In an attempt to pursue their aspirations, the individual may submit to false ideals and fabricated illusions. This is well exemplified in the play as Miller shows that when people associate "the dream" with the ability to succeed and accumulate wealth, it becomes corrupted. Through the protagonist, Willy Loman, he depicts a man who believes in all the wrong values of the dream, which leads to an unsatisfactory and dysfunctional life for both himself and his family. Willy cannot turn down the false vanity that is imposed upon him and ultimately imprisons himself within his self-created illusion. In response to the disappointment in his life, he creates a vision of himself in which he believes and immerses his whole life in disillusionment. …show more content…
Moreover, his even extends his illusions over his sons--especially Biff. Willy maintains that his sons are “built like Adonises” and that they are destined to be “great” (1.33,2.83). However, he fails to acknowledge the reality that Biff is unemployed and formerly imprisoned, while Happy is shallow and superficial, scheming within the stifling atmosphere of retail sales. It is important to consider Willy’s opinions of his sons because it focuses on the question of external values and also dramatizes the forged hopes and ideals, that Miller criticizes. More importantly, this suggests that Willy is still dwelling in the past, or is rather entrapped by it, the vision of what it should be, and not what it really was. Willy’s thoughts and impressions are so distorted that he no longer sees or exists in reality; his state of mind is out of sync with the passage of time. Through the psychological disintegration of Willy, Miller draws attention to the negative effects that "the dream" has on
Through the course of this play we get an inside look at the mind of Willy Loman, a salesman from Brooklyn, New York. Willy has worked for almost everything he has, and maintains most of his property by himself. He worked almost his entire life as a traveling salesman, and developed a wholehearted belief in the American Dream which he carried with him until the day he died. Despite Willy’s best efforts, neither of his sons are able to fulfill his vision of success and much less even carry his hope of a better life onwards. Throughout the play we are able to observe his deterioration into madness that accompanies the decay of his mental
Willy Loman longs for the success of his brother Ben, but refuses to accept the drudgery in the work of his friend, Charley. Essentially, Willy wants the freedom that Ben has – leaving for Alaska on a whim, ending up in the wrong place, and still succeeding on his own – without the responsibility and hard work that Charley puts in to be modestly and stolidly successful. The incongruity in Willy’s wishes – that Willy wants all the glory without any of the guts – leaves him in a place where, truly, he is still a child. And, like a child, Willy could never live like Ben because he needs the security of a job and life like the one Charley has. As the play winds on, Willy cannot wake up from his fantasized version of true American success and, ultimately, allows Miller to illustrate the shallowness of the American Dream.
Death of a Salesman Brainstorming After finishing your reading of Death of a Salesman, brainstorm your ideas about the key concepts of the drama. Record as many ideas as possible. 1. Title Death of a Salesman (Consider at least two different meanings)
The main character in the novel is Willy loman who is facing the difficulty situation in the play. Firstly I am going to describe Willy loman and Biff loman the oldest son of Willy. Willy is the father of two sons Biff and Happy, he has a lot of potential, and he thinks the goal of life is to be well liked and gain material success. He failed to achieve the American goal. And Biff the oldest son of Willy is the character in the novel that shows any real personal growth, he cannot hold down a job. In the story at (Act 2, 105) I am going to discuss the merits of Biff observation.
...s personal failure and betrayal of his soul and family through the meticulously constructed artifice of his life. He cannot grasp the true personal, emotional, spiritual understanding of himself as a literal “loman” or “low man.” Willy is too driven by his own “willy”-ness or perverse “willfulness” to recognize the slanted reality that his desperate mind has forged. Still, many critics, focusing on Willy’s entrenchment in a quagmire of lies, delusions, and self-deceptions, ignore the significant accomplishment of his partial self-realization. Willy’s failure to recognize the anguished love offered to him by his family is crucial to the climax of his torturous day, and the play presents this incapacity as the real tragedy. Despite this failure, Willy makes the extreme sacrifice in his attempt to leave an inheritance that will allow Biff to fulfill the American Dream.
A tragic hero is defined by Dictionary.com as “a literary character who makes an error of judgment or has a fatal flaw that, combined with fate and external forces, brings on a tragedy”. In the novel Death of a Salesman, Willy Loman has consistently displayed elements that lead the reader to believe that he is a tragic hero whose death is a result of following the wrong dreams. A character must show elements including a fatal flaw, an external force that provokes his downfall, and a fatal event to be considered a tragic hero. Willy’s fatal flaw can be considered his desire to live in the past and his belief that reputation means everything in the business world. His external force is the change in the nature of business: success through reputation no longer holds true, eventually leading to Howard firing Willy. The last element is that Willy died with the fatal event of his suicide due to the fact that he believed it was a last resort towards his dream. Through the use of these characteristic and thematic elements, Miller is able to craft, to an extent, Willy into a tragic hero whose death was the consequence of his delusions of his dream.
