Comparing Willy Loman And The Death Of Ivan Ilyich

929 Words2 Pages

II & DOAS Compare and Contrast Essay In Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller and The death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy, Willy Loman and Ivan Ilyich were both on a constant search for ways to attain the ideal life that they dream for. These two pieces of literature allowed us to take a step back and observe the consequences of a skewed mindset. The two protagonists painted a picture of the ideal life they wish for, alarming us the aftermath of removing ourselves from the reality. Willy and Ivan similar value their imagination, but due to their unique experiences, they came to a different conclusion about life when living their last moments. Tracing back to Willy and Ivan’s life, we can observe factors such as family and persona that contributes …show more content…

Their last thoughts before death are what set them apart. Willy spent his whole life in searching for a way to success, but failed. He was extremely caught up with the unrealistic ideal picture that he painted in his mind. Hopelessness, gloominess finally hit Willy, causing him to yell out “I suppose that’s my fault”(Miller 131). On the other hand, Ivan’s expectation of life is to live with no expectations. Because of expectations, Willy stepped into darkness; because of expectations, Ivan stepped into the light. Another crucial detail that creates a stark contrast between them is the manner of their death. Death came to Ivan, whereas Willy searched for death. Death was an unwelcome guest in Ivan’s life where he had to deal with this uncomfortable feeling that disrupted the decency of his life. He cannot bring himself to accept the fact that death is approaching him and his life is getting more inconvenient every day. He enjoyed an ordinary life but extraordinary death. He dwelled on the past and could not let go until he realized he “mustn’t think about that…too painful,” as “[he] said to himself and shifted back to the present.”(Tolstoy 48). Ivan figured that life is not meant to be easy and eventually accepted his death, knowing he could not change anything. However, Willy notices that his dreams are never going to come true, as he “[doesn’t] have a thing in the ground.”(Miller 122) With a late notion of himself being detached from reality, Willy decided that he could not fulfill his purpose while living. Therefore, he examined the needs of his family, and was certain that his death will be better off for everyone including himself. Both Willy and Ivan believed that their deaths would be of the best interest for them and people around

Show More
Related

  • Candide, Death Of Ivan Ilyich, And The Metamorphosis

    1380 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy tells the story of Ivan Ilyich, a man who deals with a mysterious illness through introspection. Until his illness, he lived the life he thought he was supposed to live. Like Candide, he was living in blind optimism. He assumed that what he was doing was the right thing because he was told as much. He had a respectable job and a family. Happiness, if it did occur to him, was fulfilling his duties as a husband and father. It was his sudden illness that allowed him to reflect on his choices, concluding that those choices did not make him happy. “Maybe I have lived not as I should have… But how so when I did everything in the proper way” (Tolstoy 1474)? Ilyich had been in a bubble for his entire life, the bubble only popping when he realizes his own mortality. This puts his marriage, his career, and his life choices into perspective. Realizing that he does not get to redo these choices, he distances himself from his old life: his wife, his children, and his career. All that is left is to reflect. This reflection is his personal enlightenment. He had been living in the dark, blind to his true feelings for his entire life. Mortality creates a space in which he can question himself as to why he made the choices he made, and how those choices created the unsatisfactory life he finds himself in

    Read More

  • Critical Response Of Arthur Miller's 'Death Of A Salesman'

    1060 Words  | 3 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Death of a Salesman Character Analysis

    1323 Words  | 3 Pages

    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...

    Read More

  • Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman and Thornton Wilder's Our Town

    1736 Words  | 4 Pages

    In the road of life, the right path may not always be where the road signs lead. The road to self-discovery is found by following one’s heart and mind and to wherever they may lead them. Within the plays Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller, and Our Town by Thornton Wilder, parallel pathways and contrary connections can be established between the characters coinciding in both. In Death of a Salesman, Willy Loman is the portrait of a sixty year old man reflecting upon his past, one of lies and hopelessness. Upon coming about his past, he finally and fatally, discovers himself at the end of his life. Mr. Webb from Our Town plays the figure of an editor of Grover’s Corner Sentinel and loving father of Emily. Early in the play, he displays knowledge over his own self-discovery, which he hopes to tell others. The self-discovered Mr. Webb raised Emily coherently as a woman who in the end recognized the value of life. Married to George Gibbs, her life was very much comparable to Linda Loman, married to Willy Loman. Linda Loman was a woman dedicated to the needs of her spouse, but also therefore blind to the real needs that Willy desired. In the end, she still was left wondering why or what had gone wrong. Interlocked by protruding parallel traits of progressive self-awareness, these characters promoted the two plays to a higher level of understanding.

    Read More

  • Ivan Illyich Tolstoy's Five Stages Of Grief

    1295 Words  | 3 Pages

    Tolstoy provided us with two perspectives to view Ivan’s life in “The death of Ivan Illyich”: an omniscient narrator and Ivan himself. What I plan to do is give another perspective, not necessarily to view his life, but rather to his experiences after he realized he was dying. This perspective will be an analytical and psychological; the perspective from Kubler-Ross’s Stages of death (or stages of grief, as they are better known for). These stages occur when we are faced with an event that is usually connected with death. The “normal” order in which these five stages occur, though may not go doctrinally in this order, are as such: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance.

