Bipolar Disorder In Arthur Miller's Death Of A Salesman

In Death of a Salesman, by Arthur Miller, Willy Loman’s life seems to be slowly deteriorating. It is clear that Willy’s predicament is of his own doing, and that his own foolish pride and ignorance lead to his downfall. Willy’s self-destruction involved the uniting of several aspects of his life and his lack of grasping reality in each, consisting of, his relationship with his wife, his relationship and manner in which he brought up his children, Biff and Happy, and lastly his inability to productively earn a living and in doing so, failure to achieve his “American Dream”.

Toward the end of the story, Willy realizes that his life is falling apart: Biff does not have a stable job or family, is making only commissions for his job, his refrigerator and car are in despair, and he talks to himself. Willy just cannot figure out what has gone wrong, especially with Biff who to him seemed so promising because of his good looks and his charm with others. When Biff comes home again, Willy gets real nervous and starts talking to himself (Act I. Scene I). He is stressed out that Biff has done nothing with his life so he starts seeing visions of the past. When Willy talks out loud while seeing visions, he is trying to discover where he went wrong as a person and father. To find where he went wrong he begins to ask anyone in visions or in person. One character that he frequently asks for advice throughout the drama is his older brother Biff (Gross, 319-321).

In “Death of a Salesman” by Arthur Miller, Willy Loman is the well-developed protagonist of the story. Willy struggles throughout the story with daydreams and delusions that he confuses with reality. These delusions have a huge effect on the story and greatly impact Willy’s life. Willy has a difficult time keeping his bills paid with his job as a traveling salesman. He works long hours and drives long distances for very little success. His delusions cause him to believe that his work is successful when it is far from it. “Willy is self-deluded, believing wholeheartedly in the American Dream of success and wealth. When he fails to achieve this, he commits suicide—yet until the end he never stopped believing in this American Dream” (Sickels).

Willy admires Ben as his older brother and tries to be everything like him, however he lacks some of the characteristics like self-esteem. Ben’s success creates an illusion for Willy to be connected to him somehow. Most importantly ben represents all the fantasies of success that Willy desires for himself and his sons. Ben eventually leads willy into committing suicide to receive the insurance money because by making him believe money is

Although Biffs relationship with his father didn't change after he discovers about the affair and how he lied to make himself look good to society he then loses motivation to succeed to anything in life. As Willy goes on with his life and tends to get a little older, sales become a little more difficult for him as memories start to come back to him. He could never tell himself the difference between reality to a fantasy and since he wasn't able to, he alienated himself from other people and struggles to survive in the present during the play. His life becomes really dysfunctional and has a disorder and practically forces himself to completely withdrawal memories from the past where in his mind order exists while reconstructing his mind with certain event and relive the past. While reading this story, it relates to me and a lot of other people simply because it showed that Willy had a self-deprecation with a sense of failure with regret and many emotions. The audience can relate to this story because everyone has experienced all of these things at one time or another in life. Although Willy ended his life, most do not, people can connect with Willy because he was driven to succeed. Im sure many people had a lot of sympathy for Willy because he felt that his only answer was suicide simply because he didn't meet his standards in success. I on the other hand had no sympathy for Willy because he lied to his family and friends and found the easy way out. Willys life and situation was not unique, he only made a couple of mistakes and found the worst through

Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman follows protagonist Willy Loman in his search to better his and his family’s lives. Throughout Willy Loman’s career, his mind starts to wear down, causing predicaments between his wife, two sons and close friends. Willy’s descent into insanity is slowly but surely is taking its toll on him, his job and his family. They cannot understand why the man they have trusted for support all these years is suddenly losing his mind. Along with his slope into insanity, Willy’s actions become more aggressive and odd as the play goes on. Despite Willy and Biff’s “family feud”, his two sons Happy and Biff truly worry about their father’s transformation, Happy saying: “He just wants you to make good, that’s all. I

Throughout the play, Willy’s ideas of happiness prevent him from realizing that his acts are cowardly. To him, financial success embodies happiness. His comparisons of himself to others show his idealizations. Mainly, he idolizes Ben, who walked into Africa at age seventeen and walked out four years later as a wealthy man. Willy also compares himself to Dave Singleman, a salesman he met on the road early in his career. Dave prospered as a salesman even at age eighty-four. Willy asks his boss, Howard, "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?" (Miller 1251). Due to his belief that money creates happiness, Willy feels that money will mend the broken

In the play Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller, Willy is both sympathized with and looked down upon throughout the story. Willy is a very complex character with problems and faults that gain both sympathy and also turn the reader off to him. Willy Loman is both the protagonist and the antagonist, gaining sympathy from the reader only to lose it moments later.

