Part of the human life is the experience of joyful and unpleasant events. What has the most influence on the someone’s personality and life are the negative things that they must endure and how they react. Though everyone experiences these negative moments, how they react and the factors that contribute to their actions are all their own. Such truth is shown in the two realistic fiction works “Death of a Salesman” by Arthur Miller and “Stone Angel” by Margaret Laurence. Both works portray the rather unpleasant lives of Willy Loman and Hagar Shipley and how they work through or crumble under the pressure of their struggles. These works are an example of the real life occurrence that the consequences of the actions taken by humans in the face …show more content…
He has two sons, both now in their thirties, living at home with not much to show for themselves. Willy had recently been in a car accident and is now unable to drive his car. His wife worries about his health and asks if he can get his boss to allow him to work in the city instead of going on the road all the time. Willy complains to Linda about how their oldest son Biff has yet to really do anything with his life after he flunked out of high school, while Biff discuss with his brother about mental degeneration of their father who slips into hallucination like stupors as he remembers the past during “better times”, in which he talks out loud to himself and acts like the past is actually happening in front of him. Biff and Willy fight frequently throughout the play about how Biff wasted his potential as he was a very promising football player with a full ride to college but was unable to take it as he failed senior math. In order to stop the fighting, Biff explains that he will be working on a business proposition tomorrow in order to make something of …show more content…
His son loses respect for him and is responsible for Biff’s inability to live up to the potential he had shown in high school. The problems with his son don’t stop there as even in adulthood, Biff has no respect for his father and he and Willy get into fights often. Willy also has trouble with changing times, especially when change happens in his neighborhood “They should have arrested the builder for cutting those (the trees) down. They massacred the neighborhood. Lost: More and more I think of those days, Linda.” (Miller, Act one 17) In fact, Willy thinks nothing is as good as it used to be and constantly reminisces about the past. So much so that it consumes almost all of his thoughts and he hallucinates about it. This brings up a factor that might be contributing to Willy’s negative moments, the fact that he might actually be schizophrenic as seen by his hallucinations. This could be something that Willy already had and is just now surfacing, or it could actually be stress induced schizophrenia that happened over time due to the return of his eldest son. Either way, his mind is starting to slip. The problems continue as Willy is unable to keep up with the younger salesmen and loses his job in a humiliating way, leaving him with money worries. Some of the final unpleasant factors are the feelings of lost
“BIFF [crying, broken]: Will you let me go for Christ’s sake? Will you take that phony dream and burn it before something happens?” By saying this Biff tries to address his family on the giant rift between Willy’s dreams for him and reality. He tries to explain that all he wants is for Willy to let go of those dreams and high standards he has set for him so he can create his own reality rather than fulfill his father's dream. Willy's dreams for Biff were very unrealistic for the reality of his situation,which caused him to fill unsuccessful and push himself away from his father. The reason Willy wanted his children to do so well and had such big dreams for them was because he wasn't able to achieve the dream and had a fear he had failed and so he wanted to force his dream to be fulfilled by his children. Therefore, due to Willy’s wildly unrealistic amount of pride, causing him to make poor decisions, betray his family by having a mistress and finally his unrealistic dreams for his sons, he paved his way towards his failure and his deep fear of isolation and
Both sons live with the same concern for Willy as Linda, especially after she explains to them that Willy’s crashes were not accidents. Biff is particularly affected by Willy’s actions as Biff discovered Willy’s affair with one of his coworkers, an action which enraged Biff and caused Biff to refuse to fix his math grade and finish high school. Additionally, Willy’s affair also caused Biff to grow distant from his father, setting the two up for many future arguments such as one in which Willy tells Biff, “stops him with: May you rot in hell if you leave this house!” (129). Not to forget that Willy’s suicide was originally meant to spite Biff as Willy believed his funeral would be grand, claiming “He’ll see what I am, Ben! He’s in for a shock, that boy!” (126)--this being a tragic twist of dramatic irony. This trauma and strife brought upon Biff leads him into a great deal of hardship, never having had a job or settled down. Willy causes Biff to believe himself a failure, and Biff is dragged into Willy’s world of suffering where Biff cannot attain success in the face of his father’s high
Willy's first flash to the past was when his son, Biff, returns home from the west. Willy discusses his disappointment in Biff with his dear wife Linda. When Willy fails to cope with this misfortune successfully, he returns in his head to a time when everything was going well and life was more fortunate to him. It is perfectly normal for one to remember more fortunate days at the more dispirited times of life, as long as they can return to the present and deal with the reality of the situation. However, Willy never does return to the original problem, he just continues on with life, fleeing from the troubles that cross his path. His refusal to acknowledge reality becomes so significant, that he honestly believes the past, and he lives his entire life through a false identity never looking at the truth of his life.
