Arthur Miller's classic American play, Death of a Salesman and Henrik Ibsen’s classic
play A Doll’s House, expose dysfunctional families and behaviors. In these plays, the themes
of innocence, guilt and of truth and are considered through the eyes of deception. Both
plays tell us that most of us choose to play roles and deceive, not only those immediately,
but distantly around us. In Death of a Salesman the father passes deception to his boys the next
generation. A Doll’s House Shows deception in a whole different way. We are shown a women’s
role with lack of power in a mans society.
In Death of a Salesman Willy Loman is a self deluded, insecure traveling salesman.
Willy truly believes in the American Dream of easy wealth and success. Willy always
tells his boys people he has known that have gotten rich. Willy’s tells them ”The man knew what
he wanted and went out and got it! Walked into a jungle, and comes out, the age of twenty one,
and he’s rich!”(1254) Linda is Willy’s loving, loyal wife. Linda suffers through Willy’s big
dreams. Once in a while, she seems to be taken in by Willy’s false hopes for future glory and
success. Biff is Willy’s thirty-four-year old elder son. Biff led a popular life in high school as a
football player, good male friends, and fawning female admirers. He failed classes, however, and
did not have enough credits to graduate. He really messed things up they even had a scholarship
waiting for him.
In The play Death of a Salesman the Lomans are all extremely self-deceptive, and in their
respective delusions and blindness to reality, they fuel and feed off of one another. Biff and
Willy Loman have been deceiving themselves and one another for years. Biff and happy both...
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help him keep his job. The lies keep digging her deeper and deeper in the ground.
In the end both stories have family members consistently deceiving themselves. The
familes have fallen apart and in result some are dead. The fight to escape the consent cycle of
lying did not appeal to some family members. Other family members got caught up in the
massive secrets and lies. In both stories the characters learned a lesson of a life time.
Works Cited
Gioia, Dana and Kennedy, X., J. “Death of a Salesman.” Literature: an introduction of fiction,
poerty,drama, and writing. 6th ed. Bosten: Pearson/Longman, 2010. 1239-1301
Gioia, Dana and Kennedy, X., J. “A Doll’s House.” Literature: an introduction of fiction, poerty,
drama, and writing. 6th ed. Bosten: Pearson/Longman, 2010. 1032-1084
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
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.
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.
Willy doesn’t want to accept that he is not successful anymore, he still recognize his son as handsome heroes. Biff as the football star when he was at high school and Happy an...
Willy Loman’s first son Biff is the son he taught his ideals, which affected Biff and caused him to live in the illusion for a little while until he realized he
Throughout history many families can’t face reality. In the play Death of a Salesman the main characters 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. Willy wants to live in his dream world; Linda and Happy don’t even realize that they’re in a dream world. Biff had no idea he was in a dream world until he had an epiphany.
Willy was an old man with a wife and two sons. He worked as a salesman
Eisinger, Chester E. "Critical Readings: Focus on Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman: The Wrong Dreams." Critical Insights: Death of a Salesman (2010): 93-105.
The relationship between Biff and Willy is not good. Since Biff found that his father Willy was cheating to her mother he left the home. In the play The Death of a Salesman Willy Loman and Biff seems they don’t like each other. Although Willy love his son Biff. When Biff was young Willy was always there supporting Biff in everything and was very proud of him. And he was the son that Willy had attached him dreams upon. According to the statement “I am not the leader of men, Willy, and neither are you. You were anything but a hard working drummer who landed in the ash-can like all the rest of them”. Biff’s observation was that he sees his father as a failed to achieve, although he work hard to success. Willy loves Biff his oldest son since he was at school. In his mind he was thinking that Biff will become a successful man in life, but it didn’t happen’. Biff is a man who got the job but fail to keep his job. That makes Willy become frustrated. But Biff he tried to find himself. Here Biff compare his self and Willy’. Willy is the hard worker trying to achieve an American dream, and when he look at Ben his brother who achi...
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.
Biff reveals that not just Willy, but all the family has been lying about their success. He begs to his father, asking him to give up on his dream of Biff being a massive success. Biff seems to accept something that Willy never could, he isn’t special. He shouts to Willy that he “is a dime a dozen and so are you”. Willy becomes infuriated at the notion that he is a common man and cries out “ I am not a dime a dozen, I am Willy Loman!” The confrontation ends with Willy weeping, realizing that Biff truly does love him. However, Biff’s efforts were in vain as Willy also exclaims “That boy is going to be magnificent”. Willy is not able to cope with the idea that both he and his son are not destined for greatness. And in his final act, he commits suicide, in an attempt to supply his son with the life insurance money. Or perhaps more importantly, to supply him with an opportunity to achieve the dream he never
Family and people surrounding Willy Loman influenced his dreams and motives in life. Willy’s perception about life was carved by his father as he absconded him at the age of four for the pursuit of wealth, which indirectly taught Willy that materialistic gain is a primacy in one’s life and cost Willy a great deal of emotional distress as he says “dad left when I was such a baby and I never had a chance to talk to him and I still feel—kind of temporary about myself” (36). The tremendous amount of Willy’s father’s influence that he has had on his son is confirmed through the presence of his flute sound in Willy’s imagination even to this day. Having materialism as the primary goal in life, Willy meets Dave Singleman, a famous salesman, whom becomes an icon for Willy as he protrudes a very positive and elegant picture of being wealthy. Based on Singleman’s fame and luxurious living at the age of eighty four, Willy superficially decides salesman as his career. However, not knowing how one achieves wealth, he assumes incorrectly that on...
Lying is a string that ties together a great part of the plot in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. The Lomans are all greatly self-deceptive, and in their particular fancies and delusions to reality, they fuel and nourish off of each other. Willy convinces himself that he is effective, overall loved, and that his children are bound for significance. Unable to adapt to reality, he totally forsakes it through his vivid dreams and eventually through suicide. Linda and Happy also accept that the Lomans are going to become showbiz royalty. Not at all like alternate parts of his family, has Biff developed to distinguish that he and his relatives reliably bamboozle themselves, and he battles to escape the cycle of lying.
Miller, Arthur and Gerald Clifford Weales. Death of a salesman. New York: Penguin Books, 1996. Print.
In the play, Miller introduces the readers to the way that Willy looks at Biff, the oldest one of his two sons and how he loves them both, but feels frustrated at their outcomes in life and talks about it with his wife, Linda, throughout the play. “Willy's son Biff adored Willy when he was young, he believed all Willy's stories, and even subscribed to Willy's philosophy that anything is possible as long as a person is ‘well-liked.’ The realization that Willy is unfaithful to Linda forces Biff to reevaluate Willy and Willy's perception of the world. Biff realizes that Willy has created a false image of himself for his family, society,