The Price: Analysis of Major Characters
"The Price: Analysis of Major Characters" explores the complex dynamics between four central characters, each representing different responses to familial obligations and personal choices. Victor Franz, a disillusioned police sergeant, grapples with regret and loyalty as he confronts the sacrifices he made for his father, feeling trapped by his past choices and an unwillingness to embrace change. His brother, Walter Franz, a successful surgeon, contrasts Victor's sentimentality with his pragmatic yet self-centered nature, leading to a strained relationship marked by guilt and unresolved tensions regarding their father's support.
Esther, Victor’s wife, seeks to navigate the tumultuous waters between the brothers while managing her own disenchantment with their life, turning to alcohol as an escape. Her eventual solidarity with Victor underscores the emotional stakes at play within their marriage. Gregory Solomon, an elderly furniture dealer, serves as a wise mediator whose insights into loss and resilience provide a broader perspective on the characters’ struggles. Collectively, these characters embody themes of sacrifice, regret, and the search for forgiveness, offering a poignant examination of the personal costs associated with familial loyalty and the burden of unresolved pasts.
The Price: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: Arthur Miller
First published: 1968
Genre: Play
Locale: A brownstone in Manhattan, New York
Plot: Melodrama
Time: The 1960's
Victor Franz, a fifty-year-old police sergeant in New York City. Frustrated and disillusioned, Victor lives almost exclusively in the past, conveniently blaming his brother for the direction that his life has taken and unwilling to accept that he alone, by his own free will, charted his own destiny. He has a strong sense of familial loyalty. Victor's self-esteem and self-worth rest solely in his belief that he did the honorable thing decades earlier by sacrificing his college studies to become a policeman so that he could support his bankrupt father. Now, sixteen years after his father's death, Victor is forced into his life's crisis and is immobilized: He lacks the courage to accept early retirement and begin a new career because that action would signify the meaninglessness of his life's work as a policeman and, by implication, the vacuity of his allegiance to his father. His confrontation with the past and the high price he paid for his choices, symbolized in his task of selling his father's possessions, reaches its climax when his brother, whom he has not seen since his father's funeral, forces him to admit that he always suspected that his father had sufficient money to support himself without need for his financial assistance. When his brother offers him both the money from the sale of their father's furnishings and a job at the hospital where he works, Victor refuses for two reasons: His acceptance would imply an admission that his life and work, his very existence, had no purpose, and indirectly it would signify his forgiveness of his brother for not helping support their father and thereby enabling Victor to attend college to pursue a career. Until the end, Victor holds tenaciously to his code of ethics, which places familial loyalty above all else, maintains the view of himself as a martyr victimized by the stinginess and callousness of his wealthy brother, and, more pointedly, sustains his belief that his life's direction was controlled by the needs and actions of others.
Walter Franz, Victor's middle-aged brother, a prominent and successful surgeon. Unlike Victor, who is a self-sacrificing sentimentalist, Walter is pragmatic, self-centered, and incapable of loving. His fear of suffering a life of poverty like that of his father made him a workaholic detached from life, but his drive for wealth and fame led to the alienation of his wife and daughter. After enduring a nervous breakdown years earlier, he has come to realize both the price he paid for his stolidity and the need to make amends for his past behavior. Now, with the hope of securing his brother's forgiveness and alleviating his guilt for not financially helping Victor to support their father, Walter meets with Victor and offers him conscience money and a job. Interpreting Victor's refusal to accept his offer as a denial of absolution, Walter leaves angrily, still unforgiven and unable, despite his rhetoric about facing responsibility for his own actions, to acknowledge openly his betrayal and sins against his father and brother.
Esther Franz, Victor's wife. Disenchanted with her middle-class existence of scraping for pennies and sacrificing her wants and needs to help support Victor's father, she has turned to alcohol to escape the realities of middle age. With Victor's retirement now imminent, Esther is angered at his unwillingness to put the past behind and get on with the life that they had planned together decades ago. She tries to reconcile the brothers, taking alternating sides as each argues his point of view about the realities of the past. At the end, however, when Walter calls Victor a failure, Esther finally becomes Victor's ally and unconditionally accepts him and the life that they have constructed together.
Gregory Solomon, an eighty-nine-year-old Jewish furniture dealer who has come out of retirement to negotiate for the Franz family's old furniture. As his surname suggests, he is a wise arbitrator-philosopher, offering words of wisdom about life with endearing charm and humor. Despite the many losses he suffers, particularly the suicide of his daughter, his indomitable will to continue an active life without blaming others for his lot affords Victor insight about coping with life's inexplicable miseries and broken dreams.