Watching Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” for the first time at London Theatre was both entertaining and frustrating. The degree of bewilderment created by the protagonist Willy Loman resulted in the loss of my undivided attention, as experiences from the past and happenings from present time fused together in what seemed to be a cluster of random thoughts and phrases. I lost focus when I tried to grasp and comprehend what was happening and at the same time attempt to distinguish between reality and imagination. After finally regaining my consciousness from the mind-puzzling events featured on stage, the play seemed to utterly shift once more, introducing a vicious circle. The storyline is unpredictable due to the time switches, and flying from scene to scene will without a doubt give you a jetlag.
Willy Loman, a character thought-provoking enough to hold his own separate review, shows throughout the play his completely skewed view on the American Dream and how to be a successful business man. In turn, Willy brainwashes his family (especially Biff and Happy, Willy’s sons) into the misguided image of the American Dream he established. Willy, clearly not an ideal father, lectures Biff and Happy in a pool of lies in how to be successful. Willy is not an ideal father in a sense that he can’t distinguish between what’s right and what’s wrong, not even for his sons.
Seeing how Willy raised his sons gave me a migraine. It got to the point where my eyes started to burn and all I wanted to do was to pull my hair out. He accepted the matter of his sons stealing, which definitely had a substantial impact on me. Just ten minutes into the performance, there was one element which I knew would haunt me for the rest of the play; Willy’s pai...
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...ng favorites. Willy does not recognize that Happy is being neglected by his father the same way Willy was neglected by his. Little as Willy knows, he should understand that open differential parenting does not only affect the less favored child, but the family as a whole. Hearing Happy’s cries for his father’s attention almost brought me to tears of contempt.
The only interesting aspect of this theatre performance was how confusing the concept was. Skipping from one time frame to another was an experience by itself. It was Willy’s presence and the influence he had on his family that made the play what it was - baffling. If you like rollercoasters with an endless amount of loops and spins, this is the play for you. On the other hand, if you are like me who prefers to keep their head intact and functioning, don’t waste your time or your thinking capabilities here.
At the beginning of the play it is evident that he cannot determine the realities of life, and so he repeatedly contradicts himself to establish that his conclusion is correct and opinion accepted. These numerous contradictions demonstrate that Willy is perturbed of the possibility that negative judgements may come from others. Willy strongly believes that “personality always wins” and tells his sons that they should “be liked and (they) will never want”. In one of Willy’s flashbacks he recalls the time when his sons and him were outside cleaning their Chevy. Willy informs Biff and Happy the success of his business trips and how everyone residing in Boston adores him. He mentions that due to the admiration of people he does not even have to wait in lines. He ultimately teaches his sons that being liked by others is the way to fulfilling one’s life and removing your worries. These ideals, that one does not need to work for success, demonstrate Willy’s deluded belief of achieving a prosperous life from the admiration and acceptance of others. This ultimately proves to be a false ideology during his funeral, when an insufficient amount of people arrive. Willy constantly attempts to obtain other’s acceptance through his false tales that depict him as a strong, successful man. In the past, he attempts to lie to his wife, Linda, about the amount of wealth he has attained during his
Throughout the play, Willy can be seen as a failure. When he looks back on all his past decisions, he can only blame himself for his failures as a father, provider, and as a salesman (Abbotson 43). Slowly, Willy unintentionally reveals to us his moral limitations that frustrates him which hold him back from achieving the good father figure and a successful business man, showing us a sense of failure (Moss 46). For instance, even though Willy wants so badly to be successful, he wants to bring back the love and respect that he has lost from his family, showing us that in the process of wanting to be successful he failed to keep his family in mind (Centola On-line). This can be shown when Willy is talking to Ben and he says, “He’ll call you a coward…and a damned fool” (Miller 100-101). Willy responds in a frightful manner because he doesn’t want his family, es...
Experiencing a play means to allow it to make an impression for the reader, for him or her to observe the characters and create emotions, get a better understanding of the situation that is occurring in the play, and allows the readers to form opinions. Many times during the play we come to realize that Willy drifts in and out of flashbacks. Most of these occur during the period when Biff was in high school, and foreshadow the events of the present. For example, in one of the flashbacks, Biff “borrows” a football from the locker room and is told by Willy, “Coach will probably congratulate you on your initiative.” Obviously, Willy tries to justify Biff’s behavior in addition to his own. In the same flashback Willy asks Biff, “What do they say about you in school, now that they made you captain?” Willy proudly hears that Biff has a crowd of followers, and is well on his way to becoming well-liked ...
In the course of the play, Willy Loman is displayed as an adolescent who has not taken a grip on life. When parenting his children, Willy does not act as a father figure. He acts as if he is one of the boys who do not discipline his children. Because of this, Happy and Biff have nothing to strive for in life. Willy yearns for attention and he obtains this by bragging about how popular and athletic his sons are in comparison to his neighbor, Charley’s son, Bernard. “When this game is over, you’ll be laughing out of the other side of your face. They’ll be calling him another Red Grange. Twenty-five thousand a year” (Page 63). In this line, Willy is showing off to Charley that Biff’s athletics will get him somewhere in life, while Bernard’s classwork and lack of social skills will never give him real world experience. Willy believes that hard work and dedication will never pay off “because the man who makes an appearance in the business world, the man who creates personal interest, is the man who gets ahead.” (Page 22) In sum, Willy Loman believes that living in the momen...
