Some people never change, their stubbornness gets the best of them, and they find it hard to adapt to what happens around them. Being stubborn can also lead you to get into some big trouble if you do not compromise sometimes. In all honesty, I am a stubborn person and hate to compromise, but I will if I have to. In Arthur Miller’s play, Death of a Salesman, Willy Loman is unbelievably stubborn and definitely delusional. Constantly, Willy is hallucinating about things that have already happened, or things that never even could have happened. Although, Biff, Willy’s son, changes by the end of the play, while everyone else stays in a delusional land with Willy.
Throughout the play, Willy has hallucinations of his brother Ben, who left Willy when he was young, “Well, I was just a baby, of course, only three or four years old,” (Miller 47), and the man later offered to take Willy with him, but Willy had a dream “There’s a man eighty-four years old-” (Miller 86) and he felt that he was going to accomplish that dream. “Willy retreats into a dream world consisting of his roseate recollections of the past and of fantasies,” (Hadomi), he hallucinates often, and this is a better way of saying he’s delusional. He did not, he failed miserably, he had to borrow money from Charley “If you can manage it-- I need a hundred and ten dollars,” (Miller 96), then he pretended it was a loan from him “I’m keeping an account of everything, remember,” (Miller 96), that he would pay back “I’ll pay every penny back,” (Miller 96), but Linda and Charley knew he was not going to pay any of it back. Willy had a hard time accepting defeat, and he wanted his boys to succeed where he failed, but Biff was always better with physical labor “when all you really desi...
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...appy’s trying to live in a happy world all hold them back from making any real progress in life, it holds them back from actually being happy. Linda just ignores everything that is happening around her, or she goes along with it, until the end, she gets a little angry, but then goes back to living as she did before. Really, only Biff changed in this story, and it probably saved his life.
Works Cited
Foster, Richard J.Confusion and Tragedy: The Failure of Miller's `Salesman', in Two Modern American Tragedies: Reviews and Criticism of Death of a Salesman and A Streetcar NamedDesire, Edited by John D. Hurrell, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1961, Pp. 828.
Hadomi, Leah. Fantasy and Reality: Dramatic Rhythm in Death of a Salesman. Thesis. 1988. N.p.: N.p., N.d. Gale. Web. 6 May 2014.
Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman. N.p.: Penguin Plays, n.d. Print.
Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman. The Bedford Introduction to Literature. 8th ed.Ed. Michael Meyer. Boston: Bedford, 2008. 1908-1972. Print.
Gioia, Dana, and X.J. Kennedy. "Death of a Salesman" Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing, Compact Edition, Interactive Edition. 5th ed. New York: Pearson; Longman Publishing, 2007. 1212-1280. Print.
Murray, Edward. “The Thematic Structure in Death of a Salesman.” Readings on Arthur Miller: 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.
Have you ever felt compelled to reconcile your past uncertainties because of the desire of attaining acceptance? In Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman”, Willy Loman, the protagonist, is a salesman blinded by his own delusion. This self delusion affects him and the people around him. The delusion also affects the standards of success that he created throughout his life to make sure his ambiguity is not transferred to individuals around him. These standards guide him towards his emphasised view of who he is and what he wants to achieve, causing pressure to both himself and Biff Loman, another main character. In this modern play, the differences between Biff and Willy and their dissimilar sense
Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman,The Heath Introduction to Drama, Fifth Edition. Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath and Company, 1996, pp. 731-808.
Miller, Arthur. “Death of a Salesman.” The Norton Introduction to Literature 10. New York: W. W.
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.
Alistair Deacon from As Time Goes By once said that, “The people in the book need to be people.” The main character in a story or in a play always has to be somewhat likeable or relatable. Who doesn’t like to feel like they can relate to their favorite character in a story? In many cases the authors of stories or books always try to make the reader feel like they are not the only ones with problems or going through a crazy situation. Wanting the reader to become engaged in the characters' conflicts is what they aim for. In Arthur Miller’s play, Death of a Salesman, many people were gripped by Willy Loman’s, the main character, problems because they too struggle with many of the conflicts that Willy faces. Willy could not keep his life together, failing to see reality and pursuing the wrong dream, with a wrong viewpoint, ended up causing others around him and himself to hurt.
Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman. Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Seventh Edition. X.J. Kennedy, and Dana Gioia. New York: Addison Wesley Longman, Inc., 1999
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Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman. Eds. Alison Booth and Kelly J. Mays. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2010. 2128-2193. Print.
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Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman. Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Seventh Edition. X.J. Kennedy, and Dana Gioia. New York: Addison Wesley Longman, Inc., 1999. 1636-1707.
Miller, Arthur. “Death of a Salesman”: Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. 1991: 280-317