Paying Attention

"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 into his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must be finally paid to such a person."

That's Linda Loman, speaking about her husband, in Act One of "Death of a Salesman," Arthur Miller's tragedy of the common man, the story of Willy Loman, a man who is exhausted making ends meet as a travelling salesman, always on the go. He's got a secret life, too. Like many patriarchs, invested in competitive one-upmanship, there is The (other) Woman. Willy's son Biff discovers his father's deception, and is forever burdened by this truth.

Even though Willy Low-man prefers digging in the soil, planting seeds and nurturing them, and hates the dismal orange light of his city, he believes that being liked is important. Willy believes that in his America, with hard work, dreams will come true. He believes that coming out the "number-one man" against the competition is an important goal.

If you're selling stuff, perhaps that matters. And selling stuff in a manufacturing society used to be a fine career.

But Miller asks us to take a closer look. In the final Requiem scene, Linda, always the mediator, is bereft at Willy's suicide. It's a 1949 play, and clearly Miller is presenting Willy's existential solution: suicide as an act of free will.

Biff, however, laments the fact that there are no mourners. His father's dream of being well-liked never materialized. Biff states: "He had the wrong dreams. All, all wrong."

Biff, the next generation, has had enough of cities and his family's dreams. Willy's dreams are false, impossible dreams because Willy is the common man, the mediocre man. A man who dies without dignity. Willy is a tragic figure because his ordinariness precludes dignity.

Biff wants out. He knows he's mediocre. He seeks to find a genuine life, an authentic self somewhere else, away from home.

Like Huck Finn, who resists being "sivilized" according to Aunt Sally's and Miss Watson's norms, Biff rejects his father's dream. Like Huck, the quintessential American puer eternus, Biff chooses to Light out for the territory, back to the land and a slower pace, a place where he can find and know who he is.

This play still resonates. My students sense Willy's deep unhappiness, his false self. They see him as bi-polar, dysfunctional. They throw all kinds of DSM-IV diagnoses at Willy Low-man.

They don't yet understand how difficult it is to provide for a family, how expensive it is to move, how terribly stressful it is to have no money, to have few options in this "land of opportunity."

There are strong parallels to families who are currently struggling economically.

However, even in a country that tends to corral everyone into college, higher education, and preparation for life as a knowledge worker, there are other options.

We still need people who can invent and fix things, who can work with their hands and hearts. (See the NY Times piece, 5.21.09, "The Case for Working with Your Hands http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/magazine/24labor-t.html?em) And we must pay attention to finding work for ourselves that is in alignment with who we are.


Paying attention asks us to be authentic, to listen to the tiny voice within, our nature, our gut, intuition, whatever we call it. And this, Miller suggests, is the path to freedom and the pursuit of happiness.

(Miller died at the age of 83. He famously said: "If I'd known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.")