No one has a perfect life. Everyone has conflices that they must face sooner or later. The ways in which people deal with these personal conflicts can differ as much as the people themselves. Some insist on ignoring the problem as long as possible, while some attack the problem to get it out of the way.
The book of a Salesman, is written by Arthur Miller. It takes place at Willy Loman’s - A 63 year old once popular salesman who’s lost his popularity and sales, not to mention his mind, small house in New York surrounded by apartments. Biff, a thirty-four year old son of Willy who has been searching for himself while working on farms in the west to the dismay of his father, returns from the west to visit his family although he doesn’t know how long he’s going to stay. Happy, the younger brother of Biff who tries in all he can to please his father and attempts to continue his father’s dream after he dies, is glad to see him, but Willy seems strangely irritated. Willy has a flashbacks time to time. Biff and Happy were promising high school students. Charley, a father who is fairly successful and offers Willy a job which Willy refuses on the basis of pride, comes to Willy’s house at night complaining of not being able to sleep. Charley and Willy play cards, but at the same time, Willy hold a conversation with his imaginary brother. Charley has no idea what’s going on and leaves. Linda tells Biff that Willy has attempted by crashing the car several times. Willy comes out of his reverie and speaks with his family about their jobs. Happy has an idea of starting a line of sporting goods so Biff decides to go to Bill Oliver to ask to borrow money. Willy decides to go to Howard the next day to ask if he can work in New York so that he wouldn’t have to drive 700 miles to work.. The next day Willy goes to Howard and Biff goes to see Oliver. They decide to celebrate their success by going out for dinner at night. Biff confronts Willy about his attempts and Willy denies everything. He tells Biff that he did not get any money from Oliver and has no hope go get any money. He accuses Willy of not know who he really is. However, after this, Biff cries and leaves. Willy realizes that Biff loves him and decides to celebrate by himself by crashing the car which would give his family twenty-thousand dollar in life insurance. No one but his family and...
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...f, when he couldn’t even afford to buy his wife new ones. Another secret is when Linda finds out that Willy’s trying to kill himself. She doesn’t let Willy know that she found out, so she’s letting the problem go on, instead of fixing it. In Act One, page 59, Linda states, “I was looking for a duse. The lights brew out, and I went down the cellar. And behind the fuse box---it happened to fall out--was a length of rubber pipe--just short......And sure enough, on the bottom of the water heater there’s a new little on the gas pipe....Everyday I go down and take away that little rubber pipe. But when he comes home, I put it back where it was.” Happy lies constently about everything and anything. An example is when they were at the resturant and he met some s. He told the s that Willy wasn’t his father. Charley’s family has an open relationship. Charley taught Bernard to be honest.
Third, there’s appearanceWilly’s family shared the need to be well liked, and wanted to have the personalities to “win friends and influence people,” Willy tried to make sure his “image” presented an air of leadership and success, but was more passive than he wanted to appear.
Willy demonstrates his desperation for attention when he has his hallucinations of Uncle Ben. After Willy is fired by Howard, and he is still in awe, Ben appears. Willy then proceeds to talk to him: “Oh, Ben, how did you do it? What is the answer? […] Ben, I’ve got to talk to you” (84).
Willy’s father, a “very great” and “wildhearted man,” made a living traveling and selling flutes, making “more in a week than a man like [Willy] could make in a lifetime” (Miller 34). Even though Willy barely knew his dad, he built him up in his head as an amazing person and role model, striving to be as “well liked” as him (Miller 34). Willy also idealizes his brother, Ben, as evidenced by his constant one-way conversations with him.... ... middle of paper ...
