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Role of Willy Loman in death of a salesman
Critical analysis of the death of a salesman
Critical analysis of the death of a salesman
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Death of a Salesman Character Development Essay
A person’s attitude is mostly what everyone around him or her will view them as. From this they can tell many things. Whether it is if the person is funny or down to earth or even irresponsible. Many times people change personalities often and they would be classified as being a dynamic type of person. A person who is doesn’t change is classified as being a static character. Willy, from Death of a Salesman written by Arthur Miller, is a static character for his inability to grasp reality, his poor parenting and his constant lying to his wife.
Foremost, Willy has a problem with his inability to grasp reality. As he grows older his mind is starting to slip. For example, when he talks to the woman and his brother Ben. Throughout the story, Willy dreams of talking to the woman, because the woman is a person that he was dating in when he went to Boston. He was cheating behind his wife’s back. Willy basically uses her as a scapegoat when he’s hallucinating about her. He blames all of his problems on the woman. For instance Willy says, “ Cause you do… There’s so much I want to make for.” (38) This is the evidence right here. Also he dreams about his brother Ben. Willy wishes could be more like his brother who has just passed away a couple of months previously to the story. He also wishes he didn’t have to work and could be rich like Ben. He respects Ben for not really working and making a lot of money. Another example of Willy’s hallucinations are when he says,“ How are you all?” (45) This occurs when Willy is talking with Charley and he starts thinking about Ben. Willy’s inability to grasp reality never changed throughout the story.
Willy also has very poor parenting skills. He has two children Biff and Happy. Willy excuses Biff for a lot of events when he was younger. If Biff stole something, Willy just brushes it off and says that is was no big deal. He didn’t even care when Biff failed math and did not graduate from high school. He measured success in how many people you knew not what your grades are. In one breath Willy would say that Biff is lazy and then in the next say he’s not.
At the beginning of the play it is evident that he cannot determine the realities of life, and so he repeatedly contradicts himself to establish that his conclusion is correct and opinion accepted. These numerous contradictions demonstrate that Willy is perturbed of the possibility that negative judgements may come from others. Willy strongly believes that “personality always wins” and tells his sons that they should “be liked and (they) will never want”. In one of Willy’s flashbacks he recalls the time when his sons and him were outside cleaning their Chevy. Willy informs Biff and Happy the success of his business trips and how everyone residing in Boston adores him. He mentions that due to the admiration of people he does not even have to wait in lines. He ultimately teaches his sons that being liked by others is the way to fulfilling one’s life and removing your worries. These ideals, that one does not need to work for success, demonstrate Willy’s deluded belief of achieving a prosperous life from the admiration and acceptance of others. This ultimately proves to be a false ideology during his funeral, when an insufficient amount of people arrive. Willy constantly attempts to obtain other’s acceptance through his false tales that depict him as a strong, successful man. In the past, he attempts to lie to his wife, Linda, about the amount of wealth he has attained during his
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...
In a flashback Willy has, it is shown that Willy jokes about Charley’s son, Bernard, a “nerd” who helps Biff with his math so he doesn’t fail, by claiming that despite Bernard being smart, he will not get far in life because he is not as “liked: as Biff, who at the time was a football star. After Biff saw his father with is mistress, he began viewing his father more negatively, rejecting all of Willy’s future plans for him, calling him a “phony little fake”. Biff’s rejection of Willy’ future plans for him sends Willy into a downward spiral, making him more and more delusional. Ironically, Willy failed to sell his plans to his own son, when his main profession is selling products to people, as he is a
"After all the highways, and the trains, and the years, you end up worth more dead than alive," (Miller, 98). This quote was spoken by the main character of the Arthur Miller play Death of a Salesman: Willy Loman. This tragedy takes place in Connecticut during the late 1940s. It is the story of a salesman, Willy Loman, and his family’s struggles with the American Dream, betrayal, and abandonment. Willy Loman is a failing salesman recently demoted to commission and unable to pay his bills. He is married to a woman by the name of Linda and has two sons, Biff and Happy. Throughout this play Willy is plagued incessantly with his and his son’s inability to succeed in life. Willy believes that any “well-liked” and “personally attractive man” should be able to rise to the top of the business world. However, despite his strong attempts at raising perfect sons and being the perfect salesman, his attempts were futile. Willy’s only consistent supporter has been his wife Linda. Although Willy continually treats her unfairly and does not pay attention to her, she displays an unceasing almost obsessive loyalty towards her husband: Even when that loyalty was not returned. This family’s discord is centered on the broken relationship between Biff and Willy. This rift began after Biff failed math class senior year and found his father cheating on Linda. This confrontation marks the start of Biff’s “failures” in Willy’s eyes and Biff’s estrangement of Willy’s lofty goals for him. This estrangement is just one of many abandonments Willy suffered throughout his tragic life. These abandonments only made Willy cling faster to his desire to mold his family into the American Dream. They began with the departure of his father leaving him and...
http://www.biography.com/people/arthur-miller-9408335#awesm=oErg8SN49Mb56o Era I. Author A. Arthur Miller 1. Early Life a. Born in Harlem, New York on October 17, 1915. b.University of Michigan. c. Wrote prolifically through college and young adulthood. 2.
