The Midlife Crises in Death of a Salesman, Alfred J. Prufrock, and American Beauty
Disillusioned and disenchanted, both Arthur Miller's Willy Loman and American Beauty's Lester Burnham share sexual frustrations and a dissatisfied longing for their respective pasts, but Willy, like T.S. Eliot's equivocating Prufrock, is unable to move beyond the failures inherent in his mediocrity and instead retreats into his delusions.
On the surface, Willy and Lester have all the elements of settled, prosaic lives shaped from the pattern of the "American Dream": large homes in middle- or upper-class neighborhoods, successful children, loving wives. But under this facade, both share a need that has devastated men and engendered distrust in their families for generations: the extra-marital affair.
Willy's affair with The Woman is a crucial turning point in his relationship with Biff, his oldest son. When Biff catches Willy and his mistress, Willy first attempts to distract his son and then be rid of him. However, his attempted cover-up fails and forever shatters the idolatrous relationship between father and son.
Willy: She's nothing to me Biff. I was lonely, I was terribly lonely.
Biff: You... you gave her Mama's stockings!
Willy: I gave you an order!...
Biff: You fake! You phony little fake! You fake! (Miller 1850)
Biff's discovery of his father's indiscretions shatter the Loman family's fragile facade of middle-class happiness. Although Willy is genuinely remorseful for his conduct, neither his repeated refrains of "stop crying, I gave you an order!" (1850) nor his apologies can mend the rift between him and Biff. Yet even as Biff loses his football scholarship and wanders, not unlike hi...
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...the passive salesman and the aggressive quitter. Where Willy Loman quickly makes society's ideals his own and then falls victim to his own dissatisfaction, Lester achieves happiness because he rejects the standards that society sets for a middle-aged man.
Works Cited
American Beauty. Dir. Sam Mendes. Writ. Alan Ball. With Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening. Dreamworks SKG, 1999.
Eliot, T.S.. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. M.H. Abrams. New York: Norton, 1996. 2459-2463.
Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman. New York: Viking, 1965.
Millar, Jeff. "The Rise and Fall of Everyman: `American Beauty' Proves Potent Family Portrayal." Houston Chronicle 24 Sept. 1999, Star ed.: 1. Academic Universe. LEXISNEXIS. Madden Lib., Fresno, CA. 13 Apr. 2000 <http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe/>.
Aside from having poor parenting skills, Willy also fails to act as a role model for his sons. When Biff discovers his father’s affair with “the woman,” Willy l...
Willy Loman is a man that has lived his life trying to achieve the easily attainable American Dream of success and wealth. Yet, Willy himself never achieves such success. Now, he is hopeful that his sons can achieve success that he himself never did. Willy becomes obsessed with his sons becoming successful and wealthy and becomes upset when they do not. Willy begins to have illusions about an affair that he had over 15 years ago. Miller uses the affair to show how one event can determine and define the rest of your life. Willy’s obsession with his inability to achieve his definition of success and the American dream is ultimately his downfall and what leads to his death. However, the reader learns that Willy does not fully give up his dream of wealth and success because he leaves his on Biff a twenty thousand dollar insurance policy. Willy’s refusal to accept his and his son’s reality of not achieving success and instead leave him money to start a business what makes Death of a Salesman tragic. The same can be said with all tragedies; many times a story is defined as tragic because the person or persons involved never got to achieve their dream yet they never lost
Willy Loman’s false pride leads him to believe that he has been successful as a father. He remembers how he was once looked up by his children, especially by his son Biff. However, Willy fails to realize that the relationship he once had with his son Biff has been broken, due to the fact that Biff caught Willy in an affair he was having with another girl; Biff was heartbroken to fin...
A major part of the reader's animosity towards Willy stems from his responsibility for the ruin of his sons. Willy's affair ends up being the reason that Biff ends up a high-school failure and a football has-been. This blunder both disheartens and destroys his eldest son. It becomes the reason Biff refuses to go to summer school; it becomes the reason that Biff leaves home. Yet, this is all a result of Willy's need to be likeable. He cheats on his doting wife simply because it makes him feel special, because it gives him proof that women other that Linda are interested in him, because it makes him feel well liked. A woman "picked [him]"; a woman laughs when he makes jokes about keeping pores open; a woman pays him some attention (38).
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.
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.
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
This motif of abandonment and betrayal is carried through to Willy’s son, Biff. Biff feels betrayed whe...
Most critics can agree that Biff idolizes his father and enjoys working alongside him. However, Biff finally comes to terms that he has been living a lie his entire life. Even though some critics may or may not believe that Biff Loman is the reason that Willy ends his life, one can assume that Biff plays a significant role in the life of Willy Loman.
Sometimes all you need to get stuck in a rut is to interact with one simple person. Occasionally, someone’s sly words and convincing argument is all that is needed to keep a person’s mind on a one way track. One such person is Ben Loman, who despite only appearing within a few sections of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, has a presence that completely defines the Loman family’s goals. With Ben’s influence in Willy Loman’s life, he and his family are pressured into following a pointless dream that ultimately keeps them stuck on a fixed path.
Macbeth is presented at the start of the play as a noble man, one full
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...
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.
Willy Loman is an old salesman (63 years old) who is no longer able to earn a living. He receives only a small commission as he ages, and he slowly loses his mind and attempts to kill himself by inhaling gas from the water heater or from crashing his Studebaker. Dave Singleman is his role model, he wants to become well liked and rich. He spends most of his time dreaming instead of doing anything to improve his life. He is obsessed with the post-war interpretation of the American Dream. In the end, he kills himself by crashing his car, hoping to get the life insurance money for his family.
When delving into Willy Loman’s character it is obvious that he has an obsession with the past, but like most humans he tends to idealize that life he once knew and rarely thinks in terms of the present in the play but when he does he is aware of how his life has fallen apart and it shows through his feud with Biff. Thinking in terms of what ruined Willy’s old life, you have to look to when Willy had cheated on Linda and how he “gave [the woman of the evening] Mama’s stockings!” With this betrayal Biff never forgives Willy for what he had done, which begins to spiral Willy’s life out of control and as a guilt mechanism he alludes himself into thinking of a time before Biff had resented him for his wrongdoings. Willy’s own worst enemy is himself, and he alone drives himself to his demise. The previously mentioned betrayal between Biff and Willy is the first in the timeframe of the play that you see Biff really question what his father is about. After the realization of what had happened Willy’s reply is subpar at best when he states “ She’s nothing to me, Biff. I was lonely, I was terribly