Arthur Miller is a famous author who has the capability to attract the peculiar feelings of every reader who enjoys reading plays and wishes to feel the author’s illustration power. The play Death of a Salesman written by Arthur Miller in the Aristotelian sense is a tragedy based off of pity and fear. The play is a critique of the capitalist American dream. It is commonly known as one of the first tragedies of Modern American society. Death of a Salesman is based on the foundations, values and moral principles of the American society by applying the American Dream. Miller portray around the play Willy Loman as a tragic hero. He is a common person and has a small family. Miller throughout the play characterizes Willy and his family to show the tragic mishaps and imperfect devotion for that dream.
The main features of this tragedy tale that was observed by Aristotle were the emotions that were pitiful and full of fear. These emotions were characterized as symbols by Miller such as constantly complaining and fixing the car and freezer. He reflected these emotions throughout the drama and revealed it throughout the play. The relationship of Willy with all the characters in the play shows a strong sense of despair, sorrow and disillusion. This clings Willy to the version of the American Dream that attack and defends people in his life. At first Willy imagines that he makes sure that his son lives the best life according to this dream. However, as the play advances ahead, one begins to see that Willy’s treatment for Happy, Biff and all the other characters is just an expression to protect the capitalist progress philosophy. The play shows the feelings of anger sorrow and despair that comes all around from the idea that if Willy’s dream ...
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... shows the audience that Willy never accepted himself for who he is and be happy with what he had. For instance, Willy ignores Linda’s love and focus on the other women instead. Linda shows through the play that Willy never realized his own worth and he is immersed in the materialism and worldly gains.
To conclude, this way the classic tale of tragedy ended and it was made on the American dreams (Feillet 88). This shows that a common person can not always become hugely successful, materially or socially. It sometimes depends on who you know and what you do. The play conveys a series of emotions, nobility of the hero, and reversal of the fortune and organic unity. In the end, however Miller implies that Willy’s death was not essential because it was due to his disillusioned belied that in the empty promises of capitalism lied the real American dream of contentment.
The play, “Death of a Salesman” written by Arthur Miller, presents Willy Loman, as a salesman, who fails to earn a living and slowly loses his mind. Willy continuously seeks the past to find out where he went wrong. During his years in life, Willy wanted his two sons, Biff and Happy to become someone they’re not; Willy wanted them to become a salesman like him. However, because of his obsession in the American Dream of easy success and wealth, he created a life full of lies for himself and his sons. In the end because of “his misconception of himself as someone capable of greatness” leads to his downfall and the end of his life (Death of a Salesman).”
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.
The tragedy of love, grief, despair, and betrayal created this significant play. As you can see from this paper, read the play with female trauma perspective, with the "American Dream" as the background, we realized the tragic fate of the female character Linda in the play is the most tragedy character than male character Willy.
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.
The play “Death of the Salesman” by Arthur Miller, introduced the dramatic story of Willy Loman, a salesman who has reached the end of the road. Willy Loman is a washed-up salesman who is facing hard times. In “Death of a Salesmen,” Willy Loman has been deluding himself over the years to the point he cannot understand what is wrong with him. This leads to the problems with is sons, wife, and career; it ultimately is what ends his life. I believed that the character of Willy 's delusion caused him to fall. While there were many contributing factors to Willy 's demise, his failure to cope with such circumstances and to become trapped in his own delusion is what tears Willy apart from himself and his family. Rather than facing the reality, Willy
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.
... morals and personality towards his goals and at the same time trying to pass those values onto his sons, making him lose their respect, which is one of the many reasons that ended up taking his life. For the most part one can see that issues like Willys cannot only be seen or heard of in a play but also in the real world. Everybody in general wants to conform and be liked in today's competitive society, which is one of the reasons why many people don't get to accomplish the things they want to accomplish because they are either to scared or don't have the courage to step out of the social norms and achieve what they what to achieve. If anyone learns anything from this tragic character, one can say that truly knowing ones-self can really help in the long run because if one doesn't know who they are, they can end up leading a miserable life, in a miserable world.
In short, Willy Loman's unrealistic dreams caused his downfall. By trying to be successful with material desires and being "well-liked" he failed. By the play's end he had to lose his own life just to provide funding for that of his family. He put his family through endless torture because of his search for a successful life. He should have settled with what he had, for his true happiness included a loving family. Willy's example shows that one must follow their own dreams to be truly accomplished.
Arthur Miller uses Willy, a common man, whose only flaw is his inability to question the validity of the American Dream, to portray a tragic hero, and also to question the ideals of the American society. Willy’s conflicted, lonely and seemingly false character has been created with only one end, and it is through the story of his life, his denial and finally his death, that undeniably grants his validity as a character. As Miller writes, ‘tragedy is the consequence of a man’s total compulsion to evaluate himself justly’, this feeling being evoked when we are ‘in the presence of a character who is ready to lay down his life, if need be, to secure one thing- his sense of personal dignity’.
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.
The American dream described in the play can be achievable, but Willy’s ways of achieving that American dream leads him to a failure. According to an article published by the South Atlantic Modern Language Association, the play builds the idea of American dream that it is harmful and immoral as long as it is based on selfishness and greediness. However, the dream us described realistic when it is achieved on values that ar...
One major theme in Death of a Salesman is the pursuit of the American dream. Playwright Arthur Miller details main character Willy Loman’s misguided quest of this dream. Death of a Salesman was written in postwar America, when the idea of the American Dream was a way of life. The United States was flourishing economically, and the idea of wealth was the base of the American Dream. Capitalism was alive and well, and by living in a capitalist society, everyone in America was supposed to have a chance to become rich and successful. Miller makes the reader realize this dream is a falsehood, because it doesn’t always work for everyone as planned. In the play Death of a Salesman, Willy Loman is a prime example of someone trying desperately, yet unsuccessfully, to pursue the false hope of the American Dream, directly resulting from capitalism’s effects.
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller concerns itself with the fall of a simple man perpetually in a steadfast state regarding his own failure in a success-driven society. The protagonist of the play, Willy Loman, will follow a tragic trajectory that will eventually lead to his suicide. Arthur Miller's tragic play is an accurate portrayal of the typical American myth that sustains an extreme craving for success and a belief in the illusion of the American dream, a dream attainable only by a handful of people. Having chosen a career in sales Willy Loman constantly aspires to become 'great'. Nevertheless, Willy is a poor aging salesman that considers himself to be a failure when comparing himself to his successful father and brother, but he is incapable of consciously admitting it. Consequently, Willy will measure his level of success with the level of success attained by his offspring, particularly his eldest son Biff. Their difficult relationship contribute to the play's main plot. Willy unfolds his deluded perception and recollection of the events as the audience gradually witnesses the tragic downfall of a man shadowed by a mental illness that has already began to take it's toll on his mind and personality.
...nition of these terms. Arthur Miller, the playwright of Death of a Salesman intended this play to be a tragedy; this is what it should be interpreted as. As seen by this essay, it is clear that there is no right and true definition of the genre tragedy; it is as open to interpretation as the literature pieces are. Willy Loman represents a society striving for the American Dream, although he is of little importance in the standings of life. He is not popular or well-liked despite his hopes and dreams. He is a tragic hero who participated in the tragedy of Death of a Salesman.