Death Of A Salesman Essay

Death of a Salesman
For the first play report of the semester, I chose to watch death of a salesman. The play revolves around a man by the name of Willy Loman, a salesman whose career has been falling apart due to his older age and loosening grasp on reality. The play follows Willy’s slow walk into both insanity, and deep depression brought on by failure both in the business world, and in his own family life. Often comparing himself to his rich brother Ben, he sees both himself and his sons as complete and utter failures in contrast to the wide success of his brothers african diamond mine. Over the years, all of the pressure he puts on himself and his family causes him to fade in and out of a day dreaming state, where he talks with Ben asking for the secrets of a successful life, and reliving his early days as a successful salesman. Both his brother, and his success are gone in the midst of his constant daydreaming. If that were not enough to destroy his family relationships, the fact that he was caught cheating on his wife with “the women” by Biff his older son years earlier does not help his relationship with both sons by any means. After Willy is pushed over the edge he decides to kill himself. The play ends with Willys two sons reflecting on

In scenes where Willy daydreams, the main lights are shut off and a spot light is shown on Willy and the individual he is daydreaming about.. Considering the background is completely blacked out, this is a cheap way to be able to keep one set the entire time. Because of this move the set does not have to be picked up between scenes, which makes more set detail possible. The actors were rather young, but were able to move like older people. I thought that there could have been more makeup to make the actors seem older. At some points it was hard to tell which characters were older than each other, because the actors did not look or sound older. This was made up for in