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Parent sons relationship in Death of a Salesman
Father son relationships in death of a salesman
Essay on arthur millers life
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Parent-child relationships are used to create dramatic effect in both 'Top Girls' and 'Death of a Salesman' as the main parent-child relationships presented in both plays are based on lies which creates a sense of conflict. However because 'Top Girls' is mainly focused on the uncertainty of Angie not knowing who her mother it is arguable that 'Top Girls' is more dramatic in its portrayal.
Throughout both 'Top Girls' and 'Death of a Salesman' the main parent-child relationships that are presented are ones of tension and are based on lies and secrecy. In 'Top Girls' it is evident that the mother-daughter relationship between Joyce and Angie is not one of closeness as it has been built on lies. There is an indication to the audience that Angie believes that “I'm my aunt’s child” which is the main source of conflict between Joyce and Angie. Joyce calls Angie a “fucking rotten little cunt” which is shocking as it not language the audience would expect a mother to label her child with, which suggests Angie is not Joyce’s daughter therefore creating dramatic effect. The suggestion that Angie is not Joyce’s daughter creates dramatic effect until the very end of the play as the closing scene is simply Angie repeating the word “Mum?” The questioning suggests Angie has heard Joyce and Marlene’s previous conversation, in which it is revealed that Marlene is Angie’s mum therefore dramatic effect is created as the audience is left questioning whether Angie knows the truth.
Similarly in 'Death of a Salesman' the relationship between Willy and Biff, father and son, is one that has been built on lies which causes conflict between the pair, much like Joyce and Angie in 'Top Girls.' From the outset of 'Death of a Salesman' it is evident that the...
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...c in its portrayal as Gret's story and death is unexpected whereas Willy's suicide was hinted at from the very outset of the play.
Both 'Top Girls' and 'Death of a Salesman' present a variety of parent-child relationships and each relationship is presented in different way due to the different personalities of the characters portrayed. Willy is presented to be a man who has lost everything due to pinning his hopes on the ‘American Dream’ in an attempt to be a role model for his sons, whereas Marlene is a career driven independent women of the 80’s who has no aspiration to be a role model for her daughter. However 'Top Girls' is more dramatic in its portrayal as there is tension and uncertainty throughout the entire play surrounding the parent-child relationship whereas in 'Death of a Salesman' the reasons behind the troublesome relationships are clearly expressed.
The fathers in the two plays are comparable because they both have conflicts with their sons as a result of living in the past, and they die in the end. Willy, in Death of a Salesman, is never respected for his occupational status, so he places very high expectations on his son, Biff. Willy lives in the memory of past events to such a large extent that he cannot distinguish fantasy from reality, and he passes this trait onto Biff. Biff says, "How the hell did I ever get the idea I was a salesman there? I even believed myself that I'd been a salesman for him!...We've been talking in a dream for fifteen years. I was a shipping clerk" (1760). Willy's high demands of Biff cause Biff to experience the same difficulties of living in the present and the desire to live in a fantasy world. This conflict is only resolved in Biff's mind when he releases himself from his father's dominance and establishes his own identity. At his father's funeral, Biff has compassion for his father and remembers that "there were a lot of nice days;" his father did have good intentions but "had the wrong dreams" (1778). He realizes the futility of trying to live up to his father's unrealistic expectations, and Cory has the same realization in Fences. ...
Death of a Salesman is a play of tragedy because it tells of disappointment, failure, and death. Ultimately, Willy wastes his adult years trying to prove his worth but is very unsuccessful in everything he does. He has a misguided vision of what life should be that he passes on to his two children, and can no longer distinguish between reality and illusion. This play teaches good morals, values, and that personality can only get you so far in life. We come to understand this by experiencing, interpreting, and evaluating the play, which is a good strategy in approaching any work of literature.
In Arthur Miller's, “Death of a Salesman” and Charlotte Perkins Stetson’s, “The Yellow-Wallpaper” both struggle to maintain their own individual expectations in companion with Societies' input. Death of a salesman focused on how financial success plagues the family as they fail to meet the standards of the American Dream. The Yellow-Wallpaper focused on how society’s view of gender inhibits the narrators in functioning beyond her basic duties.
Through the actions of the male hegemony and the mother figure, both plays show the different perspectives both sexes have towards homosexuality. The patriarchal figures, show an intolerant and abusive perspective whereas the mother figures show a more understanding way of coping with the identities of their sons. By seeing the reactions of both males and females, it is to say that the maternal figures of the play show a more comprehensive attitude towards the struggles that the male protagonist undergo. Both plays are related to today´s society, because there are still families in which homosexuality is not accepted. People are still
In the book Death of a Salesman by Arthur miller, there are lot morals and the play switches over from time to time because a lot the Loman’s are focusing too much on a lot of such different things and as the play goes on you start to see why Linda becomes a problem to the whole family. This book shows you how different one family can be and how much they have to work together to become the absolute best they can be. Linda does nothing wrong but to her husband Willy she does not do a thing right and you will soon find out why.
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.
