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Analysis of the Character of Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman
Critical analysis of the death of a salesman
Critical analysis of the death of a salesman
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What makes you successful in Life? Is it being well liked or highly thought of or being a high school star? I think being successful is achieving goals that you have set throughout your life. It is not lying and stealing but being honest and hard working throughout your life.
Throughout the play, I would like to mention four characters that were important in my mind; Willy Loman, Linda, Biff, and Happy. Willy is the main character who is an older salesperson who is lost in false hopes and illusions, a man who dreams of an easy success and wealth, but throughout his life, never achieves much. I felt sorry for him because he thinks he is doing the right thing in life, working and teaching his sons to be successful but everything he does leaves him hopeless. Like Biff, his son said at his funeral that his dad was lost is the same way I feel about him. He was trying but he was bad at his attempts. Linda said in the last scene that, Willy was good with his hands. If he did something different, different carrier maybe the ending wouldn’t be so depressing for him.
Linda is the wife to Willy, Biffs and Happy’s mother. She is a strong character in the play. She is very supportive and protective of him knowing that Willy is tired. She knew he tried committing suicide, and that is because he is mentally ill. She is always trying to stand between Willy and her sons to ease the tension. This is because her respect to her husband is great and she still loves him for who he is. This makes her loyal.
The elder son of Willy, who is thirty-four years old, is Biff. He led a charmed life in high school as a football star, lots of friends, and female admirers. He flunked his senior math class which held him back from graduating and being succe...
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...e Happy was lying about his job, he, himself has been lying to his parents and even Willy was living in a lie. Biff realized that and wanted change. At the end in anger he told the truth and admitted the lies kept the family from reaching success.
“Death of a Salesman,” is not a play with a happy ending. One way I could identify or compare is the conflict between kids and parents. In my life, especially when I was living at home my parents had rules every sibling had to follow. As I grew older I did not agree with everything my parents believed in, which created conflict between us. I always thought my parents were too controlling with trying to enforce their rules on us. But once I got married and moved out there is a lot I realized. I realized my parents only wanted best. Biff in the end realized too that his father wasn’t bad; he was just after the wrong dream.
... morals and personality towards his goals and at the same time trying to pass those values onto his sons, making him lose their respect, which is one of the many reasons that ended up taking his life. For the most part one can see that issues like Willys cannot only be seen or heard of in a play but also in the real world. Everybody in general wants to conform and be liked in today's competitive society, which is one of the reasons why many people don't get to accomplish the things they want to accomplish because they are either to scared or don't have the courage to step out of the social norms and achieve what they what to achieve. If anyone learns anything from this tragic character, one can say that truly knowing ones-self can really help in the long run because if one doesn't know who they are, they can end up leading a miserable life, in a miserable world.
It taught me a lot like how a family should be and how a family should not be. The play makes you think wow this can really relate to me as a high school student and athlete. Linda needs to learn to speak her mind no matter what her husband says because people have rights and she should be able to talk about what she thinks is going on with her family. “When Linda converses with her husband it’s almost as if se walking on eggshells and almost that she is taking to a frail eggshell that is her husband’s mental state.” (Source 2). Nothing Linda says to try to help her husband will work because she is someone who gets under her skin and makes it a lot worse to willy but too anyone else she is doing anything in her power to help him much like and other wife would do for their husband. A couple weeks after willy dies after all that the family has been through with him it’s a very sad dad but the family is very mad at him still so it is a very hard position to be in and I know I would never want to be to in the position that this family is in. willy was a very mean and angry person to his family and had a lot of stress going on in his life this is why we need to realize that all he wanted was to make his family happy but it was just something he could not do so he gave up and just took all of his anger out on
The main character in the novel is Willy loman who is facing the difficulty situation in the play. Firstly I am going to describe Willy loman and Biff loman the oldest son of Willy. Willy is the father of two sons Biff and Happy, he has a lot of potential, and he thinks the goal of life is to be well liked and gain material success. He failed to achieve the American goal. And Biff the oldest son of Willy is the character in the novel that shows any real personal growth, he cannot hold down a job. In the story at (Act 2, 105) I am going to discuss the merits of Biff observation.
Happy, Biff’s younger brother, has always felt neglected by his father, because he was not as a...
Willy doesn’t want to accept that he is not successful anymore, he still recognize his son as handsome heroes. Biff as the football star when he was at high school and Happy an...
One reason that this play is well known is because many of the characters are identifiable with ourselves. Willy is a burnt-out businessman with no special talents or qualities. Linda is a kind and dedicated housewife, but she has not accomplished anything noteworthy. Biff has a habit of theft and a number of pent-up frustrations. Happy tries to smooth out the tensions in the family, but he is also unsatisfied. The only “successful” major character in the play is Bernard, but even he was considered “liked, but not well-liked” by the Lomans when he was young. There are not any heroes or bad guys in the play. The characters are all very human, and very flawed.