A bit later we get an idea of how successful Willy is. Willy tries to
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
that it wasn't her who made her commit suicide. At the end of act one
If society was the cause for Willy’s struggles, then it only makes sense that other characters in the story would be having similar problems, but this is certainly not the case. Starting with Dave Singleman, the man who inspired Willy to become a career
One problem Willy has is that he does not take responsibility for his actions; this problem only gets worse because of his lies. Biff looks up to Willy, so when he finds out that Willy has an affair in Boston, Biff is petrified. Biff realizes his hero, dad, the one he wants to impress, is a phony and a liar. Willy destroys Biff's dream of playing football by saying he does not have to study for the math regents, he also Willy telling Bernard to give Biff the answers. When Biff fails the regents, he does not want to retake the test because he is so disgusted with his hero and does not want to succeed. Not only did Willy destroy Biff's dream, he also broke his vows and refused to admit it. Biff is a failure, in Willy's eye, in most part due to Willy and what happened in Boston. Willy refuses to take responsibility for what he did, so he lies about Biff. Willy tells Bernard that Biff has been doing great things out west, but decided to come back home to work on a "big deal". Willy knows that Biff is a bum who has not amounted to anything, but he refuses to take responsibility for what happened in Boston, so he changes the story of Biff's success. Throughout Willy's life he continued to lie. It might have stopped if Linda did not act the way as she did. Linda is afraid to confront Willy, so she goes along with his outlandish lies.
Willy becomes more and more dependent on his drug as the story progresses. His next allusion to the past was during a conversation with his wife. Willy is downhearted about his failure to provide for his family, his looks, and basically his whole life in general. He begins to see some of the truth in his life: "I know it when they walk in. They seem to laugh at me."(Miller; The Death of a Salesman; pg. 23) By trying to see the reality in life, for once, he depresses himself so awfully, that he has a rendezvous in his head with his women that he sees on the side. He only uses this women to lift his spirits and to evade the truths that nearly scare him into his own grave.
I am blinded by darkness. Timing is key. As the Thunder bashes the prison, I smacked the shit pipe. After a few good hits on the pipe it finally burst. I can’t believe the smell and the taste that shoot up into my mouth, my eyes, even in my pores.
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.
For example, she lacks remorse or any form of sympathy or regret for her actions and sees herself as being superior to other people. Secondly, Lisa saw herself as being invincible, and at one point, Lisa and her friend Susanna described having mental illness as a gift, which allowed them to see and understand the truth.
Subconsciously, Willy knows his capabilities and his problems and exiles himself socially. That could very well be the reason behind the "conversations" he has with himself throughout the novel; he feels like he can't talk to anyone else. Willy has a war going on in his mind, and he is helpless toward ending it. He knows that he can do well in life and be the man he should be, but he just can't seem to piece together the correct method of doing so. It's because of this that he continually defeats himself and repeatedly fails.
Foremost, Willy has a problem with his inability to grasp reality. As he grows older his mind is starting to slip. For example, when he talks to the woman and his brother Ben. Throughout the story, Willy dreams of talking to the woman, because the woman is a person that he was dating in when he went to Boston. He was cheating behind his wife’s back. Willy basically uses her as a scapegoat when he’s hallucinating about her. He blames all of his problems on the woman. For instance Willy says, “ Cause you do… There’s so much I want to make for.” (38) This is the evidence right here. Also he dreams about his brother Ben. Willy wishes could be more like his brother who has just passed away a couple of months previously to the story. He also wishes he didn’t have to work and could be rich like Ben. He respects Ben for not really working and making a lot of money. Another example of Willy’s hallucinations are when he says,“ How are you all?” (45) This occurs when Willy is talking with Charley and he starts thinking about Ben. Willy’s inability to grasp reality never changed throughout the story.
No one has a perfect life; everyone has conflicts that they must face sooner or later. The ways in which people deal with these personal conflicts can differ as much as the people themselves. Some insist on ignoring the problem for as long as possible, while others face up to the problem immediately to get it out of the way.
...self to be happy by thinking of his past, which destined him to do what every coward does when faced with problems: run. He runs from his problems, from his friends, from his family, and from himself. I think that Willy could have resolved his issues a lot easier if he had been brave enough to admit that he did have problems. Instead, he bottles them up, hides them deep inside himself, and lives vicariously through his past.