Willy Loman Betrayal

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Recommended: Analysis of death of a salesman by Arthur Miller

Betrayal is a thread that ties together much of the plot in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. Willy Loman feels personally betrayed by his son Biff’s inability to succeed in life, despite what Willy sees as loving encouragement. Biff Loman, however, feels betrayed by his father because of the affair that he discovered when he heard a woman laughing in the bathroom, which also echoes a betrayal of Willy’s marriage vows. But besides the betrayal that is felt between Willy and Biff we also see that Willy tries very hard to live his life through his son Biff’s life. This is demonstrated many times throughout the play when we see Willy become very frustrated because his son's success is not being demonstrated which then to him shows that he is …show more content…

Willy in Death of a Salesman finds it to be very hard to believe that his own son Biff that he has put everything in is very unsucessful and is struggling a ton in the real world. As the reader of the script there starts to be an understanding for why exactly he is so unsuccessful. It also becomes very noticeable that Willy hasn’t taught his son how to be truly successful as many people know that stealing things will get you nowhere in life. Willy also is a ton of talk about what he believes Biff’s appearance is to be. The author, Arthur Miller allows for us to know that Willy believes that his son is very attractive due to how Willie makes his son appear higher up than others due to his looks. When the author has Willy state this it allows for everyone to know that Biff is in his eyes suppose to achieve great success. Due to Willy putting everything into his sons especially Biff he finds it unbearable that his sons are failures and he has a very hard time grasping this concept as he doesn’t want it to be true. This can be connected to Willy’s distorted reality as he doesn’t understand how the real world works today and that things don’t just rely on how someone looks for them to be successful. The author, Arthur Miller brings into play the idea of the American Dream which when we compare the overall idea of a typical American Dream to Willy’s you see a huge

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