Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller

1061 Words3 Pages

Many families suffer from dysfunctions. In the Death of a Salesman written by Arthur Miller, you have a dysfunctional family, Willy thinks he is an advanced salesmen getting cheated out of an amazing opportunity in New York, Linda believes her husband Willy is mentally sane and that he just has bad luck, Happy says he’s a salesmen when he has been keeping his real work hidden from his family, and Biff has been bouncing around from job to job down west. Willy, Linda, Biff, and Happy use self-deception as a means to mentally escape the reality of their lives. Biff is the only character who becomes self-aware by the end of the play.

Biff is the only one who realizes that he and his family have been living a huge lie and when he tries to get everyone to realize what he has, they don’t believe him. “Oh maybe it was the steering wheel again. I don’t think Angelo knows the Studebaker.” (Miller 91) This shows that Linda isn’t acknowledging the problem with Willy. She is hiding and pretending that Willy is fine and nothing is wrong with him. “Well, he’s been doing very big things in the west. But he decided to establish himself here. Very Big. We’re having dinner. Did I hear your wife had a boy?” (Miller, 91) Biff isn’t or hasn’t been doing anything big in the west. He was in jail. He hasn’t been able to hold a job. This shows how Willy will make his own reality to make him and his family sound successful. “The man doesn’t know who we are! The man is going to know! To Willy: We never told the truth for ten minutes in that house!” (Miller, 131) Biff tells everyone that they have been living in lies but Happy and Willy think Biff is nuts when in fact Biff is the most logical person there.

The Loman family lives in a make believe world a...

... middle of paper ...

... and living with his family. Happy Loman, a complete and utter womanizer. He craves attention and lies about where he works. In the play Biff Loman is the only one to realize who he was and what his actual impact on the earth was. He realized he was nothing. Willy had buffed Biff’s image so high that Biff couldn’t even keep a job because he had such high standards of himself.

Works Cited

"Brother Man Reflections." blogspot. N.p., n.d. Web. 6 May 2014.

"What are some examples that show Biff as a morally ambiguous character in Death of a Salesman? - Homework Help - eNotes.com." enotes.com. enotes.com, n.d. Web. 6 May 2014.

Shmoop Editorial Team. "Biff Loman in Death of a Salesman." Shmoop.com. Shmoop University, Inc., 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 5 May 2014.

Miller, Arthur, and Gerald Clifford Weales. Death of a salesman. New York: Penguin Books, 1996. Print.

