The Powerful Conclusion of Death of a Salesman The play "Death of a Salesman" shows the final demise of Willy Loman, a sixty-year-old salesman in the America of the 1940's, who has deluded himself all his life about being a big success in the business world. It also portrays his wife Linda, who "plays along" nicely with his lies and tells him what he wants to hear, out of compassion. The book describes the last day of his life, but there are frequent "flashbacks" in which Willy relives key events of the past, often confusing them with what is happening in the present. His two sons, Biff and Happy, who are in their 30's, have become failures like himself. Both of them have gone from idolizing their father in their youth to despising him in the present. On the last few pages of the play, Willy finally decides to take his own life ([1] and [2]). Not only out of desperation because he just lost his job, with which he was hardly earning enough to pay ordinary expenses at the end. He does it primarily because he thinks that the life insurance payout [3] will allow Biff to come to something [4], so that at least one of the Lomans will fulfill his unrealistic dream of great wealth and success. But even here in one of his last moments, while having a conversation with a ghost from the past, he continues to lie to himself by saying that his funeral will be a big event [2], and that there will be guests from all over his former working territory in attendance. Yet as was to be expected, this is not what happens, none of the people he sold to come. Although perhaps this wrong foretelling could be attributed to senility, rather than his typical self-deception [5]. Maybe he has forgotten that the "old buyers" have already died of old age. His imagined dialogue partner tells him that Biff will consider the impending act one of cowardice. This obviously indicates that he himself also thinks that it's very probable that Biff will hate him even more for doing it, as the presence of "Ben", a man whom he greatly admires for being a successful businessman, is a product of his own mind. But he ignores this knowledge which he carries in himself, and goes on with his plan. After this scene, Biff, who has decided to totally sever the ties with his parents, has an "abprupt conversation" (p.99) with Willy. Linda and Biff are in attendance. He doesn't want to leave with another fight, he wants to make peace with his father [6] and tell him goodbye in a friendly manner. He has realized, that all his life, he has tried to become something that he doesn't really want to be, and that becoming this something (a prosperous businessman) was a (for him) unreachable goal which was only put into his mind by his father (p.105). He doesn't want a desk, but the exact opposite: To work outside, in the open air, with his hands. But he's willing to forgive [6] Willy for making this grave mistake while Biff was in his youth. He simply wants to end their relationship in a dignified way. Willy is very angered by this plan of Biff's [7], because it means that he is definitely not going to take the 20000 dollars and make a fortune out of it. Happy, who has become very much like his father, self-deceiving and never facing reality, is shocked by what Biff says. He is visibly not used to hearing the naked truth being spoken in his family. He objects by telling another lie, "We always told the truth!" (p.104). This only serves to enrage Biff further, after Willy has already denied shaking his hand, which would have been a gesture of great symbolic meaning. For Willy, it would have meant admitting to everybody that he was wrong, and it would show acceptance of his son's true nature. But Willy goes on to say that Biff is doing all of this out of spite, and not because it is what he really wants. Spite, because the teenage Biff had once caught him cheating on Linda, and that was the turning point from being admired, to being hated by Biff. So now, instead of generously forgiving, Biff becomes just as angry and aggresive. They almost get into a physical fight, but he suddenly lapses intro utter sadness and desperation, and cries, holding on to Willy. Afer he has left, Willy is deeply moved, because he realizes that Biff actually liked him. But even this realisation does not make him understand Biff, and he proclaims again that Biff "will be magnificent!" (p.106). And his mental voice, in the form of Ben, adds that this will certainly be the case, especially "with twenty thousand behind him". He is freshly motivated to proceed with his old plan by his gross misinterpretation of Biff's startling behaviour. He is simply unable to realize, that money is not what Biff wants or needs. Although he does realize, that Biff, despite everything, loves him, and perhaps this is to him another incentive to give him the money. At the funeral, Happy is unchanged, his old self. He says that "[they] would've helped him" (p.110), even though he himself had been extremely cruel to Willy by abandoning him at a restaurant just before the big quarrel, and certainly this wasn't the only incident where he had shown no regard at all for Willy. Happy has obviously not learned a thing from the entire tragedy, which is why Biff gives him a "hopeless" glance near the end of the Requiem. Biff speaks of the "nice days" that they had had together, which all involve handyman's work Willy had done on the day. Charley adds to this that "he was a happy man with a batch of cement" (p.110). This adds a new dimension to the tragedy, because it all indicates that Willy was, just like Biff, a man who enjoys physical work. If this was the case, then Willy could simply never admit to himself, like Biff finally did, that he WASN'T going to make big money. Linda voices her regret over not being able to cry, alone at Willy's grave. An explanation of this would be, that she simply cannot understand and forgive him these last acts. First, the not letting Biff go, and then committing suicide, despite the fact that Biff had made his intentions so clear. Also, she might interpret into his self-inflicted death, which leaves her behind alone, that he did not love her. This conclusion of the tragedy fits the rest of the play well. The dramatic character development is quite unpredictable, neither are the specific events, which makes it a compelling read. Footnotes [1] p.96 (giving a tip to a waiter) "Here - here's some more. I don't need it any more." [2] p.100 "Ben, that funeral will be massive!" [3] p.100 "It's twenty thousand dollars on the barrelhead [..]" [4] p.101 "Why, why can't I give him [biff] something and not have him hate me?" [5] p.44 Linda to Biff: "[..] the old buyers [..] they're all dead, retired." [6] p.101 "To hell with whose fault it is or anything like that. Let's just wrap it up, heh?" [7] p.103 "May you rot in hell if you leave this house!"
