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Critical Analysis of death of a salesman
Death of a salesman character analysis essay
Critical Analysis of death of a salesman
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“Death of a Salesman” by Arthur Miller, is a short play told of the life of Willy Loman, protagonist, as he recounts memories as he talks to himself. Willy is a sixty-three-year-old traveling salesmen. Willy Loman is also a man of many trades but throughout the play, he seems to show abandonment. Willy has been left behind since he was an adolescent by those he cherishes. Willy expresses these ideas of such abandonment through his father, his brother, and his own abandonment to his family. Being merely four years old, Willy, and Ben, his brother, were abandon by their father who left for Alaska. The lack of a father figure leads to Willy’s lack of guidance and concern. “WILLY [pulling Ben away from her impatiently]: Where is Dad? Didn’t you follow him?... I discovered after a few days that I was heading due south, so instead of Alaska, I ended up in Africa.” (Act 1. 1042-43.) The idea of abandonment felt is through Willy’s longing for memories about his father. If Willy’s dad had been around, then he wouldn’t have to go to his brother for countless memories. Willy is fond of the past rather the present. “WILLY: No, Ben! Please tell about Dad… and some …show more content…
Ben left the Willy behind in hopes of finding their father in Alaska when Willy was an adolescent. With Ben leaving, he caused Willy to develop this false interpretation of what the “American Dream” is. Willy takes interest in Ben being so success and rich. Willy looks up to his older brother and sees that everything Ben does is right. After their father left, Ben, being the oldest, was supposed to be Willy’s “go to man “serving as not only a sibling, but a father figure too. Ben abandoned Willy just as much as their father did. Ben visited very rarely in his trip to and from Alaska. Willy feels as though he—along with his family, could’ve been successful had he gone to Alaska with Ben. Ben is a mirror image of what Willy Loman could’ve been but failed to
In the book Death of A Salesman, author Arthur Miller shows how cruel life can be through the life of Willy Loman, the main character. His feelings of guilt, failure, and sadness result in his demise.
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.
On Willy’s funeral, Charley says that “He [is] a happy man with a batch of cement.” As Linda also recognizes, Willy is “wonderful with his hands”. It shows that Willy actually is a man who loves to work with tools and he is good at fixing and building things at home. Willy’s talent can have made him an excellent carpenter as Biff said in one point. However, Willy chooses to sacrifice what he is really good at, to be a successful salesman as Dave. Moreover, Willy refuses to go to Africa to assist his brother Ben and gives up the opportunity to be rich. Because Dave’s successful image is deeply rooted in Willy’s mind, he believes that one day he can achieve his expectation. Even though Willy understands the difficult financial situation of family, he still refuses Ben and the opportunity to be rich because he considers he is struggling for his unfulfilled expectations. When he is fired by Howard from the company he worked for last thirty-four years, he still refuses to take a job from Charley. Since Willy still want to follow his dream of being Dave, he would not do any other job but trying hard to be successful salesman in business. It is also a part of his sacrifice for his unfulfilled
The main theme of the plot seemed to be Willy reaching for the "American Dream". Financial success, business success, outwardly perfect family, revered by your peers, and in general respected by all. Early on in the play two things are evident to the reader; Willy's questionable mental status, and his tumultuous relationship with his sons.
Benizman asserts that there is two sides of Willy’s past felt within his memories; the aspect of feeling he’s done something right, and his constant inferiority, both explain Willy’s understanding of the American Dream, which is if one can’t make a decent income then they are worthless. Both sides are represent through Ben and Charley, as Ben represents the fantasy portion of Willy’s aspirations (since he is represented in memory only), while Charley, on the other hand, represents the realistic version as he is always there to aid Willy in things that he needs. However, Willy is unable to accept either person, as he believes that he will lose the fantasy of his dream, if he chose Ben, or have to face reality, if he chose Charley. Thus even though Willy’s dream was wrong, one can still learn a powerful lesson—a true meaning to an American
At some point in his premonition, Willy reminded Ben of a bunch of flowers he gave him during childhood. Furthermore, the relationship between the two occurred in an environment of trust. However, Willy seemed not to have many of experiences with their parents and he asked Ben about their father. Willy’s admiration for his brother Ben replicated almost every move that he made. Also, it was unlike himself that at the point when Ben moved to Alaska to search for wealth, Willy choose to remain with his family and tried to make a fortune with his workers back at
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...
