Death of Salesman as a Reflection of the Avant-Garde in American Drama

Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman is a groundbreaking play for many reasons. This article explores the play’s structure, in particular its embrace of elements popularized by the interwar European avant-gardes which are then expertly blended with realistic modes of dialogue. In amalgamating a new form of drama that is one-part Naturalism, many parts various other avant-gardes, Miller highlights the complexity of the American experience: it cannot be held with one mode of storytelling. In the same way as it is a new kind of tragedy—that of the common man—it is also a new kind of dramaturgy. This is because to tell the story of being an American in the late-1940s is too multifaceted to be easily contained and represented with one style alone.