Flashbacks In Arthur Miller's Death Of A Salesman

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The heart-reaching American drama Death of a Salesman written by Arthur Miller, describing a pattern of failure that transcends most of the members of the Loman family, portrays the important events through Willy’s flashbacks that have lured the family into the condition of disarray they are in. These flashbacks reveal a pattern in the relationship between Willy’s son Happy and his father in which Happy seeks the approval and love from his father equivalent to the attention that his older brother Biff receives. This loss of paternal attention causes Happy to seeks ways to re earn this attention even into his adulthood. Happy Loman’s blind ambition for the approval of his father destroys any possibility for him to form his own personal identity …show more content…

Because a man who makes an appearance in the business world, the man who creates personal interest, is the man who gets ahead”(Miller 33) rather than acknowledging the necessity of studies and intelligence represented by Bernard. Willy has tricked himself into the belief that to do well in business one needs to be well liked and thus imposes this false belief upon their children. Due to an enormous pressure to portray and represent the beauty and physical perfection, happy often attempts to pull Willy’s eyes onto him no avail. During one of the flashbacks it is revealed that Happy is “Forever seeking both parents’ attention with his declarations that he is losing weight”(Abbotson). Happy gets down on his back peddling in the air twice and states “I’m losing weight, you notice pop?”(Miller 29) as a plea to his father to look at him and be proud of him. Neither time Happy gets the response he searches for, one time he is completely ignored, the other he is responded with the criticism “Jumping rope is good too” (Miller 29) forcing Happy to further focus on his physical body …show more content…

“Happy carries Biff shoulder guards, golden helmet, and football pants. As the saying goes, Happy ‘carries water’ for Biff” (Dugan 47) describing how Happy is treated as less valuable and special in the eyes of Willy and thus Happy wants to mimic Biff and all of his traits. These traits Biff carries are not suitable for someone to function properly in society. The first bad value Happy mimics is an emphasis on the objectification and inappropriate behavior in regards to women. When Willy is called out on the terrible traits of Biff by Linda and Bernard, Linda exclaims “He is too rough with the girls, Willy. All the mothers are afraid of him!” (Miller 40). Willy defends Biff against these accusations yelling at them to “Shut up!” (40) and “There’s nothing the matter with him! You want him to be a worm like Bernard? He’s got spirit, personality”(40). This tone of the defense and unrelenting optimism towards Biff is the same optimism that Happy seeks and thus copies Biff in how he treats women. As an adult Happy looks at women without any respect, exemplified when in the restaurant Happy disrespectfully states his feelings on the looks of a woman stating “Look at that mouth. Oh, God. And the binoculars” (Miller 100). Happy has a twisted and perverted aspect on women which stemmed from the patterns of disrespect shown by

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