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Death of salesman as a social drama
Character analysis death of a salesman
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Death of A Salesman: Shifting of the American Dream Arthur Miller's play Death of a Salesman addresses loss of self-identity and a man's incapability to accept change with society in the 1950’s. The play involves memories, strange dreams, and confrontations with his family, which all make up the last hours of the protagonist’s life. Death of a Salesman captures all the dramatic and disparity that a family can gain during a downfall. The country at that time period was all about rebuilding itself and everyone achieving the “American Dream”. Therefore, American commercialism makes up of the play's idealistic themes and although ego and pride leads Willy Loman into committing suicide, he was driven by the harsh economic system of society making …show more content…
Overtime, development of fear of abandonment is made, which makes him want his family to conform to the “American Dream” he desires so much. Willy Loman almost has a phobia of being left alone. “Cause what could be more satisfying than to be able to go, at the age of eighty-four, into twenty or thirty different cities, and pick up a phone, and be remembered and loved and helped by so many different people…Today it’s all cut and dried, and there’s no chance for bringing friendship to bear or personality. You see what I mean? They don’t know me anymore.” (Act 2) Willy overpraises the idea of being remembered and is overthinking that even the clients who he sells to have abandoned him. He's absolutely terrified that ultimately he's really alone. Through out the story it is obvious that the salesman has a part of him that clings on to the past. His wife Linda explains to their son about accepting him. “I don’t say he’s a great man. Willy Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper. He’s not the finest character that ever lived. But he’s a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. He’s not to be allowed to fall into his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must be finally paid to such a person. You called him crazy.” (Act 1) His wife understands Willy's fear, and this is reflected that their son to be sympathetic to his own father. Here, she recognizes that Willy's fears have turned him into a fallacious person. She asks her son to look past those flaws, see the good in his father and forget about his abandonment issues. Throughout the play the flute is a symbol of Willy remembering his father. His father is portrayed as one of Willy’s most important role models. While reminding him of the father, the flute takes him back in time to his younger
Throughout the play, Willy can be seen as a failure. When he looks back on all his past decisions, he can only blame himself for his failures as a father, provider, and as a salesman (Abbotson 43). Slowly, Willy unintentionally reveals to us his moral limitations that frustrates him which hold him back from achieving the good father figure and a successful business man, showing us a sense of failure (Moss 46). For instance, even though Willy wants so badly to be successful, he wants to bring back the love and respect that he has lost from his family, showing us that in the process of wanting to be successful he failed to keep his family in mind (Centola On-line). This can be shown when Willy is talking to Ben and he says, “He’ll call you a coward…and a damned fool” (Miller 100-101). Willy responds in a frightful manner because he doesn’t want his family, es...
The unprecedented prosperity of the 1950's remained far in the future. Death of a Salesman tells the story of a man confronting failure in the success-driven society of America and shows the tragic route that eventually leads to his suicide. Loman is a symbolic icon of the failing America; he represents those that have striven for success but, in struggling to do so, have instead achieved failure in its most bitter form. Arthur Miller's tragic drama is a probing portrait of the typical American mind portraying an extreme craving for success and superior status in a world otherwise unproductive.
Willy Loman, a hard worker aged to his sixties never accomplished this goal. He always talked the talked, but never achieved to walk the walk. Willy Loman would always talk about who he's met and how he has always well known and liked, but truthfully he never was. "Willy: He's liked, but not-well liked…I got on the road and I went north to Providence. Met the Mayor. (ACT I, lines 232, 234)…Willy: And they know me, boys, they know me up and down New England. The finest people. And when I bring you fellas up, there'll be open sesame for all of us, 'cause one thing, boys: I have friends. I can park my car in any street in New England, and the cops protect it like their own…(ACT I, line 242)." Willy can talk of meeting wonderful and powerful men, but his limits stretch to the Mayor of Providence. Willy Loman's dreams seem to outlive Willy.
Will is an insecure man who has a dream of being a successful salesman. Throughout the whole film Willy’s main concern is making sure he is well liked. For example when Willy is talking to his wife about a business opportunity he says “ Oh, I’ll knock ‘em dead next week. I’ll go to Hartford. I’m very well liked in Hartford. You know, the trouble is, Linda, people don’t seem to talk to me.” In this scene Willy is saying that he is very well liked but then when questioned about the people in Hartford Willie admits that they just pass by him like he is not there. This scene proves Willy’s delusion to himself by the way he says people like him but admits they don’t talk to him. He is too caught up in the idea of being successful to realize that he isn’t that successful. Willy’s intentions are right but his delusion personality takes control over his actions. He sets his intentions so high that he’s setting himself up to fail. He isn’t an ideal role model for his children seeing as he gave up his passion of carpentr...
