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Death of a salesman conclusion analysis
Analysis setting death of a salesman
Analysis setting death of a salesman
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The play, Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller follows the Loman family and the conflict that leads up to their father, Willy’s, eventual suicide. There is a sense of a distorted reality that is prompted by Miller’s expressionist impressions. These impressions are supported by the use of the flute, set descriptions of where the Lomans live, and complex dialogue. All of these components combined not only fuse together the somber and dream-like tone and the theme of abandonment of but also the distorted reality that Willy and his family live in. Miller’s descriptive and almost interactive form of writing builds up to create a play full of flashbacks and delusion. Set descriptions from the Death of a Salesman are presented in a way that paints the Loman’s house in New York as confining. Willy dislikes the fact that they moved into the city where the towns and …show more content…
Through dialogues we learn information on Willy’s affair, Happy and Biff’s plan to go into business, the neglection of Linda, and Willy’s true inability to be a successful salesman. Although the play revolves around a series of conversations, the most important dialogues come in at the end of the play. By the end of act two, Willy kills himself in a car accident and although he claimed to be a successful and a “well liked” businessman, the truth comes out as his funeral. Linda (Willy’s wife) proclaims, “Why didn’t anyone come?...where were all the people he knew?.” It is important to understand that Linda thought so highly of Willy, she believed his claims of popularity and saw him as best of the best. It took a funeral for Linda to realize that the reason Willy was abandoned by his “friends” was because Willy was essentially insane and he created his own distorted reality. Arthur Miller uses dialogue to create rising action, discuss the plans of characters, and push them into their downfall triggered by their own
Porter, Thomas E. “Willy Loman and the American Dream.” Readings on Death of a Salesman. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, Inc., 1999.
Like countless characters in a play, Willy struggles to find who he is. Willy’s expectations for his sons and The Woman become too high for him to handle. Under the pressure to succeed in business, the appearance of things is always more important than the reality, including Willy’s death. The internal and external conflicts aid in developing the character Willy Loman in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman.
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
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller concerns itself with the fall of a simple man perpetually in a steadfast state regarding his own failure in a success-driven society. The protagonist of the play, Willy Loman, will follow a tragic trajectory that will eventually lead to his suicide. Arthur Miller's tragic play is an accurate portrayal of the typical American myth that sustains an extreme craving for success and a belief in the illusion of the American dream, a dream attainable only by a handful of people. Having chosen a career in sales Willy Loman constantly aspires to become 'great'. Nevertheless, Willy is a poor aging salesman that considers himself to be a failure when comparing himself to his successful father and brother, but he is incapable of consciously admitting it. Consequently, Willy will measure his level of success with the level of success attained by his offspring, particularly his eldest son Biff. Their difficult relationship contribute to the play's main plot. Willy unfolds his deluded perception and recollection of the events as the audience gradually witnesses the tragic downfall of a man shadowed by a mental illness that has already began to take it's toll on his mind and personality.
It surrounds the life of Willy Loman, an aging salesman whose son Biff has just returned from a work stint out in the west. As Biff’s father, Willy desires him to have a good paying job and to settle on one job, two things Biff has been struggling to do. Tensions heighten between the two characters, while the conformist son Happy and Willy’s wife Linda, an optimist to say the least, are stuck in the middle. This is when the reader is really exposed to Willy’s delusion. It is learned that Willy has been suicidal for a very long time, constantly trying to asphyxiate by inhaling gas fumes. On top of this, throughout the play there are flashback scenes of when Biff was younger, and they progress in intensity as the piece moves on. Images of the prosperous Uncle Ben haunt Willy and taunt him of his unsuccess, and scandalous scenes of his cheating affair in Boston haunt him otherwise. Eventually, Willy is fired and Biff does not acquire a job approved by his father. This all ends in the ultimatum of Willy’s suicide by car crash and Biff’s acceptance of the life he wants to live. The last audible words of the play are in a line spoken by Linda while walking away from the grave: “We’re free… we’re free...” (Miller 109). These powerful words, and from this character especially, pound the destructive nature of Willy’s dreams
The play “Death of the Salesman” by Arthur Miller, introduced the dramatic story of Willy Loman, a salesman who has reached the end of the road. Willy Loman is a washed-up salesman who is facing hard times. In “Death of a Salesmen,” Willy Loman has been deluding himself over the years to the point he cannot understand what is wrong with him. This leads to the problems with is sons, wife, and career; it ultimately is what ends his life. I believed that the character of Willy 's delusion caused him to fall. While there were many contributing factors to Willy 's demise, his failure to cope with such circumstances and to become trapped in his own delusion is what tears Willy apart from himself and his family. Rather than facing the reality, Willy
Willy’s failures and lies have been a result in his constant faith and will to achieve his dreams, the dreams which society has implanted within him. His flaws have come from society, but also himself, and Miller has used this to create the conflict and tragedy in the play. It is then that writer then makes the impact of Willy’s failures greater, incorporating his death into the play, crushing his dreams and the dreams of the characters around him, creating his tragedy.
Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman follows protagonist Willy Loman in his search to better his and his family’s lives. Throughout Willy Loman’s career, his mind starts to wear down, causing predicaments between his wife, two sons and close friends. Willy’s descent into insanity is slowly but surely is taking its toll on him, his job and his family. They cannot understand why the man they have trusted for support all these years is suddenly losing his mind. Along with his slope into insanity, Willy’s actions become more aggressive and odd as the play goes on. Despite Willy and Biff’s “family feud”, his two sons Happy and Biff truly worry about their father’s transformation, Happy saying: “He just wants you to make good, that’s all. I wanted to talk to you about dad for a long time, Biff. Something’s – happening to him. He – talks to himself” (Miller 21). Willy, as a father, cares about his children but he wishes they would do better. He believes Biff should have been an athlete. According to Harrington, “Even figuratively, Willy is haunted, and particularly in Biff’s failure to achieve success as a sports figure” (108). This haunting is part of what led to Willy’s slow plunge into madness. As Willy’s career in sales fails, he also fails, even failing his family. Heyen adds: “He didn’t have anything of real value to give to his family, or if he did, he didn’t know what it was” (48). His debilitating flashbacks and delusional hallucinations with Uncle Ben cement his horrifying realizations that he has let down his family. Willy Loman blames the economy for his downfall in his career. In one of his more extreme outbursts he exclaims, “There’s more people! That’s what’s ruining this country! Population is getting out of control. ...
In brief, it is apparent that Willy’s own actions led to not only his own demise, but his children’s as well. The salesman tragically misinterpreted the American Dream for only the superficial qualities of beauty, likeability and prosperity. Perhaps if Willy had been more focused on the truth of a person’s character, rather than purely physical aspects, his family’s struggles and his own suicide could have been avoided. On the whole, Arthur Miller’s play is evidence that the search for any dream or goal is not as easy and the end result may seem. The only way to realize the objective without any despair is the opposite of Willy Loman’s methods: genuineness, perseverance and humility.
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.
In the play, The Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller,Willy Loman, an unsuccessful business man struggling to support his family is completely out of touch with reality throughout the plot line. Many characters throughout this play and their interactions with Willy have showed the audience his true colors and what he thinks is important in life. His constant lying and overwhelming ego certainly does not portray his life in factual terms, but rather in the false reality that he has convinced himself he lives in.
Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman is the story of a man much like Miller's father, a salesman, "whose misguided notions of success result in disillusionment" (Draper 2360). The suppression of the main character, Willy Loman's, true nature is a result of his pursuit of a completely misguided dream. The fraudulent and miserable existence this generates is accentuated by the father-son relationship he shares with his son Biff.
Arthur Miller’s play “Death of a Salesman”, primarily focuses on the flaws and failures of Willy Loman, Millers’ main character in this story. Willy’s distorted and backward views of the American Dream, paired with his inability to let go of the past lead him down a road of regret and in the end his biggest failure which was his wasted life.
Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman is a play that follows the troubles of a salesman named William “Willy” Loman, whose overzealous definition of true success inevitably leads to his suicide. I feel that a few of Willy’s unique characteristics contribute to his downfall, but that his unstable point of view and completely misconstrued concept of reality make the greatest contributions.
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...