The Character of Uncle Ben in Death of a Salesman
The character of Ben in Arthur Miller's Death of A Salesman serves a complex dramatic function. He is Willy Loman's real brother, the idealized memory of that brother, and an aspect of Willy's own personality, and these distinct functions are sometimes simultaneous. Through his aggressive actions and vibrant speech, the audience is given a strong contrast to Willy's self-doubt and self-contradiction. In addition, the encounters between Ben and Willy serve as an extended examination of professional and familial morality. Finally, Ben personifies the burden of Willy's expectations in regards to both material success and the proper role of a father.
The most fundamental of Ben's characteristics evident in his language is his haste. Appearing in the middle of Willy and Charley's card game, Ben's first words are, "I only have a few minutes" (45). He makes his departure shortly after announcing, "I'll be late for my train" (52). During his second appearance, he declares, "I haven't much time" and "I've got to go" (85-6). These lines are emblematic. In the two scenes with his brother that are based on Willy's memories, Ben comes and goes when he chooses, despite sometimes desperate pleas that he stay. This is in direct contrast to Willy, whose life has been structured around appointments and whose livelihood depends on the forbearance of near strangers.
Because of his position as a traveling salesman, Willy never controls the parameters of his interaction with other people. He calls upon customers and must depend upon their willingness to see him in order to make a living. Willy's affair with The Woman is only partially motivated by a need for sexual fulfillme...
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...l Ben. The briefness of these meetings also serves to convince Willy of his own inferiority by concealing any difficulties that might have existed in Ben's life. Ben has exactly the wrong degree of interaction with Willy. If he were entirely absent, he would not haunt his younger brother so. If he were more fully present, he would either have been of more comfort to Willy, or have been revealed as a more fully human, less mythic character. As it is, Ben serves only to remind him of his past loss, emphasize his current failure, and provide the means of his final destruction.
Works Cited
Centola, Steven R. "Family Values in Death of A Salesman." CLA Journal. 37.1 (1993): 29-41.
Jacobsen, Irving F. "Family Dreams in Death of A Salesman." American Literature. 47 (1975): 247-58.
Miller, Arthur. Death of A Salesman. New York: Penguin, 1976.
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.
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).
Some characters in literature who only appear briefly in the work can have a tremendous impact on the literature. These characters have a significant presence in the literary work. In Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, Ben Loman is that character. Ben is the brother of the main character Willy. Though Ben has a brief part in this play, he affects the theme and development of other characters.
Arthur Miller’s play, Death of a Salesman, portrays the cost of selling oneself to the American Dream. Willy Loman, the central character, is madly determined to achieve affluence that he overlooks the value of his family and himself in the process. He instills in his sons, Biff and Happy Loman, that being charismatic will hand them a prosperous lifestyle. Happy trusts in his father’s ideology while Biff’s beliefs contradict them. Biff deems that success is a product of happiness and contentment, not a paycheck. Out of all the sociological theories, social conflict best emphasizes the author’s perspective of how conflict, through class and family, can deteriorate the American dream. By analyzing the play’s themes- social class and family- through the sociological perspectives: structural-functional, social conflict, and symbolic interactionist, we can predict what drives these characters to behave and perceive things the way they do.
Willy is a man who does not know how to make the most of what he has. He sets himself up for...
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...
Willy first experiences abandonment through the actions of his brother, Ben Loman. In the first act, Willy sees Ben in his dream, “walking away down some open road; I was going to find father in Alaska…” (Miller 1575). Willy continues a discussion with his brother in which Ben lies and jokingly admits going to Africa. Willy regrets not going with Ben to Africa, because that is where Ben became rich. Because he was not as successful as his brother, Willy views Ben’s going to Africa as a betrayal.
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
The name Willy, which we realize is short for William, is a rather silly name. However, it might suggest that Willy is willful in his denial of the lack of honest relationship with his two sons. Maybe he is willingly deluded by the fantasy of what he might have been or what his sons might have become and the mediocre reality of the way life actually is for the Loman family. Arthur Miler’s “Death of a Salesman” portrays the shattered relationships hidden inside a fallacy of grandeur that a father has with his two sons.
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...
Willy constantly battles with living in the past. Throughout the entire play, he seems to wander off into his confused mind. After Willy returns home early from a business trip, Linda, his wife, and he converse about their son Biff as follows:
In today's modern times we hear the word hero all of the time. The news media throws the term around as if it is an everyday word. What exactly is a hero? Who, or what, can be classified as heroic? The correct definition of the word hero is: One invested with heroic qualities in the opinions of others. That is a fine definition for books and intellectual minds. To the average person, however, a hero is much more.
Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman. Eds. Alison Booth and Kelly J. Mays. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2010. 2128-2193. Print.
In many literary works there has been a predilection for choosing themes such as family relationships as plots, because it seems that this type of topics go straight to the receptors’ heart, creating new connections and perceptions of life.
Willy's main flaw is his foolish pride, this it what makes him a tragic hero. Yet there are many facets to his personality that contribute to the state he and the family are in during the play. His upbringing of the boys is one major issue, he raised them with the notion that if one is well-liked, he need not worry about qualifications, he believed that if his boys were popular they would come out on top. Sadly, he doesn't realize that the only way an ordinary person can get rich is through work (represented by Bernard) or through luck and good timing (Ben), and Willy missed the boat when it came to ...