Willy Loman is a 60 year old senile salesman who desperately wants to be a successful salesman; however, his ideas about the ways in which one goes about achieving this are very much misguided, just as his morals are. He believes that popularity and good looks are the key to achieving the American dream, rather than hard work and dedication. He not only lives his entire life by this code, but instills his delusional beliefs in his two sons Biff and Happy. As a result, his sons experience similar failures in their adult lives. Willy led a life of illusion, lies and regret which not only ruined his life, but gad a negative impact on the lives of family as well.
The business world has moved ahead and the way of selling goods has changed, but Willy can't see this. Willy Loman has never come to terms with reality. His life is a dream and derives all his pleasures from the past and he always assures himself that all is well. His problem is that his role models are out. of place in the modern business where heartlessness and hostility win.
Although it is never actually said verbatim, it is obvious that Willy has some kind of mental problem that needs attention. Yet even in his own home, he can't get any help because his family can't bring it upon themselves to help him. This instance depicts the way society would rather "let someone else handle it" than take action and go against what is popular. This example is probably the saddest and most heartbreaking part of the play. A final instance of Willy Loman's alienation is the way he excludes himself from society.
Willy Loman is a firm believer in the "American Dream:" the notion that any man can rise from humble beginnings to greatness. His particular slant on this ideal is that a man succeeds by selling his charisma, that to be well liked is the most important asset a man can have. He made a living at this for 30 years, but as he enters the reclining years of his life, people have stopped smiling back and he can no longer sell the firm's goods to support himself. His ambition was one of greatness, to work hard and to be a member of the firm; and if he could not succeed in this respect, that he should at least be well-liked and be able to sell until the day of his death: When his friends would flock from all over the country to pay their respects.
Willy Loman stands in, so to speak, for every American male who defined himself as a man, husband and father with respect to his success in the workplace and his capacity for grabbing a share of the material American dream. Willy Loman is a man who has deluded himself and has judged himself more harshly than his wife or his son. His tragedy is that he comes to an understanding of this delusion too late to make any changes in his life. Whether or not we as readers or as members of the audience agree with his judgment is irrelevant. It is Willy's own failure that is important in this play.
Willy Loman will bring his downfall upon himself as he entices his own disillusions and the bedrock of his values pertaining to success and how one can achieve it. His failure to recognize the fruitless outcome of his own idealism will seal his fated suicide and have a determining effect on the failures of his two sons that when adolescent, idolized their father as a guid...
Moreover, the psychological view of Willy Loman is shown as a person who works as a traveling salesman and decides to commit suicide because the “American Dream” overwhelms him. As Charley says in the story: “the only thing you got in this world is what you can sell”. He is a normal person “who embodies traditional American values of success.”(Hansberry) In fact, Willy Loman wants to a great extent believe that he is one of the finest salesmen, a winner in life and a great father. For Mr. Loman, the accomplish...
Willy Loman equates success as a human being with success in the business world. When Willy was a young man, he heard of a salesman who could "pick up his phone and call the buyers, and without ever leaving his room, at the age of eighty-four, make his living." 8. This salesman is Willy's inspiration; someday to be so respected and so well known that he can still provide for his family, even at an old age. Of course, Willy is no good at being a salesman because his heart isn't in it.
One major theme in Death of a Salesman is the pursuit of the American dream. Playwright Arthur Miller details main character Willy Loman’s misguided quest of this dream. Death of a Salesman was written in postwar America, when the idea of the American Dream was a way of life. The United States was flourishing economically, and the idea of wealth was the base of the American Dream. Capitalism was alive and well, and by living in a capitalist society, everyone in America was supposed to have a chance to become rich and successful. Miller makes the reader realize this dream is a falsehood, because it doesn’t always work for everyone as planned. In the play Death of a Salesman, Willy Loman is a prime example of someone trying desperately, yet unsuccessfully, to pursue the false hope of the American Dream, directly resulting from capitalism’s effects.
Willy’s hubris makes him feel extremely proud of what he has, when in reality he has no satisfaction with anything in his life. Willy Loman’s sons did not reach his expectations, as a father, but he still continued to brag about Biff and Happy in front of Bernard. Willy Loman caused the reader to empathize with him because before his tragic death he did everything he could for his family. Empathy, Hubris, and Willy Loman’s tragic flow all lead him to his death that distends from the beginning. He is unable to face reality and realize that he’s not successful in life or at his job; he remains living in a world where he thinks he’s greater than everybody else because he’s a salesman.
Willy Loman, happened to be living in the times of great change. which he was not able to keep up with, both physically and mentally. He desperately tried to integrate, but he was left behind the modern. world. The world is a world.