Willy Loman Died a Coward in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman

(p.83) When Willy first heard this from his boss, that is a man younger than him begins to cry. A man his age working in a company that long doesn't really deserve to be fired. It makes his life seem a waste, and makes him imagine himself as a failure. "I was fired and I am looking for a little good news to tell your mother, because the woman has waited and suffered." (p.107) Willy is clueless of what is to come of his family and feels he has let everyone down.

His grand error of wanting recognition drove him crazy and insane and lead to his tragic death. Willy’s hubris makes him feel extremely proud of what he has, when in reality he has no satisfaction with anything in his life. Willy Loman’s sons did not reach his expectations, as a father but he still continued to brag about Biff and Happy in front of Bernard. Willy Loman caused the reader to empathize with him because before his tragic death he did everything he could for his family. Empathy, Hubris , and Willy Loman’s tragic flow all lead him to his death that distend for him the beginning.

Willy wants Biff to be the successful man that he never was and feels that Biff will not achieve success in the occupation he has taken. Furthermore, Willy was unable to admit his faults. His pride was so great that he even lied to his own family, borrowing money weekly from his neighbor, Charley, and then saying it was his salary. He tried to justify his affair with a strange woman when caught by Biff. He...

His boss was looking to fire him for a long time. His whole life, he has had the wrong idea. “Success doesn’t come from just luck, popularity, or personality. All throughout the Death of a Salesman, Loman tells his two sons, Biff and Happy, that the key to success in life is to be “well liked” and that all you need is “a smile and a shoeshine.” (Brett) However, Willy completely ignored his true calling of working with his hands, to become a business man. He was so infatuated with the American Dream, he didn’t realize that he wasn’t a good Salesman, and would have succeeded as ... ... middle of paper ... ...ity to indulge in a world that doesn’t exist.

He wants to own his own business and he wants to be "bigger than Uncle Charley" and especially he wants to be a great success and he tries to emulate Dave Singleman. He wishes to die the "Death of a Salesman" and have many buyers and salesmen mourn for him. He also tries to be a good father, and husband. However Willy’s aims in life have been useless as he hasn’t really achieved anything. He got fired by Howard, his sons are both failures and they abandoned him in a restaurant toilet.

He is the reason for the failure of Biff's life because of his stubbornness. He would not just admit that he didn't know success and decided to lie and act as though he did and for that, Biff was met with defeat in life. Arthur Miller in the story The death of a salesman demonstrates the destruction that secrets and lies can cause and the harm it can do. Deception is the worst thing to do to someone because it can cause the destruction of their lives. Willy Loman ruins the life of his son Biff by feeding him false stories and keeping the truth from him.

His distorted perceptions of the American Dream ultimately ruined his life and the lives of his family. Sadly, Willy definitely failed as a father. He obviously favored his eldest son Biff over his youngest son Happy, and this constant neglect drove Happy to become more like his older brother as an adult in order to win his father’s approval. We can see this through his philandering behavior, something Biff was known for in high school, the golden years. Biff, on the other hand, had it worse because his father sold him lies about his importance in the business industry, which forced Biff to admire Willy and strive to be like him one day.

“I am known...and he’ll see it with his eyes once and for all”¹³. However, no one but his family and next door neighbours, Charley, who Willy described as his “only friend”, and Bernard, arrive and both Biff and Happy see Willy to have taken the cowards way out as Ben had suggested. They realise that Willy’s life was a lie as Linda says “there’s more of him in that front stoop than all the sales he ever made”¹⁴. Even though all these points are evident in his funeral, tragedy is also presented in that Happy decides to take up Willy’s job as a salesman despite its leading Willy into so much despair. Happy is desperate to help Willy like he never allowed him to do in his life since his attention was focused on Biff.

But Biff’s comment and Nienhuis’ statement is not quite accurate. “Willy did struggle against self-knowledge—trying not to know ‘what’ he was; but he had always a superb consciousness of his own individual strength as a ‘who’ (Nienhuis 4). With Willy being lost and getting fired from a job he put his whole life into, he’s death really did live up to its tragic claim. Written in the beginnin... ... middle of paper ... ...f wrong dream and the theme of identity crisis, the overall key theme of tragedy is enhanced. Because of Willy Loman chasing a dream before he found himself, he and his family drown in unhappiness which soon led to his tragic suicide.

He chose to follow the American dream and he chose to lead the life it gave him (Death of a Salesman: The Culture Of Willy Loman). Willy dies an unsuccessful person, with the realization that everything he had worked for was not achieved. There are many angles that Willy Loman can be examined from to sort out what type of man he really was. He was a man who lacked vision, drive, and ambition, which lead to his failure. Willy believed that he would one day retire with all the riches that a successful businessman deserved.