We can tell Willy has some sort of delusions in multiple instances, the first appearing when he said, “I coulda sworn I was driving that Chevy today.” (Miller 8). He keeps with his delusions to the point he sees his dead brother. This could be what’s driving Willy to forcing his own son to switch into a better job, to make him more like his brother Ben. At the end of the book, Willy expects his suicide to fix everything and bring the family together. Willy’s idea of bringing his family together As for Amanda, her husband ran off on her with some other women and went to the islands, fleeing just like Tom wants to do. Amanda may worry that Laura will be single her whole life his like her, and Amanda wants to find a nice gentleman caller for
Throughout the play, Willy has hallucinations of his brother Ben, who left Willy when he was young, “Well, I was just a baby, of course, only three or four years old,” (Miller 47), and the man later offered to take Willy with him, but Willy had a dream “There’s a man eighty-four years old-” (Miller 86) and he felt that he was going to accomplish that dream. “Willy retreats into a dream world consisting of his roseate recollections of the past and of fantasies,” (Hadomi), he hallucinates often, and this is a better way of saying he’s delusional. He did not, he failed miserably, he had to borrow money from Charley “If you can manage it-- I need a hundred and ten dollars,” (Miller 96), then he pretended it was a loan from him “I’m keeping an account of everything, remember,” (Miller 96), that he would pay back “I’ll pay every penny back,” (Miller 96), but Linda and Charley knew he was not going to pay any of it back. Willy had a hard time accepting defeat, and he wanted his boys to succeed where he failed, but Biff was always better with physical labor “when all you really desi...
Subconsciously, Willy knows his capabilities and his problems and exiles himself socially. That could very well be the reason behind the "conversations" he has with himself throughout the novel; he feels like he can't talk to anyone else. Willy has a war going on in his mind, and he is helpless toward ending it. He knows that he can do well in life and be the man he should be, but he just can't seem to piece together the correct method of doing so. It's because of this that he continually defeats himself and repeatedly fails.
He believes that he is well-liked and respected by everyone, which is not true. Willy's pride leads to his downfall, as he cannot accept that he is not successful and that his dream is unattainable. Finally, the illusion of Willy's life that resulted from him dreaming the wrong dream ends up in his tragic suicide and the destruction of his family. Willy's dream creates an illusion of a perfect life, which is not true.
A major part of the reader's animosity towards Willy stems from his responsibility for the ruin of his sons. Willy's affair ends up being the reason that Biff ends up a high-school failure and a football has-been. This blunder both disheartens and destroys his eldest son. It becomes the reason Biff refuses to go to summer school; it becomes the reason that Biff leaves home. Yet, this is all a result of Willy's need to be likeable. He cheats on his doting wife simply because it makes him feel special, because it gives him proof that women other that Linda are interested in him, because it makes him feel well liked. A woman "picked [him]"; a woman laughs when he makes jokes about keeping pores open; a woman pays him some attention (38).
The very first section of the first scene, already defines the basis of Willy’s character for the rest of the play. The stage directions on page 8 identify him as being an exhausted aging man, whose work seems to be wearing him down. “…lets his burden down…” (Miller, 8). Although this makes Willy appear uninteresting, he soon contrasts this characteristic when he shows an optimistic determination towards his own failures. “I’ll start out in the morning. Maybe I’ll feel better in the morning.” (Miller, 9) Another aspect of Willy that makes him more interesting to the audience is his already visible complexity of layers: “I have such thoughts, I have such strange thoughts.” (Miller, 9) This of course leads the audience on to wondering what exactly is taking place in a man’s head to make him say such a thing, evoking a mild fascination in Willy’s character. Another character that is developed almost immediately within the first two pages of the play is Linda. Again the stage directions on page 8 introdu...
An American dream is a dream that can only be achieved by passion and hard work towards your goals. People are chasing their dreams of better future for themselves and their children. The author Arthur Miller in Death of a Salesman has displayed a struggle of a common man to achieve the American dream. Willy Loman the protagonist of the play has spent his whole life in chasing the American dream. He was a successful salesman who has got old and unable to travel for his work, and no one at work gives him importance anymore. He is unhappy with his sons Happy and Biff because both of them are not successful in their lives. Moreover, Biff and Happy are also not happy with their father Willy because they don’t want to live a life that Willy wants them to live. The heated discussions of Willy and his older son Biff affect the family and the family starts to fall apart. However, Willy is unable to achieve the American dream and does not want to face the reality that his decisions for himself and his family have lead him to be a failure in the society. In the play Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller, the protagonist Willy Loman spends his whole life to achieve the American Dream by his own perception and denies facing the reality, just like nowadays people are selling themselves and attempting to find success in life.
Willy's goal throughout life was to climb out of his social class. As a salesman, Willy was a failure and he tried desperately to make his sons never end up like him. As a result, he loses his mind and his grasp on reality. Throughout the story, Willy often has flashbacks of the conversations that he and his brother Ben once had and the author intertwines them in past and present very nicely.
Willy cannot understand how everything could have gone so wrong for Biff. Willy has always been und...
or is he, as Luke Carrol put it in the Herald Tribune, " a pathetic little