Community Read Update

While I am still reading Death of a Salesman, I decided that with the knowledge of the first act of the book in my head I would go back and reread the introduction to see if it made more sense than when I first read it. It is not that I did not read the introduction in the first place, but simply that the introduction consisted of a fair amount of 'holes' in it that seemed to require a better understanding of the book's actual story to fill in the gaps. These 'holes' were quite easily filled  by the first act and made the entire introductory passage become a lot more clear and up front about why the play was written and what Arthur Miller's motivations were in writing it. In the introduction, it is revealed that Miller wanted to write a book that referred less to the bigger picture of America and more to the details, the fine print, the 'little guy': the general population of the country. This want to write a book about such a seemingly insignificant subject in the grand steam of things was in part inspired by Arthur Miller's other hit play The Crucible and its success in the subversive telling of what McCarthyist America, an age in American history where people were 'witch hunted' for their supposed loyalty communism and when the play was written, and what that ideological pressure did to certain people and communities within the United States through a fictional story during the Salem Witch Trials (where people were similarly persecuted through faulty/biased evidence). Miller didn't want to be a playwright who only focused on political discourse and the trickle-down of that discourse into the common man's life. Instead, he also wanted to focus on how society, traditions, and ambitions directly affected the individual person's life. Miller then had to think of a way to deliver this message to the public in a more digestible form than a journalism article. He soon found it in the form of one of his uncles. During his childhood, Miller was often seen as being in competitions with one of his cousins by his uncle (the cousin's dad, to avoid confusion). Miller's uncle would often brag about the cousin's achievements in just about every way imaginable. Sports, academia, scholarships, there was no apparent end to the list of Miller's cousin's accomplishments. Miller also states in the intro that, even after his uncle just saw the premier of The Crucible with him the first words he said out of the theater was that Miller's cousin was doing well. This gave Miller the idea for the character of Willy Loman and his ambitions for himself and his boys to become rich and great like their neighbors and their relatives. Miller then goes on to mention how, after he had the character of Willy and what he strives for in life, it was simply a matter of seeing how that world would come crashing down as Willy looses hope in both himself and his dreams.