Realizing Failure: Death of a Salesman

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In the tragic American play “Death of a Salesman” by Arthur Miller. Willy Loman, the protagonist, is a salesman who is becoming more elderly and tired. He has been in the same position at his company for 30 years and has now been reassigned to a traveling job with only the pay of commission, not salary. He is struggling financially and the traveling from Brooklyn to New England is taking a toll on him at his old age. His wife, Linda, asks him to ask for an increase in pay or a desk job so he does not have to travel at his old age. When Willy asks his boss Howard for a salary and a desk job Howard, his boss (who was once the son of Willy’s old boss), Howard says there is not spot for Willy at a desk job and that “business is business”. Willy, in an effort to persuade Howard, begins telling a story about David Singleman, the salesman who inspired Willy to go into the career of sales and is idolized by Willy because he was well known. Willy’s growing desperation in begging his boss for a desk job gives the passage a mood of some urgency, yet, in the passage, Willy maintains his calm as he tries to persuade Howard into helping him.
WILLY: And when I saw that, I realized that selling was the greatest career a man could want. ‘Cause what could be more satisfying than to be able to go, at the age of eighty-four, into twenty or thirty different cities, and pick up a phone, and be remembered and loved and helped by so many different people? Do you know? when he died— and by the way he died the death of a salesman, in his in his green velvet slippers in the smoker of New York, New Haven and Hartford, going into Boston— when he died, hundreds of salesman and buyers were at his funeral. Things were sad on a lotta trains for months after th...

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... moral dream of America’s founders. America was also trying to portray an image of capitalist superiority with a cheery image of and American society where everyone was happy and well-feed and living the American Dream, while in reality, people were suffering financially, racial turmoil was occurring, and social class were becoming more obvious. Today, we still see Americans who hold the materialistic values that were held in Miller’s time, however the numbers are much fewer. Some American today still posses the same materialistic values as Willy Loman, however, more common among present-day Americans, is the need to be “well-liked”. Many Americans, like Willy, are still unhappy and insecure about their financial situation.

. Works Cited
Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman: Certain Private Conversations in Two Acts and a Requiem. New York: Penguin, 1998. Print.

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