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
In many literary works, family relationships are the key to the plot. Through a family’s interaction with one another, the reader is able decipher the conflicts of the story. Within a literary family, various characters play different roles in each other’s lives. These are usually people that are emotionally and physically connected in one way or another. They can be brother and sister, mother and daughter, or in this case, father and son. In the Arthur Miller’s novel, Death of A Salesman, the interaction between Willy Loman and his sons, Happy and Biff, allows Miller to comment on father-son relationships and the conflicts that arise from them.
Biff: [Taking Willy’s hand.] This Saturday, Pop, this Saturday – just for you, I’m going to break through for a
Throughout the play, Willy has hallucinations of his brother Ben, who left Willy when he was young, “Well, I was just a baby, of course, only three or four years old,” (Miller 47), and the man later offered to take Willy with him, but Willy had a dream “There’s a man eighty-four years old-” (Miller 86) and he felt that he was going to accomplish that dream. “Willy retreats into a dream world consisting of his roseate recollections of the past and of fantasies,” (Hadomi), he hallucinates often, and this is a better way of saying he’s delusional. He did not, he failed miserably, he had to borrow money from Charley “If you can manage it-- I need a hundred and ten dollars,” (Miller 96), then he pretended it was a loan from him “I’m keeping an account of everything, remember,” (Miller 96), that he would pay back “I’ll pay every penny back,” (Miller 96), but Linda and Charley knew he was not going to pay any of it back. Willy had a hard time accepting defeat, and he wanted his boys to succeed where he failed, but Biff was always better with physical labor “when all you really desi...
Willy has flashbacks to show the reader the extent of his disillusionment and the truth behind how he views his world. Flashbacks are a sign in the book that Willy lives inside his mind, which shows signs of mental illness; this is because he lets his disillusionment influence his thoughts, actions, and emotions in the
Willy is a multi-faceted character which Miller has portrayed a deep problem with sociological and psychological causes and done so with disturbing reality. In another time or another place Willy might have been successful and kept his Sanity, but as he grew up, society's values changed and he was left out in the cold. His foolish pride, bad judgment and his disloyalty are also at fault for his tragic end and the fact that he did not die the death of a salesman.
Biff has no desire to achieve the success his father dreams of, craving the simplicity of life outdoors. However, Biff repeatedly contradicts his own wishes in favor of those of his father. Biff’s effortss to calm Willy at dinner prove a relevant example, especially when Biff says, “Oliver talked to his partner about the Florida idea. You listening? He- he talked to his partner, and he came to me…
Foremost, Willy has a problem with his inability to grasp reality. As he grows older his mind is starting to slip. For example, when he talks to the woman and his brother Ben. Throughout the story, Willy dreams of talking to the woman, because the woman is a person that he was dating in when he went to Boston. He was cheating behind his wife’s back. Willy basically uses her as a scapegoat when he’s hallucinating about her. He blames all of his problems on the woman. For instance Willy says, “ Cause you do… There’s so much I want to make for.” (38) This is the evidence right here. Also he dreams about his brother Ben. Willy wishes could be more like his brother who has just passed away a couple of months previously to the story. He also wishes he didn’t have to work and could be rich like Ben. He respects Ben for not really working and making a lot of money. Another example of Willy’s hallucinations are when he says,“ How are you all?” (45) This occurs when Willy is talking with Charley and he starts thinking about Ben. Willy’s inability to grasp reality never changed throughout the story.
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.
One important event that caused friction between Biff and his father Willy was about college. Since Biff did not pass math, he had to attend summer school. However, Biff refuses to do so. This made him realize he is going nowhere in life, which prompted him to return home. On opposing ends, his father Willy only sees Biff as lazy. “Biff is a lazy bum!” (Miller 859). Biff wants a simpler life, he knows the
Willy constantly battles with living in the past. Throughout the entire play, he seems to wander off into his confused mind. After Willy returns home early from a business trip, Linda, his wife, and he converse about their son Biff as follows:
Biff grew to forgive his father and confessed that he loved him despite their past. He experienced growth through the events of the story, making him another candidate for the protagonist.