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Bring out the significance of the title death of salesman
Aristotle's theory of happiness
The impact of the death of a salesman
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The Lost Key To Happiness
Death Of A Salesman by Arthur Miller is about a salesman named Willy Loman and his family. The Loman family story switches between the past and the present time during the play. The play explores the constant day-to-day struggle that many families face, and how this challenge takes a toll on the head of the household. Willy Loman continuously strives for a happy life. The way in which Willy goes about obtaining a happy life ultimately leads him to commit suicide. Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller suggests that Aristotle’s theory on obtaining a happy life is correct.
One of Aristotle’s theories is that a happy man is a man that has everything he needs. There are five different pillars of happiness. A happy man has health, wealth, friendship, knowledge, and virtue. Now, within virtue one must seek the golden mean between deficiency, virtue, and excess. One of the characteristics within these three pillars is that we must have diligence. We as human beings mustn’t be lazy or work overly hard. In the book, one of the characteristics that Willy lacks is diligence. Willy excessively works too much, and feels the need to continue, even when it damages his health. In this section of the book
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Willy has just come home from a long trip in upstate New York. When Willy is discussing his trip with Linda his wife he says, “I’m tired to death. I couldn’t make It. I just couldn’t make it, Linda”(13). Even though in this quote Willy expresses how tired he is to Linda, he still continues to work excessively hard. Willy then goes onto say, “I'll have to send a wire to Portland. I’m supposed to see Brown and Morrison tomorrow at ten o’clock to show the line. Goddammit, I could sell them!” (14) Even though Willy was just complaining about being excessively tired of his job, he automatically switches back into work mode, he feels the need to continue working. Willy then goes onto say, “Suddenly I realize I’m goin’ sixty miles an hour and I don’t remember the last five minutes. I can’t seem to keep my mind to it”(13). In this quote, we see how excessively working is taking a toll on Willy. The constant hours of driving alone throughout different towns is waning on his body mentally, and physically. Willy isn’t following Aristotle theory. Aristotle believed that we shouldn’t overwork ourselves to the point of exhaustion, we should know when to say enough is enough. Willy Loman did the complete opposite. He continued to overwork himself, and tried to sell more. Ultimately, working for long periods in a day with little breaks can take a toll on anyone. In the end, If Willy hadn’t been so consumed in his work, and became more focused on his well being, he might not have felt the need onto to end his life. One of Aristotle’s second characteristics within virtue is we must be honest. We as human beings shouldn’t possess dishonestly, and or be too blunt when talking with others. This is a characteristic that Willy seems to lack throughout the book. Willy is first dishonest with Biff. Willy is on a business trip and Biff goes to visit him on a trip. Biff finds his hotel room and goes on up to see his father. When Biff goes into his father’s hotel room he is hearing the sound of a woman. Willy tells Biff there is no sound and brushes it off. Biff says, “Somebody got in your bathroom!”(119) Willy tells Biff, “No, it’s the next room, there’s a party”(119) in this situation, Willy is dishonest. Even though Willy has a mistress in his bathroom, he could have been upfront and stated the truth. Lying about the person in his room doesn’t make the situation better. In that moment Biff then realized that his father lied to him and this dishonestly then caused a long lasting impact on their relationship. Up till the time Willy died, he blamed his dishonesty on the reason that Biff wasn’t succeeding. The burden of dishonestly ultimately played a role in Willy’s death. Another period in the book where Willy shows his lack of honesty is when he is talking to Linda. Willy tells Linda that he is selling a great amount of product and is making money. Willy says, “I’m tellin’ you, I was sellin’ thousands and thousands, but I had to come home.”(34) Willy is dishonest to Linda because this isn’t the truth. Willy isn’t actually doing well with his sales. He is struggling to sell any product and has to borrow money. He says to Charley, “Charley, look I got my insurance to pay. If you can manage it- I need a hundred and ten dollars”(96) Willy is dishonest to Linda because he doesn’t make money, he has to go to Charley to give him money. If Willy had been honest to Linda and explained his frustration, he might have not ended up taking his life. Also, if Willy hadn’t been dishonest with Biff, they could have repaired their relationship. Ultimately, Willy did not follow Aristotle’s lesson of honesty and his small contribution of lying, in the end did not help. The last reason Willy didn’t live a happy life is because he lacked friendship. We as human beings should converse with one another. We should have a diverse group of friends so that we are able to learn about different experiences and understand different viewpoints on life. On the other hand, we shouldn’t have to many friends so that we aren’t able to understand our own experiences and ourselves. Willy lacks friends. He doesn’t have a sustainable group of people rallying around him. When Willy is talking to Charley he says, “Charley, you’re the only friend I got”(98) Willy states himself that he lacks friends. Willy doesn’t feel like he has many people in his life that he can rely on. If Willy had more friends, he could have shared his struggle with them, and could have gotten good advice. However, since he didn’t have many friends, this unhappiness led him down the wrong path. In conclusion, I believe that Aristotle’s theory of obtaining a happy life is correct.
Within our daily course of life, we can become to lazy or to dishonest without reevaluating what we are trying to achieve. I have personally been sidetracked from my main goal. There are times when I need to finish a project, or homework assignment and instead I become lazy and don’t complete those objectives. In this case, Willy Loman was just trying to achieve happiness the way he knew how. Willy over worked himself, was dishonest to protect the ones he loved, and surrounded himself with people he believed would have his back. In the end, this process of achieving happiness was unsuccessful. Aristotle’s theory on how we must obtain a happy life was proven
significant.
