Evaluation of Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
The play was written by Arthur Miller who was born in Manhattan in 1915 by Jewish immigrant parents. He witnessed the depression and the failing of his fathers businesses. He went to college at the University of Michigan well he wrote and worked with plays.
He wrote Death of a Salesman in 1948 in a small Connecticut studio. The play took place in the great depression where a struggling business man tried to provide for his family. He has been working for years and is becoming very tired and crazy. He dies a sudden death in the end and he never completes the dream he wanted to as a salesman.
As soon as the play starts you get a feel for what the play is going to be like. Its dreary a dark mood Willy’s dream of becoming a wealthy salesman have fallen. The house they once bought that had such a spark has now decayed around other apartment buildings like Willy’s dream is slowly decaying. Everyone can relate to this they first have a big outlook and dream but when the dream falls so does everything else around someone. The play unfolds slowly throughout using a number of symbols, themes, and motifs. The play picks apart everyone especially Willy. The play contains two acts and a Requiem which takes place at the end of the story where Willy’s death occurs. Many troubles lead up to his death.
The story contains many symbols one is the seeds. These represent Willy’s career he keeps planting trying to be a better salesman and a better father but keeps failing. As said “You can’t raise a carrot in the back yard.” (lines 120-121). This also lets you know that things are not going well for him. Not only can he live the American dream but he cannot even plant a se...
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... aspect of life and let you appreciate what you have by what these characters had to do without. I feel a since of maturity after reading the play. I want to find myself rather its making good money or just doing something I love to do. I don’t want to live the American dream and be a big wealthy rich person after reading this story because you lose your vision in life. You don’t see things as a clearly as you should instead the main focus is on money and how much you would like to make. I want my life to be much like Biff and focus on the things I need to fix within myself. I want my life to concentrate on family values and raising my children not to lose sight of what is important in life, and that is not being wealthy and a powerful business man. It is enjoying life, loving, and caring for others and yourself. Everyone should do what makes themselves happy.
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).”
But they were both able to understand that people must sometimes put aside the dreams for the better cause. The death of Willy shows Biff what can happen if you get obsessed with your dream. Likewise the lose of the money from the death of Walter, Sr., shows Walter, Jr., what will happen. Both of them finally understand in the end that life is not about money, power and possessions, but about family and friends. Family and friends will be there in your times of need and in your times of success, and will always love
Miller’s use of personification and symbolism in the book shows the situational irony that surrounds Willy. This highlights the overall message of blind faith towards the American Dream. The major case of irony in the book is Willy’s blind faith in the American Dream. This belief is that if one is well-liked, they will become successful. The truth is actually completely opposite. The real belief is that if one works hard, with no regard to how well liked they are, they will be successful. This relationship is shown between Willy and his neighbor Charley. While Willy believes likability is the only way to success, Charley works hard and does not care how people think of him. Through his hard work, Charley started his own business, and is now very successful. Willy, however, ends up getti...
In the year 1949, Arthur Miller created the play, Death of a Salesman. This is the play that made him most famous (Gioia and Kennedy 1763). “…This work is unquestionably the pinnacle of his achievement” (Gioia and Kennedy 1763). Miller wrote many additional plays, but is best known for Death of a Salesman.
Patterns and Themes: One of the more obscure themes I discovered was about nature. For example, in the beginning of the play, Willy's small apartment is being towered by many enormous apartment buildings. Because of this, the plants in his garden don't get enough sunlight to grow. Essentially, this represents how his artificial world is stopping his from growing into a better person. Also, Willy doesn't haven't enough courage to actually go out into nature, like his brother Ben did, and discover his true passions. Instead, he chooses to sell himself to the superficial urban world.
Arthur Miller's play Death of a Salesman is the story of a man, Willy Loman, gone deaf to the outside world. Though many try to help him, he shuts them out and creates his own reality in which he is successful and loved by everyone. In Death of a Salesman, Willy has many influences both good and bad attempting to direct his life; it is his refusal to choose the helpful advice that will ultimately lead to his downfall.
