"DEATH OF A SALESMAN'S" WILLY LOMAN AND "FENCES'S" TROY MAXSON: PURSUERS
OF THE ELUSIVE AMERICAN DREAM
Author(s): James E. Walton
Source: CLA Journal , SEPTEMBER 2003, Vol. 47, No. 1 (SEPTEMBER 2003), pp. 55-65
Published by: College Language Association
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/44325193
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DEATH OF A SALESMAN S WILLY LOMAN AND
FENCES' S TROY MAXSON: PURSUERS OF
THE ELUSIVE AMERICAN DREAM
By James E. Walton
Arthur Miller, according to a recent poll taken by the
Royal National Theatre, is the world's greatest contemporary playwright. His Death of a Salesman has sold nearly
eleven million copies worldwide. It is said that Death of a
Salesman is staged somewhere in the world just about
every single day of the year, making it arguably one of
the most successful of all modern plays and establishing
Willy Loman, its central character, as the quintessential
American loser who fell short of his dreams (Lahr 2).
Miller himself is the recipient of numerous awards, in-
cluding the Olivier Award for Best Play and the New
York Drama Critics Circle Award. In 1949, he won the
Pulitzer Prize for Death of a Salesman.
Writing his first play (1981) a little over three decades
after Miller's crowning achievement, August Wilson has
also been the recipient of numerous literary awards, in-
cluding six New York Drama Critics Circle Best Play
Awards, a Tony Award, and, of course, two Pulitzer
Prizes. Unique among African American playwrights,
Wilson, we are told, is able to support himself entirely
from his earnings as a playwright and occasional lecturer. No other African American playwright has ever
had two plays running simultaneously on Broadway.
Fences and Joe Turner were both running in New York at
the same time in the 1980s.
Arthur Miller and August Wilson are two hugely successful playwrights with similarities that appear unending: as youngsters growing up among a number of siblings, neither was particularly accomplished in the
55
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56 James E. Walton
classroom, Miller attending a s
ing grades too low for him to
the college of his choice, the U
thur Miller had to write a letter to the president and
make a special request in order to gain admission. He
proved himself as a student and was allowed to stay. August Wilson attended a school in a poor section of Pittsburgh called "the Hill," and as is widely known, he quit
school at age fifteen following unsubstantiated charges of
plagiarism from a history teacher. He largely educated
himself by reading books on literature and culture.
Both Miller and Wilson have produced a series of wellreceived plays: All My Sons, The Crucible, After the Fall,
and Incident at Vichy for Miller; The Piano Lesson, Ma
Rainey's Black Bottom, Two Trains Running and Seven
Guitars for Wilson. Both Miller and Wilson are followers
of baseball, and both acknowledge the influence of poetry
on their work. "I prize the poetic above all in the theatre," says Arthur Miller. "Miller's plays move toward po-
etry," writes Harold Clurman, one of Miller's editors.
"Like a poet," Clurman adds, "Miller aims to elicit an
emotional response in the reader. He wants to impart
more than simply factual or concrete information. There
is an intensity in Miller's work that approaches the level
of intensity found only in good poetry" (Bigsby xxi).
Speaking of the influence of poetry on his plays, Au-
gust Wilson related that poetry is "the bedrock of my
writing . . . not so much in the language as in the approach and the thinking. . . . The idea of metaphor is a
very large idea in my plays and something that I find
lacking in most contemporary plays. I think I write the
kinds of plays that I do because I have twenty-six years
of writing poetry underneath all of that" (qtd. in Donal-
son 469).
The similarities do not end there.
Both Arthur Miller and August Wilson were sired by
Anglo fathers, both have had a number of marriages, and
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Death of a Salesman and Fences 57
both write plays that might be deemed, in part, to be
tobiographical. Miller has become an international pr
ence, turning out works on Russia and China and mee
ing with dissident writers and politicians around the
world. August Wilson reaches a wide audience through
his works and has taken on the ambitious task of writing
a play about African American life that will be set in
each decade of the twentieth century. Not surprisingly, at
least to this writer, the protagonist in Miller's Death of a
Salesman, Willy Loman, and the protagonist in Wilson's
Fences, Troy Maxson, likewise have some intriguing
similarities.
Both Willy Loman and Troy Maxson are common men,
ordinary men - not men of significance or nobility in the
Aristotelian sense of a tragic hero. In Shakespearean
times, protagonists were rulers, kings, folks of distinction. The ancient concept favored as tragic heroes individuals who were better than ordinary folks. Willy
Loman and Troy Maxson are not of that order. They
could be the neighbor, the friend, the fellow down the
street. Yet both are eminently qualified to be tragic he-
roes, should we care to make the case.
