What makes you successful in Life? Is it being well liked or highly thought of or being a high school star? I think being successful is achieving goals that you have set throughout your life. It is not lying and stealing but being honest and hard working throughout your life.
Throughout the play, I would like to mention four characters that were important in my mind; Willy Loman, Linda, Biff, and Happy. Willy is the main character who is an older salesperson who is lost in false hopes and illusions, a man who dreams of an easy success and wealth, but throughout his life, never achieves much. I felt sorry for him because he thinks he is doing the right thing in life, working and teaching his sons to be successful but everything he does leaves him hopeless. Like Biff, his son said at his funeral that his dad was lost is the same way I feel about him. He was trying but he was bad at his attempts. Linda said in the last scene that, Willy was good with his hands. If he did something different, different carrier maybe the ending wouldn’t be so depressing for him.
Linda is the wife to Willy, Biffs and Happy’s mother. She is a strong character in the play. She is very supportive and protective of him knowing that Willy is tired. She knew he tried committing suicide, and that is because he is mentally ill. She is always trying to stand between Willy and her sons to ease the tension. This is because her respect to her husband is great and she still loves him for who he is. This makes her loyal.
The elder son of Willy, who is thirty-four years old, is Biff. He led a charmed life in high school as a football star, lots of friends, and female admirers. He flunked his senior math class which held him back from graduating and being succe...
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...e Happy was lying about his job, he, himself has been lying to his parents and even Willy was living in a lie. Biff realized that and wanted change. At the end in anger he told the truth and admitted the lies kept the family from reaching success.
“Death of a Salesman,” is not a play with a happy ending. One way I could identify or compare is the conflict between kids and parents. In my life, especially when I was living at home my parents had rules every sibling had to follow. As I grew older I did not agree with everything my parents believed in, which created conflict between us. I always thought my parents were too controlling with trying to enforce their rules on us. But once I got married and moved out there is a lot I realized. I realized my parents only wanted best. Biff in the end realized too that his father wasn’t bad; he was just after the wrong dream.
Willy, Linda, Biff and Happy are all characters that use self- deception as a way to mentally escape the terrible reality of their lives. As the play progresses, and ends Biff is truly the one and only character that becomes self- aware. At the end of the play Biff accepts the lies his family and him have been living in for years. Biff makes huge changes mentally at the end of the play, which cannot be said for the rest of the Loman family.
It taught me a lot like how a family should be and how a family should not be. The play makes you think wow this can really relate to me as a high school student and athlete. Linda needs to learn to speak her mind no matter what her husband says because people have rights and she should be able to talk about what she thinks is going on with her family. “When Linda converses with her husband it’s almost as if se walking on eggshells and almost that she is taking to a frail eggshell that is her husband’s mental state.” (Source 2). Nothing Linda says to try to help her husband will work because she is someone who gets under her skin and makes it a lot worse to willy but too anyone else she is doing anything in her power to help him much like and other wife would do for their husband. A couple weeks after willy dies after all that the family has been through with him it’s a very sad dad but the family is very mad at him still so it is a very hard position to be in and I know I would never want to be to in the position that this family is in. willy was a very mean and angry person to his family and had a lot of stress going on in his life this is why we need to realize that all he wanted was to make his family happy but it was just something he could not do so he gave up and just took all of his anger out on
The only way to become a truly happy person is to surround yourself with the things that make you happy. Setting logical goals and pursuing dreams is going to lead to a successful life. In the play, Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller, Willy, Linda, Biff, and Happy use self-deception as a means to mentally escape the reality of their lives. Biff is the only character who becomes self-aware by the end of the play. He realizes that his whole life has been a lie and that Willy’s standards for Biff’s achievements in life are simply unreachable. Happy is too caught up in himself throughout the play to realize that his father is in need of an escape from his dysfunctional life. Willy has lived his whole life setting these goals for himself that he simply can’t attain. Happy makes it known at the end of the play that he is planning to follow in his father’s footsteps. This foreshadows the downfall of Happy’s life to come. Linda is constantly reassuring Willy that the decisions he has made are the right choices. She finds out about his possible suicide attempts and she refuses to seek help for him. She constantly tells his that he is doing great when in reality his career is going nowhere and his relationship with his sons gets worse as the days go on. Willy was a man who claimed to have a good sense of pride. He believes that he thrived in his times of struggle. He lost the battle for his life and ended his life due to the constant disappointments and failures that he had to live with every day. Willy refused to see the truth in his life and continued to feed off the lies. He got so caught up in his lies that he lost what the truth really was.
... morals and personality towards his goals and at the same time trying to pass those values onto his sons, making him lose their respect, which is one of the many reasons that ended up taking his life. For the most part one can see that issues like Willys cannot only be seen or heard of in a play but also in the real world. Everybody in general wants to conform and be liked in today's competitive society, which is one of the reasons why many people don't get to accomplish the things they want to accomplish because they are either to scared or don't have the courage to step out of the social norms and achieve what they what to achieve. If anyone learns anything from this tragic character, one can say that truly knowing ones-self can really help in the long run because if one doesn't know who they are, they can end up leading a miserable life, in a miserable world.