Aristotle once said that “A man doesn't become a hero until he can see the root of his own downfall.” Contrary to Aristotle’s definition, Willy Loman is a man of self-deception paired with misguided life goals. Being a salesman his entire career, Willy believes the goal of life is to be well liked and gain material success. Opposing the values and position of Willy, Oedipus is born a noble, and inherited wealth that Willy could only dream of. Even as a royal, Oedipus is as a man of noble cause. Although he is misguided unto his exile, Oedipus is not stubbornly deceived by himself, rather is misguided by his tragic flaw, his pride. While comparing Oedipus and Willy Loman using anagnorisis, it is revealed that Oedipus is a true tragic hero while Willy is not.
Willy Loman dreamed to be a successful salesman like Dave Singleman who has both material success and freedom. His way to achieve success is to be well-liked, which is also the way he teaches his sons. His dream cannot be achieved in that way, and such that society becomes the reason to pushing
Death of a Salesman, by Arthur Miller, is a play that illustrated the realistic life of being an American and the vulnerability of an American Dream. It is a play that blended realism and expressionism in order to demonstrate the struggles and failures of Willy Loman. It showed Willy’s illusion of an American Dream, and the harsh reality shattering his dream into pieces. The play displayed Willy’s dreamlike inner world and the cruel realities of the external world. However, it is the interactions of realism and expressionism that makes the life of Willy evermore impacting. The blending of the reality and the inner feelings of Willy illustrates the true struggles of an American during the eighteenth century-- the feebleness to accomplish their dreams under the trenchant reality.
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.
Arthur Miller's play Death of a Salesman is the story of a man, Willy Loman, gone deaf to the outside world. Though many try to help him, he shuts them out and creates his own reality in which he is successful and loved by everyone. In Death of a Salesman, Willy has many influences both good and bad attempting to direct his life; it is his refusal to choose the helpful advice that will ultimately lead to his downfall.
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.
...help his family in the only way he knew how and that was by his destruction. Willy Loman set out for popularity, but he became a tragedy. He should have taken these verses to heart, “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world”(King James Version 1 John 2:15-16).
Arthur Miller's, "Death of a Salesman," shows the development and structure that leads up to the suicide of a tragic hero, Willy Loman. The author describes how an American dreamer can lose his self-worth by many negative situations that occur throughout his life. The structure and complications are essential because it describes how a man can lose his way when depression takes over.
Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman is a story about the dark side of the "American Dream". Willy Loman's obsession with the dream directly causes his failure in life, which, in turn, leads to his eventual suicide. The pursuit of the dream also destroys the lives of Willy's family, as well. Through the Lomans, Arthur Miller attempts to create a typical American family of the time, and, in doing so, the reader can relate to the crises that the family is faced with and realize that everyone has problems.
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. ...
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller depicts the story of a man who at the end of his life has failed to be a success in almost anyway. Miller expertly portrays Willy Lowman as a character who refuses to accept his true identity; a character whose constant lying is enough to fool even himself. Willy Lowman refuses to accept the situation he and his family are in, so he relies on lies and exaggerations to keep going. Willy pathologically lies during common conversation, his lies are enough to cause himself and even others to doubt themselves, and among other things his lies destroy himself and the ones he loves. He is a man who has lost his identity, and as he defines himself as what others believe him to be, it only brings him closer to self-rejection
Willy lived everyday of his life trying to become successful, well-off salesman. His self-image that he portrayed to others was a lie and he was even able to deceive himself with it. He traveled around the country selling his merchandise and maybe when he was younger, he was able to sell a lot and everyone like him, but Willy was still stuck with this image in his head and it was the image he let everyone else know about. In truth, Willy was a senile salesman who was no longer able to work doing what he's done for a lifetime. When he reaches the point where he can no longer handle working, he doesn't realize it, he puts his life in danger as well a others just because he's pig-headed and doesn't understand that he has to give up on his dream. He complains about a lot of things that occur in everyday life, and usually he's the cause of the problems. When he has to pay for the repair bills on the fridge, he bitches a lot and bad mouths Charley for buying the one he should of bought. The car having to be repaired is only because he crashes it because he doesn't pay attention and/or is trying to commit suicide. Willy should have settled with what he had and made the best of things. He shouldn't have tied to compete with everyone and just made the best decision for him using intelligence and practicality. Many of Willy's problems were self-inflicted, the reason they were self-inflicted was because he wanted to live the American dream. If he had changed his standards or just have been content with his life, his life problems would have been limited in amount and proportion.
Willy Loman stands in, so to speak, for every American male who defined himself as a man, husband and father with respect to his success in the workplace and his capacity for grabbing a share of the material American dream. Willy Loman is a man who has deluded himself and has judged himself more harshly than his wife or his son. His tragedy is that he comes to an understanding of this delusion too late to make any changes in his life. Whether or not we as readers or as members of the audience agree with his judgment is irrelevant. It is Willy's own failure that is important in this play.
“Death of a Salesman” is a play written by Arthur Miller in which a salesman named Willy Loman struggles to achieve the “American Dream”. By having that mindset Willy struggles to raise his 2 sons, Biff and Happy who later struggle to succeed in their own lives because of their father’s obsession with success.