Willy’s own paranoia about life stems mostly from his unacceptance of his older son, Biff, as seen when Willy is speaking to him, “Not finding yourself at the age of thirty-four is a disgrace!”(Loman 16). Willy imagined his son to be a huge success in the sales business but much to his obvious dislike that never happened. The main character continues to push his son to become what he envisions and refuses to embrace his son for who he really is. Willy’s familial relationships would be better if he surpasses his prideful stereotype of who he thinks his son, Biff, should live up to. Another example of Willy Loman’s unwillingness to change his ways is declining Charley’s offer to employ him, saying “I got a job, I told you that” (Loman 43).
Although, his narcissism exhibits the common issue with American capitalism-it leads to greediness, unhappiness, and anger. This yearning for success can also cause an obsession with appearance and the self, which is a main focus in Willy Loman’s life. He says that to get somewhere, it is good to be “built like (an) Adonis,” which he tells his sons. At one point in his life, he felt he never had to ask for anything, and that when he walked in a room, he got what he wanted because “‘Willy Loman is here!’” Eventually, Willy ages and lacks the flair that he once had, and is left with unimpressive salesman skills. Due to America’s obsession with appearance, old-age is a plague to American society. The superficiality causes those to enjoy charisma over passion. This leads to arrogance, a common American worker to be. Willy Loman is a mirror being held up to the faces of American worker-bees. He avoided risks, and continued living a monotonous, easy life. Miller is attempting to say, monotony is a dangerous habit America has. This play intends to steer readers into a direction of following their own path, rather than following the norm; the norm is nothing new, and fails to reach anything
Willy’s failures and lies have been a result in his constant faith and will to achieve his dreams, the dreams which society has implanted within him. His flaws have come from society, but also himself, and Miller has used this to create the conflict and tragedy in the play. It is then that writer then makes the impact of Willy’s failures greater, incorporating his death into the play, crushing his dreams and the dreams of the characters around him, creating his tragedy.
In brief, it is apparent that Willy’s own actions led to not only his own demise, but his children’s as well. The salesman tragically misinterpreted the American Dream for only the superficial qualities of beauty, likeability and prosperity. Perhaps if Willy had been more focused on the truth of a person’s character, rather than purely physical aspects, his family’s struggles and his own suicide could have been avoided. On the whole, Arthur Miller’s play is evidence that the search for any dream or goal is not as easy and the end result may seem. The only way to realize the objective without any despair is the opposite of Willy Loman’s methods: genuineness, perseverance and humility.
In revealing this information Miller may be trying to reinforce the idea the strain and despair Willy is feeling ‘his exhaustion is apparent’ in his life and the struggles that the fixation on the American dream have brought. Miller has clearly shown the audience that Willy’s intense loyalty to the American dream has effectively personified the idea itself and the significant and ever present hold it has on him is similar to that of a shadow - in that he is unable and unwilling to remove himself from the idea - as he believes it is a concrete part of him and he is unable to let go. Therefore Miller is fundamentally reminding the audience of the catastrophic consequences that come from the devotion of the American dream, and the despair that follows when the dream is unable to fulfil expectation and desire. This allows the audience to feel sorry for Willy and subsequently reveals his tragic flaw.
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.
I thought the video lecture from Simon Sinek and his personal perspectives and formula to lead and to motivate others was very interesting. Sinek presented a simple but powerful model for inspirational leadership all starting with the question, “Why?” After watching this TED TV presentation, I wholeheartedly agree with what Simon Sinek has suggested and his assessment in the power of why and its beneficial uses in leadership. Furthermore, I though his examples of Apple, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Wright Brothers clearly illustrated the benefits in “starting with why”.
The play "Death of a salesman" starts off with Willy Loman, sixty-year old salesman returning home confused. He can't remember most of the details from his trip even though he only made it to Yonkers. His wife Linda worries, telling him he needs to rest his mind and consider working in New York. Things would be different if Frank Wagner were alive but his son, Howard, does not appreciate him as much. Willy and Linda talk about Biff and argue whether he's lazy or not.
Willy's most prominent illusion is that success is dependant upon popularity and personal attractiveness. Willy builds his entire life around this idea and teaches it to his children. When Willy was young, he had met a man named Dave Singleman who was so well-liked that he was able to make a living simply by staying in his hotel room and telephoning buyers. When Dave Singleman died, buyers and salesmen from all over the country came to his funeral. This is what Willy has been trying to emulate his entire life. Willy's need to feel well-liked is so strong that he often makes up lies about his popularity and success. At times, Willy even believes these lies himself. At one point in the play, Willy tells his family of how well-liked he is in all of his towns and how vital he is to New England. Later, however, he tells Linda that no one remembers him and that the people laugh at him behind his back. As this demonstrates, Willy's need to feel well-liked also causes him to become intensely paranoid. When his son, Biff, for example, is trying to explain why he cannot become successful, Willy believes that Biff is just trying to spite him. Unfortunately, Willy never realizes that his values are flawed. As Biff points out at the end of the play, "he had the wrong dreams."