The plays, The Glass Menagerie and A Raisin in the Sun, deal with the love, honor, and respect of family. In The Glass Menagerie, Amanda, the caring but overbearing and over protective mother, wants to be taken care of, but in A Raisin in the Sun, Mama, as she is known, is the overseer of the family. The prospective of the plays identify that we have family members, like Amanda, as overprotective, or like Mama, as overseers. I am going to give a contrast of the mothers in the plays.
Miller’s interpretations on these subjects were not only true of the changing world at the time of the plays inception but have with an eerily truth echoed through to the present day. According to the cultural context in the LIT Student Edition “at the time, Death of a Salesman was written in 1949 the United States was experiencing the largest economic expansion in its history. After World War II, soldiers were returning home and women were leaving the factories where they held jobs while the men were away fighting the war. More and more consumer goods were being made and manufactured and as a result, companies were being consolidated, large impersonal corporations were taking over the mom and pop businesses.
During most father-son relationships, there are certain times where the father wants to become more of a "player" in his son’s life than his son believes is necessary. The reasons for this are numerous and can be demonstrated in different ways. Miller is able to give an example of this behavior through the actions of Willy Loman. When Biff comes home to recollect himself, Willy perceives it as failure. Since Willy desperately wants his oldest son, Biff, to succeed in every way possible, he tries to take matters into his own hands. "I’ll get him a job selling. He could be big in no time" (16). The reason that Biff came home is to find out what he wants in life. Because Willy gets in the way, matters become more complicated. Partly due to Willy’s persistence in Biff’s life, they have conflicting ideas as to what the American dream is. Willy believes that working on the road by selling is the greatest job a man could have (81). Biff, however, feels the most inspiring job a man could have is working outdoors (22).
Aside from having poor parenting skills, Willy also fails to act as a role model for his sons. When Biff discovers his father’s affair with “the woman,” Willy l...
In the original written play, there was no mention of a wife for Nick Bottom; the on-screen rendition, however, portrayed a wife who, though having no lines, was intolerant of her husband’s idiocy. To build on this, the characters that were part of Peter Quince and his cast were much more tolerable and less aware of Bottom’s idiocy in the play than in the movie. Hoffman’s portrayal depicted Bottom as a laughingstock among laughingstocks, going so far as to add a scene in which wine is poured over Bottom’s head to reveal the intolerance of his idiocy. Regarding the characters in the main portion of the play, Helena was much less irritating, whiny, and desperate in the original work than in Hoffman’s movie. The “Hollywood” aspect of the movie made Helena seem to be a rather unlikeable character (this also was affected by the setting, as mentioned above), whereas in the play she was seen to be mostly an unfortunate soul who whined only sometimes. These differences in character, though seemingly small, lead the audience to draw two very different conclusions about the characters’ situations and why they are placed in them. The analyzation of the characters changes from Shakespeare’s written play to Hoffman’s rendering of A Midsummer Night’s
Miller himself had three wives, so he was well-experienced in this area of dysfunctional families. In this play, Miller greatly challenges the idea of an ideal family with two parents who love each other and children who are beautiful and successful. These families are only a figment of our imagination to Miller. We can assume his life has somewhat to do with this assumption of his, but sadly, Miller happens to be right about this dysfunctional family, for the most part. “Death of a Salesman,” also addresses tragedy, as does “The Crucible.” Tragedy is something everyone will become familiar with at some point in their life, but that does not mean everyone will be able to handle it properly. The main character of “Death of a Salesman,” the man who ends up with the fateful death, is named Willy. In many eyes, Arthur Miller has a dark mind, but in all reality he is exposing society through the eyes of a man that is not a Christian, only furthering the truth that there is no hope in life without God. The plot of his play has three major events, which are first when Linda fully exposes Willy’s craziness, second when Willy begs
"Looking At Gender Roles In Death Of A Salesman English Literature Essay." Looking At Gender Roles In Death Of A Salesman English Literature Essay. UKESSAYS, n.d. Web. 17 Feb. 2014.
Although the parents in Arthur Miller 's play Death of a Salesman want their sons to be successful, their sons Biff and Happy struggle to communicate with them, which results in fights that creates further dysfunctional relationships in the Loman family. Success is crucial to the father Willy, who believes he is above other salesman, giving him the wrong idea of his position. When Willy saw his brother Ben as a success, jealousy swept over him. Willy is a pushy father who wants to show his children Biff and Happy that success is most important. Biff is a realist and wants his family to accept the fact that they may never live the dream. Happy has his father’s traits but is much more understanding with Biff.
Willy throughout the course of the play, daydream he is conversing with his successful brother Ben. Willy memories of Ben, are a constant reminder of how he falls short of his American Dream. Consequently the real tragedy wasn’t Willy failing to achieve the American dream, but rather his American Dream ignores the love of his family. It’s quite ironic that Willy literally kills himself for money at the end of the play. “Willy: After all the highways, and the trains, and the appointments, and the years, you end up worth more dead than alive.”(Act II) Desperately trying to escape the deception and lies he has been facing all of this life from his own doing, Willy decides that he will take his life in order for his family to collect on the life insurance policy.