Through many instances in Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman, there is evidence of Simmel’s ideas in his essay “The Metropolis and Mental Life” interlinking the social aspects of modern life to Willy Loman’s demise in attempting to fulfill the American Dream. In the turn of the 20th century, an individual was challenged by the goals of capitalism that at times clashed with their own and in order to survive in the metropolitan society, their values had to be adapted over time. Money plays the ultimate role in holding the key to many factors of the urban lifestyle such as prioritizing profit over personal relationships.
To Simmel, the “blasé outlook” represents “an evenly flat and gray tone”, indifference, and detachment from emotional sentiments as prevalent in the urban environment due to the excess of materialism (Simmel 52). Individuals feel the need to adopt a sense of withdrawal to cope with the nature of the metropolitan cities. Industrialization has lead money to become the form of currency that is the front of every transaction to replace every relationship. In Miller’s play, Willy Loman is a husband, father, and salesman who is captivated by the possibility of being famous and successful on the pure basis of being “well-liked.”
Everything relating to culture in economic, social, and political deviances are always constantly evolving, and to stay fixated on old beliefs such as Willy thinking that on the grounds of personality and loyalty alone, his career can be sustained over time is problematic. His young boss Howard even admits “Business is business” when Willy complains about his job, how he’s getting old, and cannot travel so much anymore (Miller 60). Simmel’s “blasé outlook” comes to play in Death of a Salesman when Willy describes how the salesman’s life used to be by saying, “In those days there was personality in it, Howard. There was respect, and comradeship, and gratitude in it.
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Today, it’s all cut and dried, and there’s no chance for bringing friendship to bear– or personality (61). This exemplifies “the essence of the blasé attitude is an indifference toward the distinctions between things” meaning that the money economy has profoundly eliminated emotional behavior and decisions in the metropolis, and have replaced them with only the mentality of the intellectual (Simmel 52). It is made evident in the increasingly technical turn of modernity that personal involvement is substituted for apathetic tendencies towards human interactions in the realm of city life, especially in business.
Among the sentiment of the metropolis in relation to the one-track mentality of profit over people is how everyone lives in their own bubble and is immune to the feelings of others as prominently shown in whole as Willy keeps holding on to his merit of how you say something is much more important than what you say. When his long held beliefs are challenged, he is reluctant to let it go and adjust to newer attitudes of being a salesman and also in raising his sons with the goal of being successful. He is nonchalant, and at times oblivious to how the rest of his family including his wife, sons Biff and Happy, and even his neighbors and friends feel towards him and his actions.
Willy’s lack of empathy towards his inner circle doesn’t translate to how he deals with his customers on the road. He should be able to sell without getting emotionally entangled in his dealings as to make the most money possible according to the “business is business” logic, but he is too caught up in developing personal relationships in his role as a salesman and not making enough money to support his family. The detachment from the way business is done at his age now demonstrates the blasé attitude when applied to an occupation’s requirements changing over time and Willy’s refusal to adapt to the way of doing business in terms of the bottom line.
The need to maintain his individuality or “personality” inhibits Willy from giving in to the money-oriented mindset of the new age of city lifestyle as discussed in Simmel’s essay which states “For money expresses all qualitative differences of things in terms of “how much?” Money, with all its colorlessness and indifference, becomes the common denominator of all values; irreparably it hollows out the core of things, their individuality, their specific value, and their incomparability. All things float with equal specific gravity in the constantly moving stream of money” (52).
This relates to how even in the beginning of Death of a Salesman, Willy was criticizing his son, Biff, on the merit of how much money he was earning per week and judging him based on such a scale in reducing Biff’s worth into quantitative terms. Willy explodes to his wife Linda asking “When the hell did I lose my temper? I simply asked him if he was making any money. Is that a criticism?… But it’s more than ten years now and he has yet to make thirty-five dollars a week!” (Miller 5).
