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analysis of death of a salesman by arthur miller
analysis of death of a salesman by arthur miller
the crisis in death of a salesman
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The Dysfunctional Family
In Arthur Miller’s drama, “Death of a Salesman” the protagonist is a sixty-year-old salesperson by the name of Willy Loman. Willy suffers from self-delusion and is obsessed with the desire to succeed. Willy’s actions strongly influence his family, which contributes to their self-delusions. Willy’s wife Linda is an enabler and is codependent upon him. Linda encourages and participates in Willy’s delusions. She is unselfish and her life revolves around Willy and their two boys Biff and Happy. The Lomans are definitely a dysfunctional family due to their lack of communication, respect, and morals.
The basis for any healthy relationship is communication. Communication is something the Lomans do not practice often, and when they do, it usually ends in a shouting match. Willy has extremely poor listening skills, which is an important part of communication. When Willy goes to speak with Howard about getting a job in New York, Willy would talk over Howard whenever he would say anything that Willy did not want to hear. Howard leaves Willy in the office alone to greet people outside. Willy then notices this himself saying, "Pull myself together! What the hell did I say to him? My God, I was yelling at him! How could I!” (Miller 1350; all page references are to the class text, The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature, 5 th ed.). Willy however, is not the only member of the Loman family with ...
support is a pathetic effort to protect his identity. Linda will never admit to herself,
Happy Loman has grown up to be a well-adjusted man of society. He has developed from a follower to a potentially successful businessman. Throughout his childhood, Happy always had to settle for second fiddle. Willy, his father, always seems to focus all his attention on Happy's older brother Biff. The household conversation would constantly be about how Biff is going to be a phenomenal football star, how Biff will be attending the University of Virginia and be the big man on campus, how Biff is so adulated among his friends and peers, and so on. Young Happy was always in Biff's shadow, always competing for his father's attention but failing each time. Happy would resort to such antics as laying on his back and pedaling his feet backwards to capture his father's attention but to no avail. Willy would continue to not take notice of his younger son and maintain his attention on other matters that he thought were of greater importance. Growing up under these conditions is what motivated Happy to be the man he is today.
BANG! Your father is dead. Within a few seconds, although he attempted many times, your father dies. He gave up. All the fights, all the disrespect, and all the struggles are behind you. However, all the hope, all the passion, and all the love is still there. In Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, the main conflict is between Willy Lowman and his son Biff. Most of their struggles are based on disrespect; however, much of the tension throughout the play is also caused by the act of giving up.
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.
“The American dream is, in part, responsible for a great deal of crime and violence because people feel that the country owes them not only a living but a good living.” Said David Abrahansen. This is true and appropriate in the case of Willy Loman, and his son Biff Loman. Both are eager to obtain their American dream, even though both have completely different views of what that dream should be. The play Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller shows the typical lives of typical Americans in the 1940’s. Miller’s choice of a salesman to be the main character in this play was not a coincidence, since it represents the typical middle-class working American, some of which have no technical skills what so ever. Miller’s play gives us insides on the daily lives of many Americans, this through the eyes of Willy and Biff Loman, he also shows what kind of personalities, what dreams they have, and their different points of view of what the American dream means.
Willy Loman has an innate ability for dreaming way beyond his capabilities. Throughout the play, Willy’s dreams represent more fantasy than truth, a behavior which his boys clearly imitate. Yet, despite the talk, there is an ongoing criticism for the world and the way things work. He brags about his sales for a trip, “I’m tellin’ you, I was selling thousands and thousands, but I had to come home” (1224). It’s difficult to tell if the stories Willy tells are what he believes to be true or what he imagines is correct; as a result, he continually tells lies to cover his shortcomings and mistakes. On the contrary, with all the “thousands and thousands” of dollars he is making, he complains about necessary repairs to mechanical objects around the house: “Once in my life I would like to own something outright before it’s broken! I’m always in a race with the junkyard” (1244)!
No one’s life can be classified as “normal”. Everyone has conflicts that they have to eventually deal with. People do in fact deal with these personal conflicts in different ways; some take it easy some take it hard. Some ignore the problem as long as possible and some deal with it right away to get it out of the way. In Death of a Salesman, Willy Lowman’s technique to his problem solving leads to severe consequences. Willy never does anything to help the situation; he just escapes into the past to happier times when there were few problems. He uses this escape as if it was a drug, and as the play goes on, this drug becomes dangerous, leading him to his death.
