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Comment on the character of Willy Loman
Comment on the character of Willy Loman
Willy loman character analysis
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Plot, characterization, and dialogue are the elements of drama that I’ve chosen to analyze for Death of a Salesmen. Willy seems to be in conflict with himself and everyone else in his life. Conflict is what drives the plot and will be the main element of drama that’s analyzed in this essay. In Death of a Salesman Willy is the protagonist and his son Biff is the antagonist, he provokes Willy’s anger by not holding a steady job and measuring up to what his father feels he should be. The plot in Death of a Salesman is dialogue driven and the theme of the play is the death of Willy’s career and his inability to become successful in life. He also has hopes of Biff doing something more with his life other than working as a farmhand.
Death of a Salesman is a stage play in the form of tragedy that focuses on the relationship between Willy and his son Biff. The main character is Willy Loman, a sixty-three year old salesman that feels his life is full of failure and missed opportunities to become successful. He often has hallucinations of past happier memories where he reminisces about those times. Willy’s mind seems to be full of illusions and he has
trouble determining what is real and what he’d like to be real. There are times when he talks to himself and has conversations with his deceased brother Ben. During the hallucinations when Willy is talking to Ben it seems that he wants to be like Ben who was rich and successful.
Willy has two sons, Biff and Happy but he seems to focus more on Biff. He seemed angry that Biff didn’t do more with his life. Willy Loman, the aging salesman, is worn out to the point of breakdown by his many years on the road. But he remains a firm believer in capitalist values and has transfer...
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... embraced by him and forgiven. In this he is given existence, so to speak---his fatherhood, for which he has always striven and which until now he could not achieve. (Miller 1677)
My final thought on Death of a Salesman and the plot is that Willy Loman lived in his own world. Talking to himself quite often, living in the past and dreaming of the future. He only seems to focus on success and what could have been all the while living with regret. Even though he had two sons he only focused on one, his oldest, Biff. He wanted Biff to have a successful life since he was the high school athlete with such a promising future and when that didn’t happen he felt guilty and responsible. So much so that he took his own life hoping this will give Biff a brighter future.
Workscited:
Andersen, Richard. Arthur Miller. New York: Marshall Cavendish Benchmark, 2006. Print.
Death of a Salesman is a play about a man named Willy Loman who is an aging sales man that has difficulty remembering events, as well as distinguishing the present from his memories. Willy has always tried to live up to the “American Dream,” but unfortunately has failed miserably as a salesman and a father. Willy still having high hopes of the dream tries to live his life through his oldest son Biff, who has turned out to be just as big as a failure. Biff uncovers the truth behind his father’s lies and Willy being tormented by his failures starts to spiral downward. The thoughts of having failed as a salesman and father finally lead Willy to take his own life. In order to understand a play like this one you need to use a strategy in approaching it. One valid approach to any type of literature is to experience, interpret, and evaluate it.
Willy Loman, one of the few tragic heroes in the modern era, is not very different from other tragic heroes which precede him. Willy, similarly to other protagonists in Aristotle’s tragedies, has a tragic flaw which leads to his eventual downfall. However, Willy’s demise in the 1940s play Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller, cannot be contributed purely to Willy’s own faults, but also to the actions of surrounding characters. These characters will go on to push Willy into a corner, making it even harder for him to overcome his circumstances, eventually playing a part in the tragic end of Willy Loman. By the end of the play, it is Ben, Biff, and Charley who contributes the greatest to the ultimate demise of Willy Loman.
Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman is quite a captivating piece of literature. I really thought this book was fantastic, even reading it for a second time. Since this is a play, the majority of the characterization had to be done through dialogue, but the astonishing depth of development that Miller achieved with his characters was astonishing. I truly felt that I intimately knew the characters by the end of the play despite how slim the volume was. Miller's play is an expose of the harsh reality of the American Dream, and while his play's message may not be hopeful, the honesty of his work will resonate with middle-class America even today. Miller's play showed me that not much has changed since post-WWII America. Average people are still struggling to capture the dream that we all feel this land offers us. Happy and Biff are the tragic characters that I hope never to become, but who can blame them for aspiring for something greater? Most disturbing of all, I truly hope that my parents' generation never fall victim to the same destructive hopes that possessed Willy Loman. Perhaps the scariest realization is that any one of us can get caught up in the delusion of what we believe we deserve.
In Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller, the conflicts that formulate between Biff and Willy Loman build up to the death of Willy. Biff’s delusional perception of being liked in the world leads to a successful life which was an idea brought onto him by his father, Biff’s discovery of his father's affair, and Biff’s lack of business success all accumulate to the heavy conflicting relationship between Biff and his father, Willy. These contribute immensely to the idea that personal dreams and desire to reach success in life can negatively impact life with personal relationships, which causes people to lose sight of what is important. This ultimately leads to the Willy committing suicide from the build up of problems with his son.