This suggests that Willy is oblivious to how he has belittled his son’s efforts and existence to just mere numbers on the basis of salary. There is so much more to Biff than what his father makes him out to be such as in how he looks up to Willy and respects him. Linda tells Willy “You know how much [Biff] he admires you”, but Willy seems unaware of the sentiment and keeps on being fixated on financial success without putting in the hard work for it (5).
On the contrary, Linda, Willy’s wife, is the only one that seems to understand the whole family situation and shows sympathy for her husband acknowledging “I don’t say he’s a great man. Willy Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper. 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” (40).
If only Willy had taught his sons better and listened to his wife more, than maybe he would not have put so much emphasis on making substantial amounts of money based on the pure quality of being “well-liked.” It is unfortunate that Willy was not always completely like this and struggling to make a living as “When he brought [the buyers] them business, when he was young, they were glad to see him” so there was a time when the people that are now retired or dead did business with him, Willy was actually welcomed as a salesman (41).
With how rapidly changing business is being conducted, Miller implies that Willy has fallen foul to his deep, strong belief that personality triumphs over everything in the working world. Willy is also too prideful in that his wife says “When he has to go to Charley and borrow fifty dollars a week and pretend to me that it’s his pay?” which illustrates that Willy still hangs on to his credence that his worth is based on the amount of money he makes and nothing else measures up to that number (41).
According to Miller, the majority of events in Willy’s life is influenced by quantitative elements and Willy’s motivation for success is driven by financial means which objectifies most relationships in his life. The blame for a lot of what happens to Willy seems to fall on the shoulders of those around him and he never looks to himself in why he ended up unfulfilling his version of the American Dream.
In Simmel’s essay, he discusses that the “Modern mind has become more and more calculating. The calculative exactness of practical life which the money economy has brought about corresponds to the ideal of natural science: to transform the world into an arithmetic problem, to fix every part of the world by mathematical formulas. Only money economy has filled the days of so many people with weighing, calculating, with numerical determinations, with a reduction of qualitative values to quantitative ones” (Simmel 50).
This is displayed in Death of a Salesman in many instances between the characters such as Willy’s interactions with Ben in which Willy idolizes Ben’s financial prosperity. Thinking back to his journey to wealth, Ben recalls “Why boys, when I was seventeen I walked into the jungle, and when I was twenty-one I walked out. And by God I was rich” (Miller 33). He makes it sound so easy, and misleads Willy and the boys to believing that hitting the jackpot was the norm. Further on, Ben reminisces about their father and how “He was a great inventor, Father. With one gadget he made more in a week than a man like you could make in a lifetime” (34).
Once again, this shows how their father is diminished as a person to quantifiable terms as in how much more money he made in comparison to Willy’s income. There are so many other instances in the play where even in their daily lives, the characters are subjected to being labeled as just a number to prove themselves of worth to an external party. Willy contends “ ‘Cause what could be more satisfying than to be able to go, at the age of eighty-four, into twenty or thirty different cities, and pick up a phone, and be remembered and loved and helped by so many different people?… –when [Dave Singleman] he died, hundreds of salesmen and buyers were at his funeral” (61). His proclamation there demonstrates that Willy honestly dreams of leaving behind a legacy as a salesman, but sadly misunderstands that a career cannot just be measured by how many cities you visit, amount of people you supposedly “helped”, or by the number that attend your funeral.
The importance that Willy and others put on various matters in the play are significant as quantitative values due to their perverse mindset of deducing that as “the quantitative aspect of life is transformed directly into qualitative traits of character” (Simmel 56). As shown in Miller’s play, when Biff asks Happy “Why? You’re making money, aren’t you?” and Happy responds “ I don’t know what the hell I’m workin’ for. Sometimes I sit in my apartment –all alone. And I think of the rent I’m paying. And it’s crazy. But then, it’s what I always wanted.
My own apartment, a car, plenty of women, and still, goddamnit, I’m lonely” (Miller 12). This proves that even when one thinks money can essentially buy happiness, quantitative to qualitative terms, as implied by Miller, satisfaction is not guaranteed. The concrete part of what monetary transactions bring does not translate to contentment in life because some intangible aspects cannot be defined and bought as just a number.