    Read More

  • Comparing Hamlet And Death Of A Salesman

    1848 Words  | 4 Pages

    Throughout time, humans experience many positive and negative life experiences. These experiences can be categorized under various themes, ranging from; love even onto betrayal, and through these themes human emotions and experiences can be studied. “Hamlet,” by William Shakespeare, and “Death of a Salesman,” by Arthur Miller, are two well written plays, displaying a both very tragic and thematic approach. Although, they take place in two very different time periods, under two very different circumstances they share a common effect. Hamlet’s tragic story takes place in the royal castle Elsinore, Denmark, while the Loman’s story takes place in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Boston in the late 1940s.

    Read More

  • The Destruction of Willy Loman in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman

    963 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the book Death of A Salesman, author Arthur Miller shows how cruel life can be through the life of Willy Loman, the main character. His feelings of guilt, failure, and sadness result in his demise.

    Read More

  • Irony In The Death Of Ivan Ilyich

    608 Words  | 2 Pages

    Ivan has a strong disconnect with his family and begins feel like he is always suffering, while beginning to question if his life has been a lie. An example of this for prompt number three is when we are giving the quote "Ivan Ilych's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible." Leo Tolstoy implies through the quote that even though he lives an ordinary

    Read More

  • The Death of Ivan Ilyich

    1577 Words  | 4 Pages

    In his novella, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Leo Tolstoy satirizes the isolation and materialism of Russian society and suggests that its desensitized existence overlooks the true meaning of life—compassion. Ivan had attained everything that society deemed important in life: a high social position, a powerful job, and money. Marriage developed out of necessity rather than love: “He only required of it those conveniences—dinner at home, housewife, and bed—which it could give him” (17). Later, he purchased a magnificent house, as society dictated, and attempted to fill it with ostentatious antiquities solely available to the wealthy. However, “In reality it was just what is usually seen in the houses of people of moderate means who want to appear rich, and therefore succeed only in resembling others like themselves” (22). Through intense characterizations by the detached and omniscient narrator, Tolstoy reveals the flaws of this deeply superficial society. Although Ivan has flourished under the standards of society, he fails to establish any sort of connection with another human being on this earth. Tragically, only his fatal illness can allow him to confront his own death and reevaluate his life. He finally understands, in his final breath, that “All you have lived for and still live for is falsehood and deception, hiding life and death from you” (69).

    Read More

  • The Importance Of The American Dream In Arthur Miller's Death Of A Salesman

    822 Words  | 2 Pages

    Willy’s Distinct idea on the American dream is if your are well liked by people you will be successful. As said in the play by Willy "personality always wins the day”(Miller 1737). as said in the play by Willy. as read through the drama he looks at people who are successful and feels they have yet to attain full success. As they are surely intelligent and work hard, but do not live up to their true potential. For example, his son Biff, he feels he is wasted potential, as he is well liked yet has not obtained success. This is the point in which Willy has misunderstood, all because he had a good for nothing father. This led him to believe that the ideal success is the opposite of his father. Willy went through his life with this

    Read More

  • "The Death of Ivan Ilych", by Leo Tolstoy

    840 Words  | 2 Pages

    The story of In "The Death of Ivan Ilych", was written by Leo Tolstoy around who examines the life of a man, Ivan Ilyich, who would seem to have lived an exemplary life with moderate wealth, high station, and family. By story's end, however, Ivan's life will be shown to be devoid of passion -- a life of duties, responsibilities, respect, work, and cold objectivity to everything and everyone around Ivan. It is not until Ivan is on his death bed in his final moments that he realizes that materialism had brought to his life only envy, possessiveness, and non-generosity and that the personal relationships we forge are more important than who we are or what we own.

    Read More

  • Willy Loman's Depression in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman

    631 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • The American Dream in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman

    456 Words  | 1 Pages

    Willy's goal throughout life was to climb out of his social class. As a salesman, Willy was a failure and he tried desperately to make his sons never end up like him. As a result, he loses his mind and his grasp on reality. Throughout the story, Willy often has flashbacks of the conversations that he and his brother Ben once had and the author intertwines them in past and present very nicely.

    Read More

  • Theme Of Superego In Death Of A Salesman

    1611 Words  | 4 Pages

    Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller highlights the result of an unfulfilling life through Willy Loman’s pursuit of an unrealistic American Dream and the effects it creates on himself as well as his family. This story has many strong examples which prove the psychoanalytic theory by Sigmund Freud and his concept of the human

    Read More

  • Is Willy Loman a Tragic Hero in "Death of Salesman

    1294 Words  | 3 Pages

    Willy’s hubris makes him feel extremely proud of what he has, when in reality he has no satisfaction with anything in his life. Willy Loman’s sons did not reach his expectations, as a father, but he still continued to brag about Biff and Happy in front of Bernard. Willy Loman caused the reader to empathize with him because before his tragic death he did everything he could for his family. Empathy, Hubris, and Willy Loman’s tragic flow all lead him to his death that distends from the beginning. He is unable to face reality and realize that he’s not successful in life or at his job; he remains living in a world where he thinks he’s greater than everybody else because he’s a salesman.

    Read More

More about Comparing Willy Loman And The Death Of Ivan Ilyich

Open Document