The questions of whether or not Death of a Salesman is a great dramatic structure, or whether or not its writing is splendid or only roughly adequate, can hold but secondary importance in any discussion of the play. Above them one fact shines: Willy Loman, egotistical, greedy, affectionate, lonely, has risen up as a modern Everyman.

But the very way in which Willy speaks so immediately to so many people has brought his problems into sharp and varied scrutiny…. [The play] speaks not only to, and for the problems of, an American audience but to countries whose insecurity is even more obvious than that of the U.S. represented by Willy—countries which often look toward the U.S. as an easy and automatic way out of their troubles. To them, as to Americans, the self-destroyed Willy rises up in warning.

So powerfully projected and personally received has...