The Death of a Salesman, by Arthur Miller is a controversial play of a typical American family and their desire to live the American dream “Rather than a tragedy or failure as the play is often described. Death of a Salesman dramatizes a failure of [that] dream” (Cohn 51). The story is told through the delusional eyes and mind of Willy Loman, a traveling salesman of 34 years, whose fantasy world of lies eventually causes him to suffer an emotional breakdown. Willy’s wife, Linda, loves and supports Willy despite all his problems, and continually believes in his success and that of their no good lazy sons, Biff and Happy. The play takes place in 1942, in Willy and Linda’s home, a dilapidated shack on the outskirts of a slum. Willy has spent his whole life teaching and believing that you can achieve success by your appearance and by making yourself as amiable as possible. Eventually Willy begins to fabricate stories at himself to be able to live with himself because he can’t meet his own expectations. He falls deeper into his lies, making himself and his family suffer for it. (Thesis). In the play Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller proves he is America’s social critic when he criticizes Willy’s relationship concerning his family, his lack of success in achieving his goals and his dreams along with his inner turmoil and personal collapse which result in suicide.
Willy is a man who does not know how to make the most of what he has. He sets himself up for...
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller was first presented in 1949 and has been studied and reproduced countless times since. The plot revolves around a salesman named Willy Loman and his family. Willy is 63 years old, and on the decline. His career as a traveling salesman is going badly, and during the play he is let go. Willy’s flashbacks to a better past take up much of the past, and are brought on by the return of Biff, Willy’s favorite son, who comes to visit from out west. Biff is 34 and Willy’s favorite son, but Willy’s high expectations him cause many issues for both of them. The overall tone of the play is sobering as we watch the family (especially Willy) fall apart because of various reasons, including the way they treat each other.
Have you ever felt compelled to reconcile your past uncertainties because of the desire of attaining acceptance? In Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman”, Willy Loman, the protagonist, is a salesman blinded by his own delusion. This self delusion affects him and the people around him. The delusion also affects the standards of success that he created throughout his life to make sure his ambiguity is not transferred to individuals around him. These standards guide him towards his emphasised view of who he is and what he wants to achieve, causing pressure to both himself and Biff Loman, another main character. In this modern play, the differences between Biff and Willy and their dissimilar sense
“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.
In the original 1949 play of Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller was the American playwright. Death of a Salesman was a tragic play that presents a story about a salesman named Willy who believes that personality and being “well-liked” will achieve his American Dream. The play premiered on February 10, 1949 at the Morosco Theatre in Manhattan, New York (Avery). Miller’s play reflected on his relationship with uncle, Manny Newman who was also a salesman like the protagonist of the story and two sons who he took great pride on (Tierney). Through his characterization of Willy and Biff Loman, Miller presents contrasting (or surprising similar) illustra...
The reader can see how Arthur Miller was inspired to write this play because of his family background using a biographical approach. Miller’s father “was a prosperous businessman until the Crash of 1929, after the family suffered through the Depression” (Rollyson) which had a significant influence on his life and works. As we see in the play, Willy Loman in a sense has two different realities. There is a Willy Loman -- “the financially burdened and emotionally exhausted main character (Thompson) -- is broken, an exhausted man in his sixties, near the end of his life. And there is the more confident, vigorous Willy Loman of some fifteen years before, who appears in flashbacks in the story. If we make a parallel between the story and the author’s life, these two realities are the before and after of the great depression that Miller’s father suffered through when Miller was a child. His life served as the inspiration to create the characters of the story: “Miller drove trucks, unloaded cargoes, waited on tables, and worked as a clerk in a warehouse.” (Rollyson)
Death of a Salesman is a stage play in the form of tragedy that focuses on the relationship between Willy and his son Biff. The main character is Willy Loman, a sixty-three year old salesman that feels his life is full of failure and missed opportunities to become successful. He often has hallucinations of past happier memories where he reminisces about those times. Willy’s mind seems to be full of illusions and he has
Biff Loman, a highly successful high school football player, was supposedly meant for great things after high school. However, Biff failed to graduate from high school due to failing a mathematics class, and also did not complete the class during summer school, because of the discussion he had with his father. The discussion was one that was eye-opening, as Biff learned that his father was unfaithful to his mother, “You—you gave her Mama’s stockings…don’t touch me, you—liar...You fake! You phony little fake! You fake!“ (95). This is the moment in the play where Biff lost all respect for his father. Due to not graduating, he lost his athletic scholarship to the University of Virginia. Since then, Biff has been working blue-collar jobs in the west while not making over thirty-five dollars a week. He is happy there but realizes that there is not much future in that line of work and ends up returning home without a job.