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| Willy Loman's Death Car in Death of a Salesman |
CARS, CRISIS, AND CREATIVITY IN AMERICAN LITERATURE
(all rights reserved: Paul D. Keane)
The history of American transportation seems to be primarily a “male thing,” from the old days of the Wild West to the new days of outer space, even though women astronauts have made inroads in the U. S. Space program in the recent past. Even so, when most people think of a stage coach, a whale ship, an airplane or a rocket ship, they don’t automatically picture a female sitting in the driver’s seat. It isn’t surprising then that in three famous works of American literature written forty to fifty years ago and set in that time period after World War II of the late 1940's or 1950's, important events happen to males in scenes which involve the most exciting form of personal transportation, the car. Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, Walter Lee Younger in A Raisin in the Sun, and Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye all experience a crisis which depends on the power and freedom which an automobile symbolizes.
It would be hard enough to become forgetful at age sixty-three, but to become so unable to concentrate that one couldn’t drive a car makes forgetfulness almost a crisis. When a person’s entire ability to support himself and his wife is dependent on the act of being able to drive a car as a traveling salesman in New England, 1949, then such a ‘forgetfulness’ could spell disaster. Never mind whether or not Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman can’t concentrate because he is becoming senile or because he feels guilty over his thirty-three year old son Biff never having made “the slightest mark” (Miller, p.71 ) since the moment he caught his father having an affair when he was a high school senior of seventeen. Either way, (senility or guilt) Willy can’t drive a car any more and won’t be worth anything to the Wagner Company, where his boss, Howard Wagner, reminds him, “You’re a road man Willy and we do a road business.” (p.59 ) In case the audience has any doubt that this inability to drive is more than just a problem, Willy spells it out to his son, Hap, with a metaphor: “Where are you guys? The woods are burning. I can’t drive a car.” (p.28) Willy is right. He is a trapped animal, and that becomes clear when Howard fires Willy after thirty four years with the firm because Willy asks to be taken off the road and a given a job in headquarters in New York. In 1949, Social Security was a spit in the ocean as far as helping support someone in retirement and only the wealthy had pension plans to help with retirement. People worked until they died, went to live with their children, or went to the poorhouse if they had no means of support in old age. Thus, it is the power and freedom which a car symbolizes for a male which makes Willy’s crisis of powerlessness even more vivid and intense than if Willy had simply been fired for incompetence. He can no longer captain that magic ship which transports him hundreds of miles to work at his bidding in a day: the automobile. He is figuratively shipwrecked.
Death of a Salesman was written by a male, Arthur Miller, but even the female author Lorraine Hansberry, uses the automobile to deepen a crisis for a male character. Walter Lee Younger in A Raisin in the Sun seems at first glance to have the opposite problem than the one Willy Loman has in Salesman: He drives a car for a living yes—but he hates doing so and wants to quit even though he is fully competent to drive. He tells his mother that his job as a chauffeur for the white man, Mr. Arnold, amounts to “no kind of job . . . that ain’t nothin at all.” (Hansberry, p. 73) While Willy Loman owns his own car and can drive it when and where he wants (health permitting) Walter doesn’t own a car at all, but drives Mr. Arnold’s limousine when and where Mr. Arnold tells him to drive it. In his chauffeur’s uniform, Walter’s relationship with a car is not power and freedom, but the opposite — the servant of someone who has power and freedom. When Walter’s mother won’t help him gain power and freedom by giving him part of the insurance money from her deceased husband’s life insurance policy so Walter can go into business for himself, Walter skips work for three days in anger, borrowing Willy Harris’s car: “Thursday I borrowed the car again, and I got in it and I pointed it the other way and I drove the other way for hours . . .” (p. 105), Walter tells his mother. Ironically, the freedom and power which Willy Harris’s car represents for Walter during these three days he skips work is jeopardizing the actual freedom and power he already has from the wages Mr. Arnold pays him as a chauffeur, because Mr. Arnold threatens to fire him if he doesn’t show up for work on the fourth day. Here , as in Salesman, it is the automobile which symbolizes freedom and power for the male in A Raisin in the Sun---- and also the lack of freedom and power ---- intensifying Walter Lee Younger’s crisis. If Walter Lee had been a clerk instead of a chauffeur and Willy Loman had been a tailor instead of a salesman, they might still have faced a crisis, but an automobile wouldn’t have added the symbolic punch or zing to that crisis which it does when their jobs and lives are so bound up in the act of driving a vehicle.
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| 1958 Chrysler Imperial Limousine which Walter Lee Younger Chauffeurs for Mr. Arnold in A Raisin in the Sun |
If Willy Loman loses his freedom to drive wherever he wants in Salesman and Walter Lee never has that freedom and power in the first place in Raisin and can only borrow it occasionally from a friend, Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye isn’t even old enough to drive (he’s seventeen writing about when he was sixteen and flunked out of his third prep school.) In his crisis involving an automobile the car is parked in a garage and isn’t even running. This description doesn’t sound like a fit for the current thesis that as symbols of power and freedom, cars intensify a crisis for males in three works of American literature. In fact,Holden in this crisis scene is thirteen years old and has discovered that his younger brother Allie — who he loves dearly — has just died of leukemia. Holden describes for the reader how he spent the night in the garage and “broke all the goddam windows” with his fist (Salinger, p.39) losing mobility in his hand. Even more powerfully symbolic, Holden tries to break the windshield on the car with his fist and fails, but breaks his hand instead. If the car is symbolic of power and freedom, how does Holden’s trying to smash its windshield out of grief over his brother’s death make sense? Perhaps it requires the reader to think about what is behind the power and freedom a car symbolizes: Adulthood. Adults drive cars. Getting a driver’s license is a rite of passage to adulthood, known to every sixteen year old in America in 2011 ! By smashing this symbol of adulthood, Holden is not only expressing anger at adults who couldn’t prevent Allie’s death, but at the very idea of having to become an adult at all, since one of the great burdens of adulthood is accepting the unfairness of death and one’s powerlessness in its presence. Predictably by now, Holden’s crisis as a male is intensified by the symbolic imagery of an automobile which he tries to smash with his fist in Catcher.
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| 1946 Pontiac Woody Station-wagon Holden Caulfield Attacks in the Garage of his Summer Home the Year his Brother Allie Died in The Catcher in the Rye. |
Willy Loman has his power and freedom taken from him (he can’t drive); Walter Lee Younger is in danger of losing his power and freedom when he refuses to give Mr. Arnold the power and freedom of his personal limousine for three days (he might get fired); and Holden Caulfield permanently damages his power and freedom (his hand) when he tries to smash the windshield on his family’s car and perhaps the whole idea of adulthood which has to face the powerlessness of accepting death. Thus, in three works of American literature the crisis for a male depends on the power and freedom an automobile symbolizes: the salesman who can’t drive; the chauffeur who jeopardizes his job; the grieving brother who injures himself on a car.
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A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hansberry, Lorraine. A Raisin in the Sun. Vintage Books. (New York: 1994).
Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman. Penguin Books. (New York: 1976).
Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye. Little, Brown and Co. (New York: 1951).
