Willy Loman, the salesman who sacrifices himself upon the altar of the American dream, has become as much of an American culture hero as Huck Finn. Like [Mark] Twain's boy, Willy has met with enormous public success and is capable of moving the middlebrow audience as well as the intellectual sophisticate. The latter, however, has belabored Death of a Salesman to no end with two questions: Is the play primarily a socio-political criticism of American culture, or, does Willy Loman fall far enough to be a tragic figure?

While these issues are continually provocative, they, as Miller points out in his famous Introduction to the Collected Plays, have been explored ad nauseum and to the point of meaninglessness. Perhaps Miller's stand arises from his awareness that either conclusion is too simple and too pat, each utterly destroying the other's possibility. Certainly a play cannot be both tragic and...