Willy Loman got lost in chasing the American Dream. As a salesman in the concrete jungle, Willy had unrealistic aspirations which left him “boxed in”. He is surrounded by high rising skyscrapers which engulf not only him but his whole family. Because of this Willy has a false sense of the American Dream and in trying to achieve it, he fails. The skyscrapers and his own references to being “boxed in” serve as a metaphor for his life. He chased after riches and materialistic possessions rather than his own happiness which consequently led to his death.
Many articles explain that Linda Loman is the cause of dysfunction in the Loman House. One article read, “Linda believes that if her sons become successful then Willy’s fragile psyche will heal itself” ("Linda Loman: The Wife in "Death of a Salesman"). She thinks that Willy ...
The name Willy, which we realize is short for William, is a rather silly name. However, it might suggest that Willy is willful in his denial of the lack of honest relationship with his two sons. Maybe he is willingly deluded by the fantasy of what he might have been or what his sons might have become and the mediocre reality of the way life actually is for the Loman family. Arthur Miler’s “Death of a Salesman” portrays the shattered relationships hidden inside a fallacy of grandeur that a father has with his two sons.
Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman is a tragic play about an aging and struggling salesman, Willy Loman, and his family’s misguided perception of success. In Willy’s mind, being well-liked is more important than anything else, and is the means to achieving success. He teaches this flawed idea to his sons, Biff and Happy, and is faithfully supported by his wife Linda. Linda sympathizes with Willy’s situation, knowing that his time as an important salesman has passed. Biff and Happy hold their father to impossibly high standards, and he tries his best to live up to them. This causes Willy to deny the painful reality that he has not achieved anything of real value. Willy’s obsession with a false dream results in his losing touch with reality and with himself.
“Death of a Salesman” written by Arthur Miller in 1948 attempts to give the audience an unusual glimpse into the mind of a Willy Loman, a mercurial 60-year-old salesman, who through his endeavor to be “worth something”, finds himself struggling to endure the competitive capitalist world in which he is engulfed. Arthur Miller uses various theatrical techniques to gradually strip the protagonist down one layer at a time, each layer revealing another truth about his distorted past. By doing this, Miller succeeds in finally exposing a reasonable justification for Willy’s current state of mind. These techniques are essential to the play, as it is only through this development that Willy can realistically be driven to motives of suicide.
In literature and in life, people endure events which are the effects from the relationships between a parent and their child. In Death of a Salesman written by Arthur Miller it is evident how the relationship between Willy and his sons creates the downfall of the dysfunctional Loman family. Miller depicts the possessiveness that exists in humans through Willy Loman. In the 1949 era to preserve a healthy household it was important for the father-son relationship to be strong. If conflicts were to arise in their relationship the entire family would collapse and fail. Biff and Happy constantly idolize and praise their father, however, they realize that he is flawed and how as a father he failed to prepare them for the real world. Willy Loman is a man that is happy and proud in one moment and suddenly angry in another, which exhibits how the inconsistencies in his character make it difficult for anyone to have a strong relationship with him. In the play it is evident that the tension between the father and son relationship is the factor that causes the protagonist’s tragedy. The dispute between the father and
Willy Loman is one of the most tragic heroes in American drama today. He has a problem differentiating reality from fantasy. No one has a perfect life. Everyone has conflicts that they must face sooner or later. The ways in which people deal with these personal conflicts can differ as much as the people themselves. Some insist on ignoring the problem as long as possible, while some attack the problem to get it out of the way. In the case of Willy in Arthur Miller’s, Death of a Salesman, the way he deals with his life as a general failure leads to very severe consequences. Willy never really faced his problems in fact in stead of confronting them he just escapes into the past, whether intentionally or not, to those happier childhood times where problems were scarce. He uses this escape as if it were a narcotic, and as the play progresses, we learns that it can be as dangerous as a drug, because of its ability to addict Willy, and it’s deadliness.
Death of a Salesman deals with many timeless issues. Though these issues are portrayed through the story of Willy Loman in the nineteen forties or fifties, their presence in today's world is still very prominent. The relationships in Death of a Salesman are riddled with jealousy, hope, love, dreams, hate, disappointment, and many other very human emotions.