The Deplorable Willy Loman of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman

Willy Loman ruins the life of his son Biff by feeding him false stories and keeping the truth from him. He ruins Biff by cheating and deceiving him and Biff discovers the shocking truth he is mortified and quits on life. Biff’s life goes into pieces and he then sees the truth of his popularity at Willy’s funeral. Biff sees that he wasn't all that popular and successful and that his father was a deceptive liar. Willy Loman lived a life that destroyed

And shall I couple hell?" (I. v. 92-93). Also knowing that his father was miserable in the afterlife weighed heavily on Hamlet's mind (Knight 20). Clearly, the death of his father and speaking to the ghost of his father started the corruption of Hamlet. The deeds of his uncle and his mot... ... middle of paper ... ...rruption of Hamlet can be attributed to the ghost of Hamlet's father, the actions of his mother and uncle and the many deaths that occur in this play.

Tragic Hero in Death of a Salesman Produced in the end of modernism, Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman portrays a tragic story behind the American Dream. The play encompasses over a life of an average salesman, whose personal failure consumed on his deceptive and deluded life. Aristotle would perceive the downfall of the main character, Willy, as an intellectual error – not a moral error for he had fallen into an error in judgment. Furthermore, Miller combines the Aristotelian principles of tragedy and immerses it in a relatable context for the common people. Although Willy Loman fails to come into self-realization before his death, he, by the Aristotelian definition of tragic flaw and Miller’s belief in the mistakes the “common man,” is

This furthermore leads to the downfall of Willy and his family, proving that Willy Loman is a tragic hero. To conclude, “Death of a Salesman” by Arthur Miller satisfies the criteria for a tragic play because Willy’s pride is a tragic flaw that leads to his downfall. Ultimately, Willy gains enlightenment of his false perception of life and realizes how he inhibits the success of his family. This epiphany leads him to sacrifice himself for the well-being of his family. During his lifetime, Willy’s pride caused him to have an overinflated ego, a bizarre idealistic view on life, and a false value system.

The tragedy was that he suffered the improbabilities of murdering his father and then marrying his mother, it is a tail of his revelations about his past, and the events that led him to his ultimate fall. In this play, Sophocles illustrated a world of human frailty, pride, and punishment, which helped to propel, with dreadful inevitability, a protagonist moving toward catastrophe. Oedipus is the direct cause of his own undoing, however it is not because he is evil, proud, or weak, but simply because he does not know his true past or who he is. The facts that he believes to be true are unraveled, thus revealing his fate. Oedipus meets the first criterion of a Greek tragedy, which is that the protagonist is a good person.

His external force is the change in the nature of business: success through reputation no longer holds true, eventually leading to Howard firing Willy. The last element is that Willy died with the fatal event of his suicide due to the fact that he believed it was a last resort towards his dream. Through the use of these characteristic and thematic elements, Miller is able to craft, to an extent, Willy into a tragic hero whose death was the consequence of his delusions of his dream. Willy Loman’s delusional dream continuously brings him into the past because he cannot accept that conditions of his current life. Willy incorrectly thinks that “It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it — because personality always wins the day”, which is absolutely not true and causes him to be a poor role model for his children (Miller 65).

Death of a Salesman is a classic tragedy depicting a salesman and his attempts in the American dream. The tragic aspect of the story is the pride that destroyed the opportunities that the salesman, Willy Loman had in achieving the American dream. However, because Willy did not grasp the opportunities and took his own path, he ended up as a failure as a salesman, husband, father and friend. Willy Loman is a relatable character because everyone has flaws and make that one mistake that they would regret till the day they die. In this play, all the Lomans are tragic characters who possess a fatal flaw of their own and flaws that they share with one another.

Willy Loman, from the play Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller, exhibited the traits of a tragic hero. His disastrous qualities came prior to his foreshadowed death when he realized his existence had not panned out the way he had hoped. Mr. Loman aroused sympathy from the readers as he dedicated his life to a single cause, all while having a weakness of pride that led to his catastrophic passing. Willy was destined to pass away from the very start of the story, just like a tragic hero characteristically does. The title of the work shows the fate of Willy Loman.

Although the first scene with Willy is when he almost crashes the car, it’s also when we see his relationship with his wife Linda. Linda and Willy have a very unhealthy marriage fraught with stress, anger and infidelity. Willy in “Death of a Salesman” is a man who constantly belittles and disrespects his wife and cheats on her. Willy is also the type of man who can be classified as someone who wanted to be a hero, especially to his two sons who resent him and who he also resents. Willy wanted to be the dad who his sons loved and inspire to be, but he ends up pushing them away.

Although Willy is justly punished for his crimes, Field fails to go into the depth of Willy’s crimes. The extent of Willy Loman’s corruption makes his crimes far more severe, for he has left his family in shambles and to continue to be his future conduits. Willy Loman’s addiction to his own delusions have made him curse his sons to the same amoral mind frame that he had put on himself, and continues to use against his wife, while still feeling convinced he is a well liked person that deserves to be treated better than he treats others. Willy Loman receives a deserving punishment for many reasons, but the lesson he leaves behind to his sons is one of the most everlasting to his family. Field in his article claims “what he has taught them does not look to him like what he had wanted them to learn” (21), but Willy’s failure is that Biff and Happy have learned exactly what he has taught them their whole lives.