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"Arthur Miller and the American West" was the title of the 2006 Arthur Miller Society Conference held in Las Vegas, Nevada. Just how many connections did Arthur Miller, native New Yorker, have to the American West? As a matter of fact, he had several. Most obviously, he wrote the screenplay for the Hollywood movie, The Msfits, which takes place out west. Also, Willy Loman's father traveled through "all the Western states" selling flutes he made himself (34). For me, "Arthur Miller and the American West," also calls up phrases and images associated with Willy's son, Biff. The first phrase is "Biff the Cowboy" which was the title of a paper given by Mark Shipman at the 1999 Miller conference. Although cowboys are a part of western lore, when Biff lived out west he was not a cowboy, but rather a ranch hand. This image of Biff connotes physical hardiness, and thus the phrases, "Biff the athlete" or "Biff the football hero" or, as in Willy's words, Biff the "young god. Hercules-something like that" (51): which elevate Biffs sports prowess to the mythic plane.
And now for images more abstract. Miller and the American West also conjures up the color gold. Surely, gold is a part of western lore, too: the golden sun, the Gold Rush, golden opportunity for better lives. Willy associates gold with Biff-evidently, since Death of a Salesman's stage directions call for Biff to be bathed in golden light as Willy talks of his son's football glory in the last moments of act 1. But another play is golden, in both its title and its motifs: a 1937 drama that must have influenced Miller, Golden Boy by Clifford Odets. In this play, "golden" is a motif; in Salesman it is a theme.
It takes just one phrase to sum up the parallels between Odets' and Miller's sensibilities: the Great Depression, which according to Christopher Bigsby "seemed to break the promises America had made to its citizens" (vii). More keenly felt in cities than in rural areas of the U.S., the Depression had a profound influence on the plays of New York writers Miller and Odets, though only the latter was actually a famous playwright during the 1930's. Seeing, as a young adult, poverty...