This is what Willy has been trying to emulate his entire life. Willy's need to feel well-liked is so strong that he often makes up lies about his popularity and success. At times, Willy even believes these lies himself. At one point in the play, Willy tells his family of how well-liked he is in all of his towns and how vital he is to New England. Later, however, he tells Linda that no one remembers him and that the people laugh at him behind his back. As this demonstrates, Willy's need to feel well-liked also causes him to become intensely paranoid. When his son, Biff, for example, is trying to explain why he cannot become successful, Willy believes that Biff is just trying to spite him. Unfortunately, Willy never realizes that his values are flawed. As Biff points out at the end of the play, "he had the wrong dreams."

Willy Loman is a troubled and misguided man - a salesman and a dreamer with an extreme preoccupation with his own definition of success. Willy feels that physical impact is greater than the elements of his self-defined success. However, it is apparent that Willy Loman is no successful man, even by the audience's standards. He is still a travelling salesman in his sixties with no stable location or occupation, but clings on to his dreams and ideals. He compares his sons with Bernard, using him as a gauge of success. Nonetheless, he stays in the belief that his sons are better than Bernard. Willy recollects the neighbourhood years ago, and reminisces working for Frank Wagner, although he was also in the same condition then as now. He feels that the older Wagner appreciated him more, yet it was himself who voted Howard in. Arthur Miller presents Willy as a man with great bravado but little energy left to support it. He is always tired and has dementia, contradicting himself in his conversations and showing some memory loss, living in his world of illusions and delusions. He argues with Biff, both men without knowing why. The two sons of Willy display the physical appearance of adulthood, but their talk and attitude displays immaturity. Billy finds that he is a failure because of his lack of `success', while Happy thinks he is unfulfilled because he lacks failure.

In Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman the main character Willy Loman along with other characters Biff, Happy and Linda Loman all have their good and bad times throughout the story. These good and bad times are relived through the flashbacks of the Willy Loman. These flashbacks range from the days Willy spent time with Biff and Happy throwing around the football, to Biffs big football game, and Willy’s affair with the lady in Boston. Miller States many themes throughout the play with three being Biff trying to impress Bill Oliver and his father Willy , Willy’s confidence when meeting with his boss Howard and, Willy and Linda’s achievements they had living together and all of these themes lead to Willy’s downfall at the end of the story.

Arthur Miller begins his play with an excellent description of the setting of the play. This makes it easy for the reader to imagine themselves actually watching the play and causes the reader to be able to better relate to the play. Because Death of a Salesman can be considered an emotional play, it qualifies as being a timeless work of literature, especially because it has the ability to touch the human heart. Willy Loman is a salesman, who lives in New York City with his wife Linda. From the beginning of the play, Miller makes it obvious that Willy struggles with many obstacles, such as anger and even confusion since there are many times throughout the play where Willy becomes severely confused. Many characters throughout the play,

Willy goes in and out of daydreams, causing his children to treat him like a child, thus angering the independent minded man. It causes further tension in their relationships. Yet Willy is not merely losing his grip on reality- he is choosing to let it go. Still racked with guilt over his adulterous affair, Willy- in the back of his troubled mind- knows that occurrence is the root of his difficulties with Biff. He pathetically claims over and over again, “…don’t you

  In Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, Willy is depicted as living in his own world. The play centers around the end of Willy’s life, when the real world comes crashing through, ruining the false reality he had created for himself and his family. Throughout the play, Willy Loman uses the concept of being well liked to build a false image of reality, as shown through his teachings to his son, what he considers successful, and his reasoning for committing suicide.

The Presentation of Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller Willy Loman is presented as both a tragic hero and an unconscious victim in "Death of a Salesman". "Death of a Salesman" is very much based upon the American Dream, and whether we are slaves or conquerors of this dream. This is an idea that the playwright Arthur Miller has very passionately pursued both through Willy's own eyes, and through his interaction with the different characters in the play. Firstly, the definitions of a hero and a victim very much influence the way that Willy is viewed by the audience.