Long taught as a core text in secondary school curricula, Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman explores the impact of American capitalism on one man: Willy Loman, a salesman whose entire sense of self is tied up in a self-destructive, delusional belief in the promise of the American dream. The play’s title betrays the dramatic irony at the center of this tragedy: Willy dies. Yet before he dies, at his own hands, the play interrogates the inner life of a man in crisis and his relationships with his wife, sons, dead brother, and business associates. Death of a Salesman has been celebrated for its poetic language, complex structure, and inventive, experimental staging, all aspects explored throughout this curriculum unit. 

The unit also pairs Miller’s drama with contemporary and recent texts, in an attempt to situate the play’s white, middle class family in socio-political and historical context. Rather than frame systems like the white nuclear family, consumer and achievement culture, wealth and income inequity, and racial hierarchies as inevitabilities, this unit encourages students to approach this canonical text in context, with critical analysis of power at the forefront. 

Big Ideas: 

• Plays are meant to be performed, adapted, and analyzed in context. 

• American capitalism promotes consumer culture and affects workers’ sense of self. 

• Toxic masculinity impacts our family relationships and harms people of all genders. 

• The myth of the American Dream has inspired important works of critical literature.  

• The white, nuclear family is a specific social form that merits critical analysis. 

• The relationship between father and son is shaped by larger social forces, of family structure, work, masculinity, and misogyny.