The main character, Willy Loman, struggles to succeed in business because he is unaware of who he truly is. This is evidenced by multiple times through Willy’s opposing ambitions, his idealization of reaching success, and the desire to create and continue a family legacy. These inward and outward struggles arise because of the society Willy lives in, and how it causes him to lose sight of who he truly is. Willy’s struggle ultimately ends in his demise because he is conflicted on who he really is. His character is a perfect example of how a person cannot have dreams unless they know who they are, making him and his struggle relatable to many audiences who everyday feel the same pressures of
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. ...
The tragic life of Willy Loman as told by the author, Arthur Miller, in his short story “The Death of a Salesman” illustrates a misguided outlook in the world and how it has affected the actions of those around him. Willy Loman’s narcissistic views on how to achieve success, such as athletics, looks, and “having humor, but not too much to look like a fool”; but ignoring education provides an insight on how he became a failure in the business world. Willy’s views and action did not only hurt those around him it also affected himself.
Willy himself even goes by another name, a more successful one. Since all Willy can focus on is success, no one in that household is ever happy. Not the wife even though she supports his every decision, not Hep, the other son who denies his father upon guests and is only there to ‘try’ to make every situation better and not Biff, who has all the pressure from the family to become successful and rich. This film connects to current life because many wealthy families today already have their kid’s life set-out from the day they’re born, and the child doesn’t have a chance to become what he/she truly wants to be which should be
All throughout the text, Willy brags about how everyone in the new England area knows his name and will be at his funeral when he dies. This is because “His business dreams are based on the idea of being "well liked." In part he insists on this because of his own self-doubts” (Mosely “The American”). Because of that, he often wishes in vain that he went with his brother Ben to Alaska to obtain riches in what can be assumed as a dishonorable means. Even though he had that chance so long ago, he still has flashbacks to that moment which makes him regret his salesman job.
Willy intermittently places blame on his own childhood for his feelings of abandonment, and not knowing how to appropriately raise his own children. Willy had multiple different experiences with abandonment throughout the entire play; each one worse than the previous one. Willy and Ben were both abandoned by their father as children. Ben abandoned Willy when he moved to Alaska, and this left Willy confused and attempting to live the American Dream alone. Willy became a salesman so that he could “leave a legacy”, and was unsuccessful. He also felt abandoned by his career. Willy was abandoned by his boss, Howard, after being fired. Willy was then abandoned by his own sons at dinner one night. Willy felt that his only way out of the abandonment, and to actually be able to leave a legacy, was to commit suicide. This means that ultimately Willy abandoned his own family.
quest to make some sense of his failed life, Willy views Ben as a guide — an older brother's role
Willy recounts the events vividly, due to his madness, that question his morality and worth. His two sons, Biff and Happy, both in their 30’s, mirror their father’s split persona. Biff is filled with regrets and low self esteem, while Happy is overloaded with idealistic beliefs which causes him to exaggerate and lie. Biff is the most close to the downfall of Willy than anyone else. Although Willy believes he has taught Biff “the way to be successful,... he did nothing but rationalize and condone harmful activities.”(Feinberg) Willy does not fully realize the harm he has done to his family. However, through his confusion between reality and illusion, he revisits his mistakes, Biff had a chance to rebuild a future, but after he caught his father having an affair Biff rejected the opportunities out of spite. Because of this Willy subconsciously blames himself for his son’s failed career and life overall. It weighs down on Willy and causes him to be defensive on the littlest of doubts presented on his and his son’s character. Willy is proven to be desperate to be “well liked”, prideful, yet disappointed in himself. Ultimately, this affects his family’s philosophy and output in society. Linda becomes defensive when it comes to judgement against Willy, Happy tries to compensate of living in his brother’s shadow with women and extravagant lies, and Biff becomes a kleptomaniac “bum”. Willy knows he has lead a both an unsuccessful personal and professional life and thus leading him to be sucked in his madness and suicidal