Comparing Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller and Fences by August Wilson
1405 Words | 3 Pages
Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman. The Bedford Introduction to Literature. 8th ed.Ed. Michael Meyer. Boston: Bedford, 2008. 1908-1972. Print.
Read More
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
1336 Words | 3 Pages
... Death of a Salesman. New York: Penguin, 1996. Print. The. Sherk, James.
Read More
Self Deception In Willy Loman
1601 Words | 4 Pages
Biff never kept a steady job during his young adult life, and did not possess a healthy relationship with anyone that was in his life. As the play progresses the reader sees how much Biff becomes more self- aware. An online source states, “Unlike the other members of his family, Biff grows to recognize that he and his family members consistently deceive themselves, and he fights to escape the vicious cycles of lies.” When Biff returns home it becomes a struggle to keep a healthy relationship with his parents. Once Willy and Biff decide together that Biff will go and ask Bill Oliver for a loan is when the differences between the two characters are truly seen. Biff accepts reality for the first time in his life, and realizes how ridiculous it is to ask Bill Oliver for a loan, when he barely knows the man and worked for him about ten years ago. When Biff meets up with Willy after the ‘meeting’ Biff is talking to his Father and says, “Why am I trying to become what I don’t want to be? What am I doing in an office, making a contemptuous, begging fool of myself, when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am!” This quote reveals that Biff recently has just experienced an epiphany, and realizes that what he was doing was making no sense. Biff is escaping the self- deception he was caught in with the rest of his
Read More
death of a salesman
784 Words | 2 Pages
Linda does not lose respect for Willy for his actions as much as Biff does. Biff cares about his mother dearly and does not like to see her being yelled at. He grinds his teeth when he sees his father yell at his mother, because he knows that if he argues, there will be that much more tension between him and his father. However, Biff cannot take it much longer because he is losing respect for his father. He knows his father should never get physical with his mother, and he finally takes action before it gets violent. He grabs Willy by the arm and screams at him not to yell at her. Willy gets angry at first, but then goes to bed guilt-ridden.
Read More
Biff And Willy Loman In Arthur Miller's Death Of A Salesman
1143 Words | 3 Pages
In Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller, the conflicts that formulate between Biff and Willy Loman build up to the death of Willy. Biff’s delusional perception of being liked in the world leads to a successful life which was an idea brought onto him by his father, Biff’s discovery of his father's affair, and Biff’s lack of business success all accumulate to the heavy conflicting relationship between Biff and his father, Willy. These contribute immensely to the idea that personal dreams and desire to reach success in life can negatively impact life with personal relationships, which causes people to lose sight of what is important. This ultimately leads to the Willy committing suicide from the build up of problems with his son.
Read More
Oedipus the King, My Last Duchess, and Death of a Salesman
1452 Words | 3 Pages
Gioia, Dana, and X.J. Kennedy. "Death of a Salesman" Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing, Compact Edition, Interactive Edition. 5th ed. New York: Pearson; Longman Publishing, 2007. 1212-1280. Print.
Read More
Fallacies and Distortions in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman
2844 Words | 6 Pages
Miller, Arthur. “Death of a Salesman”. Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. Ed. Dana Gioia and X.J. Kennedy.10th Ed. New York: Pearson, 2007.
Read More
Essay on Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman and Amanda in Glass Menagerie
1166 Words | 3 Pages
Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman. Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Seventh Edition. X.J. Kennedy, and Dana Gioia. New York: Addison Wesley Longman, Inc., 1999. 1636-1707.
Read More
The Internal and External Conflicts of Willy Loman
1177 Words | 3 Pages
Willy and Happy are very similar people. However Biff does not agree with the way Willy and Happy handle situations, which results in several conflicts between Biff and Willy throughout much of the play. Willy describes Biff as being lost saying, “Biff Loman is lost. In the greatest country in the world a young man with such – personal attractiveness gets lost,” (Miller 16). Even though Willy believes Biff is the lost one, in reality, Willy is lost throughout most of the play (Eisinger 2). Willy does not really know himself. Willy always puts on a show for others and does not be his true self, which portrays the feeling of being lost within himself.
Read More
Death Of A Salesman Willy Character Analysis
655 Words | 2 Pages
In the play, The Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller,Willy Loman, an unsuccessful businessman struggling to support his family is completely out of touch with reality throughout the plot line. Many characters throughout this play and their interactions with Willy have shown the audience his true colors and what he thinks is important in life. His constant lying and overwhelming ego certainly does not portray his life in factual terms, but rather in the false reality that he has convinced himself he lives in. Being raised by Willy, Biff and Happy are becoming failures and have no motivation to work hard to achieve anything in life. Throughout this novel, Biff has a few recurrences with stealing.
Read More
Arthur Miller's Death Of A Salesman
1374 Words | 3 Pages
Miller himself had three wives, so he was well-experienced in this area of dysfunctional families. In this play, Miller greatly challenges the idea of an ideal family with two parents who love each other and children who are beautiful and successful. These families are only a figment of our imagination to Miller. We can assume his life has somewhat to do with this assumption of his, but sadly, Miller happens to be right about this dysfunctional family, for the most part. “Death of a Salesman,” also addresses tragedy, as does “The Crucible.” Tragedy is something everyone will become familiar with at some point in their life, but that does not mean everyone will be able to handle it properly. The main character of “Death of a Salesman,” the man who ends up with the fateful death, is named Willy. In many eyes, Arthur Miller has a dark mind, but in all reality he is exposing society through the eyes of a man that is not a Christian, only furthering the truth that there is no hope in life without God. The plot of his play has three major events, which are first when Linda fully exposes Willy’s craziness, second when Willy begs
Read More
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
1054 Words | 3 Pages
The only way to become a truly happy person is to surround yourself with the things that make you happy. Setting logical goals and pursuing dreams is going to lead to a successful life. In the play, Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller, Willy, Linda, Biff, and Happy use self-deception as a means to mentally escape the reality of their lives. Biff is the only character who becomes self-aware by the end of the play. He realizes that his whole life has been a lie and that Willy’s standards for Biff’s achievements in life are simply unreachable. Happy is too caught up in himself throughout the play to realize that his father is in need of an escape from his dysfunctional life. Willy has lived his whole life setting these goals for himself that he simply can’t attain. Happy makes it known at the end of the play that he is planning to follow in his father’s footsteps. This foreshadows the downfall of Happy’s life to come. Linda is constantly reassuring Willy that the decisions he has made are the right choices. She finds out about his possible suicide attempts and she refuses to seek help for him. She constantly tells his that he is doing great when in reality his career is going nowhere and his relationship with his sons gets worse as the days go on. Willy was a man who claimed to have a good sense of pride. He believes that he thrived in his times of struggle. He lost the battle for his life and ended his life due to the constant disappointments and failures that he had to live with every day. Willy refused to see the truth in his life and continued to feed off the lies. He got so caught up in his lies that he lost what the truth really was.
Read More
Willy Loman: Truly Tragic or Plainly Pathetic?
1575 Words | 4 Pages
Miller, Arthur. “Death of a Salesman.” The Norton Introduction to Literature 10. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2010. 495-506.
Read More
Death Of A Salesman Analysis
1097 Words | 3 Pages
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.
Read More
Is Willy Loman a Tragic Hero in "Death of Salesman
1294 Words | 3 Pages
Death of a salesman. : McGraw-Hill, 2007. Print. The. "
Read More

Open Document

Wait a second!

Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller

Comparing Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller and Fences by August Wilson