The proneness of the “calculating” mind to plague modern life is evident according to Simmel because relationships have become more and more transactional in that people do things in order to benefit themselves and this ends up becoming quantifiable. In Death of a Salesman, Howard Wagner only wants to advance his profits in the business arena, and ignores Willy’s loyalty and history with their family. The human elements are neglected in place of more “calculating” tendencies with expectations of what one will get out of the interaction.
Furthermore, Simmel stipulates that “Punctuality, calculability, exactness are forced upon life by the complexity and extension of metropolitan existence and are not only most intimately connected with its money economy and intellectualistic character” meaning that because of the city and overwhelmingly increasing groups of people migrating towards urban life, individual freedom in personality is stifled (Simmel 51).
Society affects the way people act, behave, and think and this in return can have a negative impact on progressing the self in contrast to just conforming to the expectations of the group. Living in such close quarters with others, according to Simmel, can hinder individualism and “progress, spirituality, and value in order to transform them from their subjective form into one of purely objective existence” (58). In the play, an example is when Charley postulates “Why must everyone like you? Who liked J.P. Morgan? Was he impressive? In a Turkish bath he’d look like a butcher. But with his pockets on he was very well liked” (Miller 75).
This scene suggests that based on solely objective terms, wealth; personality, uniqueness, and appearance do not matter. Relating back to how qualitative aspects are replaced by quantitative values in the modern day metropolis, Willy cannot seem to understand how business is run and is keen on personality holding the key to being successful. Even when Happy insists “Don’t mention it. It’s all company money” in response to getting the girl champagne and then remarks “Oh, gets to be like everything else. Selling is selling, y’know” shows that the reduction of qualitative aspects to quantitative values are apparent (78).
This also relates to Simmel’s idea of “the development of modern culture is characterized by the preponderance of what one may call the ‘objective spirit’ over the ‘subjective spirit’” (Simmel 58). As hinted in the play, money takes precedence over many intangible aspects in relationships, both personal and professional. Individualism, included in freedom and personality, is inhibited in place of what society and culture puts out as the norm. Modernity has affected stereotypes, and the homogeneity of thoughts and behaviors.
Throughout the entirety of Simmel’s “The Metropolis and Mental Life” and Miller’s Death of a Salesman, the susceptibility to treat relationships as transactional diminishes qualitative variances to quantitative means. The intensity of modern life has a vast effect on social stigma in that what incentivized Willy to commit suicide was the intent for his family to collect life insurance money.
His life is degraded to just something of monetary value when Willy supposes “Can you imagine that magnificence with twenty thousand dollars in his pocket?” thinking about how he will make his son, Biff’s life better when Willy is dead and the money goes to Biff (Miller 108). The tragic conclusion of the play represents the epitome of the delusion in the minds of many regarding the American Dream. Charley suppresses the embodiment that anything can be solved as just a calculated formula and by a quantitative approach when he rebuts that “No man only needs a little salary” (110).
According to Miller, it is not always just about a number that determines the course of action, in this case a death, but there is usually something more below the surface. Simmel insinuates that the city has made individuals indifferent to others in terms of uniqueness and qualitative terms are reduced to those of quantitative values. Altogether Arthur Miller in Death of a Salesman shows Willy attempting and failing to achieve the American Dream due to being steadfast in old beliefs, and Simmel in “The Metropolis and Mental Life” engages in a discourse that relates the money economy to being responsible for the relationships that are based on reciprocity. Both works are evident in displaying the symptoms of society in the modern city, and how it contributes to the ruin of individuality and meaningful interactions.
Works Cited
- Miller, Arthur. Death of Salesman. Penguin Books, 1998.
- Simmel, Georg. “The Metropolis and Mental Life.” Blackwell Publishing, 1903, www.blackwellpublishing.com/content/BPL_Images/Content_store/Sample_chapter/0631225137/Bridge.pdf.