Willy Loman and Troy Maxson are both in pursuit of
the elusive American dream. Material goods, for many
the essence of the American dream, take on importance
for both protagonists. For Willy Loman, it is the refriger-
ator, the car, and the house. He struggles to keep up
with the payments, borrowing money at times. His wife,
Linda, informs us during the requiem that she has made
the final payment on the house on the same day that
Willy Loman is buried.
Earning a good living and gaining a practical education
has great value for Troy Maxson. He advises his son
Cory:
You go on and get your book-learning so you can work yourself up in that A&P or learn how to fix cars or build houses
or something, get you a trade. That way you have something
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58 James E. Walton
can't nobody take away from you. You
put your hands to some good use.
garbage. (Wilson 35)
Linda Loman, the ever protect
solicitious wife to Willy, is cle
times charming, other times w
held fully accountable for his
Willy is lovingly viewed as "on
a harbor" (Bigsby 76). Rose Max
might be labeled with the same
checkerboard past with men, R
Troy, told herself, "Here is a m
empty spaces you been tipping
Both Linda and Rose carefully
igmatic behavior of the father
havior of the sons, in turn, to
Willy Loman has a son, Biff,
school football player with hope
sity of Virginia. He never ma
son, Cory, a good football playe
play football in North Carolin
Birnbaum's math tests stop Biff
a second job and Troy's lack of
dreams of playing college footb
Both Willy Loman and Troy M
their long-suffering wives, suc
of The Other Woman. The fath
troubles the sons. Biff Loman
ther in the act when he, withou
father at the hotel in Boston w
Disillusioned by it all, Biff is n
his two-timing father is a "fake
grip and is never able to exec
seems to lose his confidence. H
and is never able to hold on to
is still looking to find himsel
disgrace.
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Death of a Salesman and Fences 59
After Cory learns of his father's infidelity with Alberta
the Florida gal with "them great big old legs and hips
wide as the Mississippi River," Cory harshly tells Troy
"You don't count around here anymore" (78); and, later,
don't know how she (Rose) stand you . . . after what y
did to her" (87). Cory's expression of outrage and defian
quickly escalates to the point where he grabs a base
bat and engages in an almost fight-to-the-death encou
ter with his father. A barrier, a fence, has now forev
been created between father and son. Cory enters the
military.
In both plays, Death of a Salesman and Fences, both
main characters, Willy Loman and Troy Maxson, die
before the play ends.
Given all of the apparent similarities between the two
authors, Arthur Miller and Troy Maxson, and with their
two major protagonists seemingly set on parallel courses,
one might reasonably conclude that Willy Loman and
Troy Maxson are identical characters, two equally unfortunate blokes who, in an otherwise egalitarian society,
simply fell through the proverbial crack. Nothing could
be further from the truth.
In his fifty-three years, to paraphrase Malcolm, Troy
Maxson caught more hell every day of his life than Willy
Loman ever saw.
Appropriating the famous words of Linda Loman, attention must be paid. Attention must be paid to the glaring differences between Willy Loman and Troy Maxson.
True, Willy Loman, in his early 60s, finds himself without a job and alienated from his sons. Still, his lot differs
markedly from Troy's.
For starters, Willy Loman was a descendent of what
August Wilson describes in the opening of Fences as the
"destitute of Europe." His ancestors were "devoured" by
the city. They found immediate welcome and acceptance.
"They swelled its belly until it burst into a thousand furnaces and sewing machines, a thousand butcher shops
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60 James E. Walton
and baker's ovens, a thousan
and funeral parlors and mone
grants of Europe, a dream dar
No such silver spoon was ex
sented one of "the descendents of African slaves (who)
were offered no such welcome or participation. . . . They
cleaned houses and washed clothes, they shined shoes,
and in quiet desperation and vengeful pride, they stole,
and lived in pursuit of their own dreams. That they could
breathe free, finally, and stand to meet life with the force
of dignity and whatever eloquence the heart could call
upon" (introduction to Fences).
At an early age, Troy Maxson was abandoned by his
mother, who had eleven children but could not take any
more of her evil husband, Troy's father. She stole away in
the dead of the night and was never seen since. Troy was
virtually chased from home by the same evil man and, in
time, was reduced to robbing for food. Additionally, Troy
Maxson was an ex-con, had spent fifteen years in prison
for involuntarily taking a man's life. A star baseball
player, he had been relegated to a lower realm, the segregated Negro Leagues. Troy can only acquire a home by
"swooping" down on the three thousand dollars given to
his sweet but mentally challenged brother, Gabriel, by
the U.S. Government for getting half of his head blown
away fighting the Japanese during WWII. Attention must
be paid.