one page 11) this indicates that he is a selfish man and cares for his
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(Clark, page 241). He feels that "everything he has" is at risk with the greed
Ever heard that cliché stating money is the route to all evil? What if the subject of Wal-Mart was brought into the mix of this cliché? Wal-Mart is known as the highest money making supply chain store in America. When at the top of the food chain everything might not seem as it appears. After watching The Wal-Mart Documentary: The High Cost of Low Price, I am strongly against Wal-Mart in America because of several reason but will narrow it down to: the closings of small businesses, high crime rate, and discrimination against employees.
Later, in Act II, Biff is pulverized by the acknowledgment that his father is taking part in an extramarital entanglement. He is crushed and chooses to abandon his own particular future. At the end of the play, Biff at last goes up against ...
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middle of paper ... ...giving him the answers to a maths test, so he fails and can't get in. to the university of the United States. Biff and Willy argue a lot in this game. After graduating from high school, Biff lost a lot of his respect for his father.
Biff is home for a visit and is talking with his brother, Happy in their room just as they did when they were young boys. Willy has come home prematurely from a business trip and is downstairs when the boys overhear him talking to himself in a sort of quasi-reality. In the meantime, the two boys discuss the past. It is interesting here that the roles of the two boys with respect to each other seem to have reversed. Happy was the shy one growing up and Biff had all the courage and self-confidence. Now, Biff appears to have been beaten down by life and is on the brink of the se...
Biff never kept a steady job during his young adult life, and did not possess a healthy relationship with anyone that was in his life. As the play progresses the reader sees how much Biff becomes more self- aware. An online source states, “Unlike the other members of his family, Biff grows to recognize that he and his family members consistently deceive themselves, and he fights to escape the vicious cycles of lies.” When Biff returns home it becomes a struggle to keep a healthy relationship with his parents. Once Willy and Biff decide together that Biff will go and ask Bill Oliver for a loan is when the differences between the two characters are truly seen. Biff accepts reality for the first time in his life, and realizes how ridiculous it is to ask Bill Oliver for a loan, when he barely knows the man and worked for him about ten years ago. When Biff meets up with Willy after the ‘meeting’ Biff is talking to his Father and says, “Why am I trying to become what I don’t want to be? What am I doing in an office, making a contemptuous, begging fool of myself, when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am!” This quote reveals that Biff recently has just experienced an epiphany, and realizes that what he was doing was making no sense. Biff is escaping the self- deception he was caught in with the rest of his
Sam Walton founded Wal-Mart on the idea of providing superior service and selling products at the lowest prices. Many critics feel that Wal-Mart has lost its original values and now faces many ethical issues regarding how the organization is being run. Wal-Mart has received criticism for the lack of follow through regarding their sustainable practices. Another area of concern would be the treatment of its employees regarding wages, health benefits and aggressive efforts to prevent unions. The management team has also been embroiled in bribery and embezzlement scandals. One of the biggest critiques of the organizations would have to be their relationships with suppliers and safety concerns over foreign operations. An analysis of the literature
At the end of the play, each son responds differently to the reality of his fathers suicide. Biff and Happy share their father's tendency to concoct grand schemes for themselves and think of themselves as superior to others without any real evidence that the schemes will work or that they are indeed superior. Happy, who has previously appeared of being more well-grounded in reality but still hoping for something better. Happy pledges to achieve the dream his father has failed to do so. In fact, Happy falls into his fathers thought pattern (Spampinato 68). "Including martial fidelity, then this one lesson in reality should have set Biff on the right course." But in fact, Biff is sent off the deep end (Walsh). Biff
His true dream is to move out westward and tend to his own farm, his success being directly shown through the condition of his land. However, choosing this career path has earned him harsh criticism from his father, whose only wish is for Biff to be a salesman, like himself. Towards the end of the story, Biff “realize[s] what a ridiculous lie [his] whole life ha[d] been. [They’ve] been talking in a dream for fifteen years” (81). From the time he was in highschool, Biff had been conditioned by his father to believe that the only path to success is through popularity. His education was never a priority, thus resulting in him never having to work hard for anything in his life. Unfortunately, being a star football player never got him anywhere in life, it only hindered him from finding a more suitable life path. But in seeing his father’s failure, Biff has noticed that everyone has a different idea of what success is, and how to attain it. When rejected to work as a salesman for Bill Oliver, he says to his father, “I saw the things that I love in this world [...] and said to myself, [...] why am I trying to become what I don’t want to be? [...] All I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am” (105). Although he has had a tough time executing it, all Biff just wants to do what makes him
...self to be happy by thinking of his past, which destined him to do what every coward does when faced with problems: run. He runs from his problems, from his friends, from his family, and from himself. I think that Willy could have resolved his issues a lot easier if he had been brave enough to admit that he did have problems. Instead, he bottles them up, hides them deep inside himself, and lives vicariously through his past.
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