In the play we see Willy Loman confusing his family because of his action that makes the whole family become worried of him keep asking their self about the father of the family Willy Loman. His hallucination didn’t affect the family only even the neibours are worried about him. To overall all these that cause Willy seems like is crazy it because of the American dream where everybody want to achieve the American dream in these world. That is doesn’t happened in America only even in the African continent it’s happened because of the colonial influence.
Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman is quite a captivating piece of literature. I really thought this book was fantastic, even reading it for a second time. Since this is a play, the majority of the characterization had to be done through dialogue, but the astonishing depth of development that Miller achieved with his characters was astonishing. I truly felt that I intimately knew the characters by the end of the play despite how slim the volume was. Miller's play is an expose of the harsh reality of the American Dream, and while his play's message may not be hopeful, the honesty of his work will resonate with middle-class America even today. Miller's play showed me that not much has changed since post-WWII America. Average people are still struggling to capture the dream that we all feel this land offers us. Happy and Biff are the tragic characters that I hope never to become, but who can blame them for aspiring for something greater? Most disturbing of all, I truly hope that my parents' generation never fall victim to the same destructive hopes that possessed Willy Loman. Perhaps the scariest realization is that any one of us can get caught up in the delusion of what we believe we deserve.
Overall, Willy’s actions greatly influenced his children’s lives. The statement, “He has reared his children- his own seed- in the contaminated soil of delusion” is very accurate. Willy raised his children guiding them through his ways of life. Biff was “contaminated” in his childhood as he strived to live up to his father’s dreams, not realizing the negative effect it had on his life. Happy’s lack of attention as a child only made him act out and develop bad morals. Willy’s delusional life impacted every part of his two son’s lives. Willy’s death which is mourned by only Biff, Happy, and Linda represents the delusion of Willy’s well liked personality. Biff and Happy’s childhood was contaminated by the delusions of their father.
During Willy’s darkest moments, he remembered 1928 (when he had success). “I had a big year [in 1928]. I averaged a hundred and seventy dollars a week in commissions,” said Willy. He described his previous successes many times throughout the play. He wholeheartedly bel...
Patterns and Themes: One of the more obscure themes I discovered was about nature. For example, in the beginning of the play, Willy's small apartment is being towered by many enormous apartment buildings. Because of this, the plants in his garden don't get enough sunlight to grow. Essentially, this represents how his artificial world is stopping his from growing into a better person. Also, Willy doesn't haven't enough courage to actually go out into nature, like his brother Ben did, and discover his true passions. Instead, he chooses to sell himself to the superficial urban world.
The overarching theme in Miller’s play is living the American dream. Willy believes he is the best salesman. That he is well known all over New England. Which would mean he was living the American dream. Willy tells the boys, “I never have to wait in line to see a buyer. ‘Willy Loman is here!’ That’s all they have to know, and I go right through” (Miller, 2121). Even though he does not make a lot of money and people do not show up at his funeral. Linda asked, “Why didn’t anyone come? But where are all the people he knew?” (Miller, 2174).
Willy Loman experiences flashbacks of past events, and hallucinates that have never occurred. He uses flashbacks with The Woman to escape present problem. His delusions are so powerful; he loses touch with reality, like in the case of The Woman in the restaurant and with his brother, Ben, and Charley. His delusions become so strong by the end of the play, Willy cannot interpret what has actually occurred and what is a delusion. He has a flashback with his brother, though he fabricates what his brother says. Willys’ delusions are what ultimately lead to his final act of suicide.
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.
...ed; however, Linda, his wife, wonders during his funeral where all of his friends are. Willy’s obsession with achieving the success that he believes his father obtained in Alaska, and that his brother had in Africa is met with mediocrity. The dream eludes him. His failure to accept that his son Biff is happy working on farms reflects his inability to see himself and his sons as the individuals they are. Happy, unfortunately, has similar traits of his father, especially in the myth of the American Dream. He is delusional in this respect. Miller’s play reflects that not all of America’s citizens are able to participate in her prosperity, but that there are other important personal accomplishments such as value for oneself and family. Willy was blind to everything except his personal failures, which helped to hinder and undermine a healthy response to life challenges.
Like countless characters in a play, Willy struggles to find who he is. Willy’s expectations for his sons and The Woman become too high for him to handle. Under the pressure to succeed in business, the appearance of things is always more important than the reality, including Willy’s death. The internal and external conflicts aid in developing the character Willy Loman in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman.
Since Arthur Miller’s play “Death of a Salesman” first appeared on the Broadway stage in 1949, Willy Loman has become one of the most iconic and over-analyzed characters in American literature. In the play, Willy is an aging New York salesman who is facing both personal and professional problems. In fact, Miller indicates in Act I that Willy is suicidal when he proclaims “I have such strange thoughts, I have such strange thoughts,” as he explains to his wife, Linda, that he –more than once- nearly ran his car off the road (964). On the surface, his suicidal tendencies are due to his failure to earn enough money to support his family in his old age. Yet, as the play progresses, the audience comes to understand that there are deep-seated issues in Willy’s past and in his psychological makeup that have contributed to his current station in life. Miller’s “Death of a Salesman" can