Willy Loman was a salesman; we never learn exactly
what he sold, but he sold something. He did enjoy a professional career traveling up and down the eastern seaboard states, often ending up in Boston or New York. A
salesman, said Willy, is "the greatest career a man could
want" (81).
In an interview with Nathan L. Grant on the topic of
African American speech, interestingly enough, August
Wilson offered a chance opinion on Death of a Salesman
and the advisability of a Troy Maxson becoming a sales-
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Death of a Salesman and Fences 61
man: "A black man as a salesman might be lynched! It'
not a job you could easily do. Say you're setting a few e
velopes at a store. Knock at the door, walk into that
store, and the man at the door says, yeah, boy, go around
to the back. It's ludicrous to try to do that kind of work.
Blacks speak differently, think differently; they respond
to stimuli differently" (Grant 10).
Troy Maxson did not even have a driver's license. He
worked on a garbage truck, one where they had "the
white mens driving and the colored lifting." Slaving as a
garbage collector, for Troy, certainly is not "the greatest
career a man could want." Troy has to file an official
complaint to be even considered for a plum job like
driver, an officiai complaint that seems to be headed nowhere, because he will have to pass a written test first,
and he has not yet learned to read.
Willy Loman never faced such overwhelming obstacles.
For all of his setbacks and shortcomings, he never had to
walk those mean streets, never had such a tough row to
hoe. Charley, Willy Loman's good friend, is il way s there
to lend Willy Loman money if he needs it. He even offers
Willy a well-paying job when Willy is dumped as a salesman. Only pride stops Willy from taking Charlie's offer.
There is no good friend Charlie with a back-up job offer
for Troy Maxson. No such safety net exists in ids world.
The amazing triumph of Troy Maxson, tragic flaws and
all, is that on an existential level, for him also a dream
was dared and won true. Ironically enough, none other
than playwright Arthur Miller, creator of Willy Loman,
provides us with a basis for completing our understanding of indomitable Troy Maxson. In his time-honored es-
say "Tragedy and the Common Man," Miller gives us a
working definition of that classical concept known as the
"tragic flaw." He makes it clear that the possessor of a
tragic flaw need not be someone of great stature or high
character, as was previously maintained. Miller goes on
to say of the tragic flaw:
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62 James E. Walton
Nor is it necessarily a weakness. The
ter, is really nothing - and need be no
unwillingness to remain passive in t
ceives to be a challenge to his dignity,
ful status. Only the passive, only th
without active retaliation, are "flaw
that category, (qtd. in Kennedy 1726
What an apt way to describe
rounding Troy Maxson. Though
in his universe - his employer
eroded athletic prowess - he re
not "accept his ... lot without
for all that he has encountered
he made it to Mobile (he claims he walked the two hun-
dred miles), after having been chased from home by his
evil father, camped out under the Bay Street Bridge, and
did what he had to do in order to support his first wife
and young son. He would not accept his lot.
A champion baseball player in a league where only the
ball was white, he once hit seven home runs off the great
Satchel Paige. He knew the greatest home run hitter of
them all, Josh Gibson. Current stars like Warren Spahn,
Hank Aaron, and Wes Covington were of no consequence
to Troy Maxson.
When Cory and Rose try to tell Troy that times have
changed and that he is too old to play in the major
leagues, Troy will not be quieted. He is unwilling to remain passive. He asserts "his image of his rightful
status":
Hank Aaron ain't nobody. That's what you supposed to do.
That's how you supposed to play the game. Ain't nothing to it.
It's just a matter of timing . . . getting the right follow-
through. Hell, I can hit forty-three home runs now! (34)
One could not tell Troy that age is the chief reason he
could not play baseball in the major leagues.
What do you mean too old? Don't come telling me I was too
old. I just wasn't the right color. Hell, I'm fifty-three years old
and can do better than Selkirk's .269 right now! (39)
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Death of a Salesman and Fences 63
Playing baseball brought Troy Maxson no financial
curity. Despite his high level of talent, there was no
figure salary. No managerial position awaiting him up
retirement. No retirement package. No shoe contract.
Even Josh Gibson, with over seventy home runs in one
season, did not find any measure of financial security.
What Arthur Miller calls a "tragic flaw" is Troy's active
retaliation against a system that denied him his place,
his rightful status. That same system will not be permitted to exploit the talents of his athletic son Cory and
then leave him jobless and penniless. Cory will not play
high school football unless he can carry out all of his
chores, including helping with the building of that fence
and keep up with that job at the A&P.