In short, Willy Loman's unrealistic dreams caused his downfall. By trying to be successful with material desires and being "well-liked" he failed. By the play's end he had to lose his own life just to provide funding for that of his family. He put his family through endless torture because of his search for a successful life. He should have settled with what he had, for his true happiness included a loving family. Willy's example shows that one must follow their own dreams to be truly accomplished.
In Death of a Salesman, written by American playwright Arthur Miller, focuses on Biff’s relationship towards his father Willy Loman. He plays the role that drives most of Willy’s thoughts and actions, specifically his memories. Whenever Willy is not able to accept the present, he reverts to the past where Biff is usually nearby. Before Willy’s trip to Boston, Biff admired his father. He trusted and believed his philosophy that any person can be successful, provided that he is “well-liked”. Biff never questions his father even though at times it is obvious that Willy is not following the rules himself. This results in Biff growing up believing that rules do not apply to him because Willy does not follow them nor does he expect
Biff discovers who he is and is determined to become true to himself. Happy, unfortunately is destined for living in the same delusion that Willy lived in.
Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman is a tragic play about an aging and struggling salesman, Willy Loman, and his family’s misguided perception of success. In Willy’s mind, being well-liked is more important than anything else, and is the means to achieving success. He teaches this flawed idea to his sons, Biff and Happy, and is faithfully supported by his wife Linda. Linda sympathizes with Willy’s situation, knowing that his time as an important salesman has passed. Biff and Happy hold their father to impossibly high standards, and he tries his best to live up to them. This causes Willy to deny the painful reality that he has not achieved anything of real value. Willy’s obsession with a false dream results in his losing touch with reality and with himself.
Miller’s Willy shows many times that his idea of success goes no deeper than the superficial by teaching his sons the wrong path to a successful life. When Biff was in high school, Willy had already started to teach his son the false values in which he believed. When Willy found out Biff had stolen a football and was caught by his coach, who did not get angry, Willy responded by using the incident as an example of the importance of his philosophy.
In Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller, the conflicts that formulate between Biff and Willy Loman build up to the death of Willy. Biff’s delusional perception of being liked in the world leads to a successful life which was an idea brought onto him by his father, Biff’s discovery of his father's affair, and Biff’s lack of business success all accumulate to the heavy conflicting relationship between Biff and his father, Willy. These contribute immensely to the idea that personal dreams and desire to reach success in life can negatively impact life with personal relationships, which causes people to lose sight of what is important. This ultimately leads to the Willy committing suicide from the build up of problems with his son.
WILLY: Biff Loman is lost. In the greatest country in the world a young man with such—personal attractiveness, gets lost. And such a hard worker. There’s one thing about Biff—he’s not lazy.
The play centers on Willy Loman, an aging salesman who is beginning to lose his grip on reality. Willy places great emphasis on his supposed native charm and ability to make friends; stating that once he was known throughout New England, driving long hours but making unparalleled sales (something true only because of his philandering with secretaries), his sons Biff and Happy were the pride and joy of the neighborhood, and his wife Linda went smiling throughout the day. Unfortunately, time has passed, and now his life seems to be slipping out of control.
Plot, characterization, and dialogue are the elements of drama that I’ve chosen to analyze for Death of a Salesmen. Willy seems to be in conflict with himself and everyone else in his life. Conflict is what drives the plot and will be the main element of drama that’s analyzed in this essay. In Death of a Salesman Willy is the protagonist and his son Biff is the antagonist, he provokes Willy’s anger by not holding a steady job and measuring up to what his father feels he should be. The plot in Death of a Salesman is dialogue driven and the theme of the play is the death of Willy’s career and his inability to become successful in life. He also has hopes of Biff doing something more with his life other than working as a farmhand.
Death of a Salesman, a play written in 1949, by Arthur Miller, has been Miller’s most famous work thanks to how relatable the play can be to almost every citizen in America. The play is told from the point of view of the principal character, Willy Loman. The play examines Willy’s perception of success, and the conflicts that his perception creates in his household. Having a wrong perception of likeness, lying, and cheating can lead to an individual to make decisions that can be irreversible and have many consequences. The family of Willy Loman is an example of how the life of each one of the members of the family can be defined by the mindsets of only one person.
Willy?s identity crisis brings him much despair because without comprehension of his true nature his aspirations are inappropriate. Willy?s relationship with Biff is unquestionably most significant in Death of a Salesman, for it emphasizes the theme of self-awareness and its importance in the novel. Willy?s existence consists of a ?patchwork of errors in judgement, mental and moral lapses, and misdirected hopes?, however, Willy?s ?greatest mistake is living far too long with the wrong dream? (Nelson 110).