final lines with 35 seconds of silence, then began to applaud. In a sense, the applause hasn't stopped.

Time again stood still more briefly Saturday at a "Salesman" performance by the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis. Then tumultuous clapping erupted from the sold-out house and people rose in tribute.

It had been awhile since a play thrilled me. When it happens, you find the hair on your neck rising and your hands slapping each other as fast as they will.

Everything -- the casting, the performances, the direction, the set, the seamless staging of the action that occurs in Willy Loman's mind -- was masterful. But everyone has sat stone-eyed at productions where the same could be said.

There's bad Shakespeare but no good "Fantasy Island."

It's Arthur Miller's apprehension of the American psyche that leaves "Death of a Salesman" audiences stunned in self-recognition.

I'd seen Dustin Hoffman's TV version and parts of the movie with Lee J. Cobb, but this was a first encounter with Willy Loman on stage. He is an American archetype, the man convinced that popularity and material success are the Holy Grail, that life's rewards will flow if we put on a good public face and pursue the American dream -- even if it's not our dream.

It is the wrong choice, we know, yet we yearn for its security even as we lose track of our souls. The tragic American hero is not the industrialist whose greed undoes him but the common man who becomes capitalistic fodder.

Watching Willy Loman being laid off after 30 years with the same company, I thought of my father experiencing the same fate.

Willy Loman's choices lead him to commit suicide. My father and mother rediscovered their faith in God, and he eventually learned that his survival skills are just fine.

Not much has changed in America since 1949. Fathers still revel in their sons' long-gone glory days, sons try to find themselves by moving West, other sons adopt their father's beliefs and know not the comfort of a true friend or a loving woman.

Women still love their husbands in spite of themselves and in spite of their unfaithfulness.

It is an American tragedy, ungrateful children losing faith in the father, being played out in the White House today.

Maybe what has changed in nearly 50 years is our view of the social contract. People don't work for the same company for 30 years anymore, and companies don't count on us staying around that long.

Everybody's a little lighter on their feet and probably better off.

Willy Loman liked to think of himself as a popular guy, but almost no one attended his funeral. When Paul Webber, who used to coach local football teams, died young this week, more than 700 people came to the funeral home and to the church.

If life isn't a numbers game, those numbers mean something.

I don't want to start a panic on Wall Street, but my financial guru -- DC -- is concerned that we're about to enter a period of layoffs and bad economic times. Good times, bad times, "Death of a Salesman" is timeless.

Love, Sam

~Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.