Troy's unwillingness to be passive and his active retaliation do not stop there. The athletic world will not have
the option of doing to the son what it had done to the father. Withholding Cory and his talented contribution to
the arena of sports could be seen as Troy's means of active retaliation, a revolutionary act.
As noted, promotion to the elite job of driver on the
garbage truck requires a driver's license. His dedicates
himself to the task and manages to earn his driver's license. His values might not always be governed by the
accountant's bottom line, but he does hold to his sense of
values - shopping with those merchants who might be a
little more expensive but who treated him right in his
time of need, and laboring to care for his family, the "inside" and "outside" children in his family, because it is
his responsibility and his responsibility alone.
In the most poignant of all scenes, late one evening we
witness a somewhat ungainly Troy Maxson paintakingsly
entering the yard carrying a precious bundle, his young
"outside" baby, Raynelle. The mother, Alberta, we know,
has died in the hospital a few days earlier. It all becomes
clear now. Instead of spending his time at the Taylor's listening to the ballgame, Troy has found other pastimes.
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64 James E. Walton
His best buddy, Bono, looked t
He had cautioned Troy several
on Rose, because he dearly loved both Troy and Rose.
Bono's worse suspicions have proved true. Troy has been
doing more than just eyeing Alberta, more than just buying her a drink or two. Troy Maxson has committed the
unforgivable. He has, sadly, wronged the beautiful Rose.
The durable pinewood fence that Rose wanted to keep
her family in, to keep them protected, was not constructed in time. And, still, Troy will not duck the responsibility of his shameful action:
Rose . . . I'm standing here with my daughter in my arms.
She ain't but a wee bittie little old thing. She don't know
nothing about grownups' business. She innocent . . . and she
ain't got no mama. (78)
When Rose initially turns from Troy and goes inside,
he stays with his game plan as he sits on the porch and
coos to a smiling little baby. Next he tries his hand at
singing a heart-wrenching song about a scared, lonesome
traveler without a ticket who is pleading with the engineer to give him a ride aboard the passing train.
The imagery is striking. Rose comes to the door again,
this time more receptive.
We feel no sympathy for Troy, who had earlier described his eighteen years of marriage to Rose as standing "on first base for eighteen years." His philandering
with Alberta was his way, he told her, of trying "to steal
second."
Troy deserves no sympathy. He lets Rose know his
view. "I ain't sorry for nothing I done. It felt right in my
heart" (79)
In this brief, touching scene, remorseless Troy Maxson
does achieve his goal of appealing to his heartbroken wife
to help him raise his infant daughter. Rose declares that
from now on Troy will be a "womanless man," but she
does agree to become a new mother. The inning was late,
the game was in doubt, but baseball-oriented Troy, with
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Death of a Salesman and Fences 65
his plaintive appeal, has scored another one, has hit
other one over the fence.
And when the universe bellows out to Troy Maxson,
"Who art thou that I might be mindful of thee?" Troy
Maxson rises to his full height and roars back, "I ... I
am a man, damnit!"
And when a man takes on the might of the universe
and is found wanting - as mere man always will be
found - then man, in the form of Troy Maxson, can take
comfort in the knowledge that he did, in fact, step up to
the plate, that he was unwilling to remain passive and
accept his lot, that he did not stand with the bat on his
shoulders and take the called third strike.
Troy Maxson went down swinging at the universe. In
so doing, for Troy Maxson the proud act of asserting his
will, the proud act of asserting his humanity was, for
him, a dream dared and won true.
And Gabriel says emphatically, " That's the way that
go!"
Works Cited
Bigsby, Charles, ed. The Portable Arthur Miller. Introduction to the Original
Edition. By Harold Clurman. New York: Penguin, 1995.
Donalson, Melvin, ed. Cornerstones : An Anthology of African American Litera
ture. New York: St Martin's, 1966.
Grant, Nathan L. "Men, Women, and Culture: A Conversation with August
Wilson." <http://jazz.san.uc.edu/www/amdrama/wilsonint.html>
Kennedy, X. J., and Dana Gioia. Literature: An Introduction to Fiction , Poetry ,
and Drama. 6th ed. New York: HarperCollins, 1995.
Lahr, John. "Making Willy Loman." <http://www.deathofasalesman.com/lahrnyer-willy.htm>
Wilson, August. Fences. New York: Penguin, 1985. (All references in the paper
are to this text.)
California State University, Fresno
Fresno, California
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