Linda Loman is the enabler of the Loman family, and also uses self- deception to escape her life mentally. Linda never spoke up to Willy, and did nothing but feed his unrealistic dreams. Linda lived a life of “what ifs” with Willy. They both did the bare minimum in every aspect of their life, which is why
In Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller, the conflicts that formulate between Biff and Willy Loman build up to the death of Willy. Biff’s delusional perception of being liked in the world leads to a successful life which was an idea brought onto him by his father, Biff’s discovery of his father's affair, and Biff’s lack of business success all accumulate to the heavy conflicting relationship between Biff and his father, Willy. These contribute immensely to the idea that personal dreams and desire to reach success in life can negatively impact life with personal relationships, which causes people to lose sight of what is important. This ultimately leads to the Willy committing suicide from the build up of problems with his son.
Throughout history many families can’t face reality. In the play Death of a Salesman the main characters Willy, Linda, Biff, and Happy use self-deception as a means to mentally escape the reality of their lives. Biff is the only character who becomes self-aware by the end of the play. Willy wants to live in his dream world; Linda and Happy don’t even realize that they’re in a dream world. Biff had no idea he was in a dream world until he had an epiphany.
The American society view of failure as a sin. As we see in the play, Willy, Biff, and Happy can all be viewed as failures in different aspects of their lives. Also this is an allegory of what the American society is as a whole. The failures are coming from different sources. But as we go through life, don’t view failure as bad, but as a learning
The only way to become a truly happy person is to surround yourself with the things that make you happy. Setting logical goals and pursuing dreams is going to lead to a successful life. In the play, Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller, Willy, Linda, Biff, and Happy use self-deception as a means to mentally escape the reality of their lives. Biff is the only character who becomes self-aware by the end of the play. He realizes that his whole life has been a lie and that Willy’s standards for Biff’s achievements in life are simply unreachable. Happy is too caught up in himself throughout the play to realize that his father is in need of an escape from his dysfunctional life. Willy has lived his whole life setting these goals for himself that he simply can’t attain. Happy makes it known at the end of the play that he is planning to follow in his father’s footsteps. This foreshadows the downfall of Happy’s life to come. Linda is constantly reassuring Willy that the decisions he has made are the right choices. She finds out about his possible suicide attempts and she refuses to seek help for him. She constantly tells his that he is doing great when in reality his career is going nowhere and his relationship with his sons gets worse as the days go on. Willy was a man who claimed to have a good sense of pride. He believes that he thrived in his times of struggle. He lost the battle for his life and ended his life due to the constant disappointments and failures that he had to live with every day. Willy refused to see the truth in his life and continued to feed off the lies. He got so caught up in his lies that he lost what the truth really was.
Although the parents in Arthur Miller 's play Death of a Salesman want their sons to be successful, their sons Biff and Happy struggle to communicate with them, which results in fights that creates further dysfunctional relationships in the Loman family. Success is crucial to the father Willy, who believes he is above other salesman, giving him the wrong idea of his position. When Willy saw his brother Ben as a success, jealousy swept over him. Willy is a pushy father who wants to show his children Biff and Happy that success is most important. Biff is a realist and wants his family to accept the fact that they may never live the dream. Happy has his father’s traits but is much more understanding with Biff.
Plot, characterization, and dialogue are the elements of drama that I’ve chosen to analyze for Death of a Salesmen. Willy seems to be in conflict with himself and everyone else in his life. Conflict is what drives the plot and will be the main element of drama that’s analyzed in this essay. In Death of a Salesman Willy is the protagonist and his son Biff is the antagonist, he provokes Willy’s anger by not holding a steady job and measuring up to what his father feels he should be. The plot in Death of a Salesman is dialogue driven and the theme of the play is the death of Willy’s career and his inability to become successful in life. He also has hopes of Biff doing something more with his life other than working as a farmhand.
Willy throughout the course of the play, daydream he is conversing with his successful brother Ben. Willy memories of Ben, are a constant reminder of how he falls short of his American Dream. Consequently the real tragedy wasn’t Willy failing to achieve the American dream, but rather his American Dream ignores the love of his family. It’s quite ironic that Willy literally kills himself for money at the end of the play. “Willy: After all the highways, and the trains, and the appointments, and the years, you end up worth more dead than alive.”(Act II) Desperately trying to escape the deception and lies he has been facing all of this life from his own doing, Willy decides that he will take his life in order for his family to collect on the life insurance policy.
...he way he’s teaching his boys are right or not. Willy’s lack of understanding on how to teach his boys, leads him to teach the wrong ideas which would lead to Happy and Biff’s demise since both of them would believe they are entitled to everything without working hard. Willy’s failure as a father is caused by the wrong ideas he taught and the lack of experience.