The play, “Death of a Salesman” written by Arthur Miller, presents Willy Loman, as a salesman, who fails to earn a living and slowly loses his mind. Willy continuously seeks the past to find out where he went wrong. During his years in life, Willy wanted his two sons, Biff and Happy to become someone they’re not; Willy wanted them to become a salesman like him. However, because of his obsession in the American Dream of easy success and wealth, he created a life full of lies for himself and his sons. In the end because of “his misconception of himself as someone capable of greatness” leads to his downfall and the end of his life (Death of a Salesman).”
Willy Loman is a 60 year old senile salesman who desperately wants to be a successful salesman; however, his ideas about the ways in which one goes about achieving this are very much misguided, just as his morals are. He believes that popularity and good looks are the key to achieving the American dream, rather than hard work and dedication. He not only lives his entire life by this code, but instills his delusional beliefs in his two sons Biff and Happy. As a result, his sons experience similar failures in their adult lives. Willy led a life of illusion, lies and regret which not only ruined his life, but gad a negative impact on the lives of family as well.
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. ...
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.
In the play, The Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller,Willy Loman, an unsuccessful businessman 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 shown 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. Being raised by Willy, Biff and Happy are becoming failures and have no motivation to work hard to achieve anything in life. Throughout this novel, Biff has a few recurrences with stealing.
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.
The dramatic play Death of a Salesman, composed by Arthur Miller in 1949 portrays the hours leading up to Willy Loman’s death. Willy is a sixty-year-old salesman living in Brooklyn New York with his wife Linda and after thirty-five years working as a traveling salesman he feels defeated by his lack of success and difficult family life. As a salesman, Willy Loman focuses more on personality and being well liked by everyone than actual skills. When he returns early from a business trip it is apparent that he is extremely distressed and confides that he almost got into an accident. All thought the play we get to witness Willy’s brain unravel and his tragic character flaws that all seem to stem from being abandoned by his father and brother. This abandonment leaves Willy with an extreme need for approval and direction but he’s also riddled with fears and insecurities. This fear ruins his character, making him an emotionally desperate and needy man who feels that the only way you can ever be successful in life is if you’re “well liked”. Which is heartbreaking because it becomes apparent throughout that he is not really liked or successful at all but living out fantasy scenarios to soothe the pain. His brother was the man he admired the most but throughout the play Ben is revealed as being a mean, nasty man who believe that being rich is the only sign of success even thought he stumbled upon his wealth thought pure luck. We began to see his open wounds from being abandoned that leads to this obsession with needing to be liked by everyone, why he and Biffs’ relationship is so tense and irreversibly broken but also why he’s so disrespectful to Linda.
Willy’s death was ironic due to all the of consequences that he faced each point of his life; however, he wanted to leave money behind by his $20,000 insurance policy for his family to prove he finally made success in life. After Willy death, Biff realized his true beliefs and changes his life’s path to the right direction. Happy on other hand, followed his father’s footsteps and aimed to become successful as a businessman. I believed that Willy’s character lead himself to his failures and miseries with his wife, his two sons, and his career. What Willy pictured in his mind of himself was not completed by his wrong ambition of being successful. “We’re free and clear. We’re free…. We’re free” (Death of the Salesman, Requiem. lines 66-67). Willy’s wife and sons were not a bit disappointed or saddened by the news of their father. Willy’s death defined a symbol of a new beginning for his family. Throughout my research I discovered all Willy wanted to be was a devoted husband, a father that his sons can be proud of, and a successful salesman; however Willy was unsuccessful in not completely to fulfill his dreams so his death brought him and his family a break from the
Willy is a salesman. Willy believes that success comes from being well liked and popular and has tried desperately to instill his notions to his two boys Happy and Biff, Willy's biggest aspirations in life. His wife Linda is extremely supportive and is Willy's only connection to reality. While raising his boys and trying to instill his "American Dream", he fails to teach them any sense of morality, leading them down to what he feels is the wrong path. At one point, he defended Biff for stealing just because he was an amazing football player.
Death of a Salesman is centered around one man trying to reach the American dream and taking his family along for the ride. The Loman's lives from beginning to end is a troubling story based on trying to become successful, or at least happy. Throughout their lives they encounter many problems and the end result is a tragic death caused by stupidity and the need to succeed. During his life Willy Loman caused his wife great pain by living a life not realizing what he could and couldn't do. Linda lived sad and pathetic days supporting Willy's unreachable goals. Being brought up in this world caused his children to lose their identity and put their futures in jeopardy.
Willy’s hubris makes him feel extremely proud of what he has, when in reality he has no satisfaction with anything in his life. Willy Loman’s sons did not reach his expectations, as a father, but he still continued to brag about Biff and Happy in front of Bernard. Willy Loman caused the reader to empathize with him because before his tragic death he did everything he could for his family. Empathy, Hubris, and Willy Loman’s tragic flow all lead him to his death that distends from the beginning. He is unable to face reality and realize that he’s not successful in life or at his job; he remains living in a world where he thinks he’s greater than everybody else because he’s a salesman.