Death Of A Salesman Willy's Failure

In Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller’s character, Willy Loman, is desperately trying to achieve the unattainable American Dream. Throughout the play, Willy encounters many challenges that have derailed his course and his perseverance drives him and his family insane.

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”.

In the play, Death of a Salesman, by Arthur Miller, a modern tragic hero is portrayed by the character Willy Loman through his attempt to pursue the American Dream, which, in the end results in the loss of his job, relationship with his sons and his life. Willy is a modern tragic hero due to the fact that, he attempted to become a well-known salesman, which he believes to be his rightful position in society. In doing so, he eventually loses his salary, dignity, job and in the end, his life. Some factors that lead to his eventual fate were, his damaged relationship with his sons, his inability to travel for his job and unfaithfulness towards Linda. Willy’s fatal flaw is that he is unable to be satisfied by his life, and chooses to pursue his

            As we can see from Willy's ideas of personal attractiveness, he doesn't seem to rely on hard work very much, particularly when it comes down to achieving the American Dream.  In actuality, it is the lack of hard work that attracted Willy to become a salesman in the first place.  In a conversation with Howard, his boss, Willy speaks of an eighty-four year old man he'd met when he was

Willy thinks, as most children do, that he is more important than he actually is.  At various times throughout the story, he brags about himself, calling himself a great salesman.  He says that he is known everywhere. In daydreaming of

"WILLY: That's just what I mean, Bernard can get the best marks in school, y'understand, but when he gets out in the business world, y'understand, you are going to be five times ahead of him. That's why I thank Almighty God you're both built like Adonises. Because the men who makes an appearance in the business world, the man who creates personal interest, is the man who gets ahead. Be liked and you will never want. You take me for instance, I never have to wait in line to see a buyer. 'Willy Loman is here!' That's all they have to know, and I go right through" (p. 33).

In Death of a Salesman, Willy often ruminated on his past and attempted to relive certain situations and experiences. This later developed into delusion, as Willy often talked to himself and experienced hallucinations. Willy also enjoyed bragging, and frequently edited parts of reality when recounting the past. This was in favor of portraying a certain image of himself. In doing so, Willy created a facade of the perfect and well-liked man. Willy’s stories become so convincing that his family, as well as himself, believe that this representation is, in fact a true depiction. The ideology that charisma is the driving force to success is derived from Willy; he teaches this to his sons Biff and Happy. Miller writes in Willy’s conversation to his sons, “Be liked and you will never want. You take me, for instance. I never have to wait in line to see a buyer. “Willy Loman is here!” That’s all they have to know, and I go right through.” (Death of a Salesman 21). This ideology demonstrates that Willy fits

To begin, Willy could be described as having a case of misguided life goals paired with self-deception. Willy was unable to admit to his faults. His pride was so boisterous that he would lie to his own family, borrowing money every week from his neighbor, Charley, and claiming that it was his salary. Due to extreme insecurities, Willy compulsively lied to himself and his family in effort of making himself feel better about who he really is, disguising his self doubt and inner anxiety with profound arrogance. Willy raised his sons to believe that in order to be successful, one must be well liked. “Be liked and you will never want.” (1.3) He often lied to them and exaggerated his success, which led them to believe that everything was as good as he claimed them to be. Willy even encouraged deceit in his oldest son by urging him to steal things and cheat on tests. In Willy’s own delusional world, he is a largely successful and well liked salesman with sons destined for greatness, taking every opportunity to brag about these false perceptions. He lied about almost everything, even the quality of

Willy was illusive thinking that he was good enough to get a better a job, instead he end up looking as a

He is a salesman. His importance is derived from that designation. Thus, his self-dignity is directly related to his occupational success. According to Willy, some weeks he averaged two hundred dollars, in actuality it was closer to seventy. However, he still found solace in that he was doing what was expected of him.  One example of his incessant need to be successful  as a salesman is, that he misses many opportunities which life affords him. He could have gone to Africa and become a rich man, but he stayed in New York simply because he is a salesman. Here is merely another example of his identity being associated with his vocation.

There are many reasons why Willy failed to reach his dream of success, for one he was lazy and weak. He never made any true effort to chase after what he wanted. It was his hope that he would be able to charm himself into a nice and well compensated job. Unfortunately for Willy success doesn’t just come from popularity or personality you have to put in work to be a successful man. He is passing his flawed perception of what being successful is onto his sons when he says

Being a salesman is the easiest way for Willy to become liked. Or so he thinks. He soon realizes that his dreams are dying. So, in hopes to keep his dreams alive he tries passing the torch to his son.

It gets obvious that next to becoming successful, Willy also longs to be regarded by other people, he wants to be known and popular, he does not want to lead the life of a nobody. However, it is not enough for him to be liked; Willy wants to be “well liked”. Charley realizes this strong need of Willy to be respected and liked by everybody, but when being asked why everybody has to like him; Willy knows no answer to this (Miller 104). In my eyes, Willy’s need to be liked shows that he has many self-doubts. He does not want anybody to think that he might not be the successful salesperson he pretends to be. For that reason, he always longs for reassurance that other people – mostly people who have success, like Charley and Bernard – are not well liked either. (Miller 30, 33). To sum it up, Willy presumes ”[…] a brash personality, a ready smile, a fast joke, and a glittering appearance - as the key to fame and fortune […]” (Nelson 105). Does Willy fail because of society or does society let him fail?

Due to the fantasy world that Willy lived in, mostly caused by the American Dream, he pursued his career in sales. Based on the success of Dave Singleman, his mentor. His bad career choice caused most of his dissatisfaction with life. His sales career simply conflicted with his natural abilities and talents. I believe that he knew he should have been working in a different field, but his obsession with the American Dream would not allow him to realize that. When Willy dreamt of working with his hands he was the happiest. “Yeah. He was a happy man with a batch of cement. He was so wonderful with his hands. He had all the wrong dreams All, all, wrong.” According to the idea of the America Dream, manual labor did not comply. Sadly enough, Willy measured his self worth by the standards of the American Dream.

He became a salesman to follow this belief and live out his dream, instead of being a carpenter, a profession in which he would have been happy and good at, yet he thought it to be lowly. He expressed that “even your grandfather was better than a carpenter”⁹. This is also the same reason Willy declines a job from Charley, even though the money earned could provide him and his family with security financially. This is the rubicon, where Willy condemns his own fate.