Arthur Miller is one of the most renowned and important American playwrights. His works include, among others, The Crucible and A View from the Bridge. The plays he has written have been criticized for many things, but have been praised for much more, including his magical development of the characters and how his plays provide "good theater." In his plays, Miller rarely says anything about his home life, but there are at least some autobiographical "hints" in his plays. Arthur Miller is most noted for his continuing efforts to devise suitable new ways to express new and different themes. His play Death of a Salesman, a modern tragedy, follows along these lines. The themes in this play are described and unfurled mostly through Willy Loman's, the main character in the play, thoughts and experiences. The story takes place mainly in Brooklyn, New York, and it also has some "flashback" scenes occurring in a hotel room in Boston. Willy lives with his wife Linda and their two sons, Biff and Happy in a small house, crowded and boxed in by large apartment buildings. The three most important parts of Death of a Salesman are the characters and how they develop throughout the play; the conflicts, with the most important ones revolving around Willy; and the masterful use of symbolism and other literary techniques which lead into the themes that Miller is trying to reveal.
             Arthur Miller was born in Manhattan on October 17, 1915, to Isidore and Augusta Barnett Miller. His father was a ladies coat manufacturer. Arthur Miller went to grammar school in Harlem but then moved to Brooklyn because of his father's losses in the depression. In Brooklyn, he went to James Madison and Abraham Lincoln High Schools and was an average student there, but did not get accepted to college. After high school, he worked for 2 ½ years at an auto supply warehouse where he saved $13 of his $15 a week paycheck. He began to read such classics as Dostoevski and his g...