Miller and Subversion of form

I'm not sure I quite agree with Miller's sentiments towards subverting the Classical "narrowing cone of intensifying suspense". His arguments for interrupting the linear in the narrative is clear: "[A] single chord ... within which all the strains and melodies would appear to be contained." Miller's main challenge was one that was self-referring; his challenge was more formalistic than it was contextual. He later reveals the impetus for his experiment in form as his earlier play "All My Sons", one that he felt was constructed to roll the red carpet of the narrative. I assume Miller's main structural strategy with "Death of a Salesman" was a presentation that denied the audience the luxury of a narrative 'spelt-out', so to speak, as he had done so with "All My Sons". Therefore, although "Death of a Salesman" composite narrative is primarily linear, Miller would attest that its presentation allows for affecting moments to share a similar theatrical space-time. A concept which the "laid-out" form of "All My Sons" did not allow for.

Having said that, form sometimes backfires: for what Miller constructed out to be a powerful psychological piece, his very alliance to the narrative functions of the Classical "Tragic Hero" creates a deepening well of sympathy and pathos, elements which could easily fill-in for a narrowing-cone of intensity. Because the play also functions with (I hasten to call them) "flashbacks", the narrative operates on different levels that forces viewers to (re)construct them in their own way. This building form of contentual 'hide-and-seek' also intensifies the revelation, which occurs a good two-thirds into the plot. Miller, however, almost immediately does away with the revelation of Willy's unfaithfulness: clearly as a psychological piece, revelation but reflects the building conflict within the Tragic protagonist. It is here that Miller perhaps unknowlingly recedes into the classic structure of tension-resolution: Willy's inner-conflict has reached a state of subversion where the ecoogical conditions and internal conditions apply equal pressures. Miller opts for the classical resolution that resolves inner-condition by reflecting it outwardly by Willly's suicidal coup de theater, the ultimate form of expression that forces pleasure and pain to collapse into each other.

I feel Miller does not stray sufficiently from established forms. What he manages to accomplish, however, is theatre on multiple narrative planes, the "bloc" that constitues "the process of Willy Loman's way of mind" and its impending derision. What Miller possibly failed to apprehend was the dramatic possibility of his 'new form', and how audiences (so used to traditional forms of reader-responses) implicated their own understanding of Tragedy and Tragic form upon his framework. Miller's Salesman narrative, though multi-planar, is still unable to capture fully the nature of simultaniety: multiple incidents rehashed at the same time, informing and transforming each other. Rather, the nature, order and context at which Willy Loman's inner conflicts are revealed to us inevitably shapes our experience of the play rather than presenting it as a cogent piece "ahistorical" in-and-of-itself.