Death of a Salesman Essay

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 Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, the author conveys the reader about how a person lives his life when he or she cannot live the “American Dream.” Willy Loman, the main character in the play is a confused and tragic character. He is a man who is struggling to hold onto what morality he has left in a changing society that no longer values the ideals he grew up to believe in. Even though the society he lives in can be blamed for much of his misfortune, he must also be the blame for his bad judgment, disloyalty and his foolish pride.

Many workers today go through a low time or a struggle and give up. Today’s workers do not necessarily commit suicide when they are in a low point but they do things such as quitting the job or relying on government assistance. Willy strives to achieve the American dream and he eventually realizes that he has failed and gives up on life. This dream is a belief in America and that all things are possible if you work hard enough (Criticism of ' the American Dream' in 'Death of a Salesman'). Arthur Miller uses this story to expose the problems with pursuit of such a dream: “What Miller attacks, then, is not the American Dream of Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, but the dream as interpreted and pursued by those for whom ambition replaces human need and the trinkets of what Miller called the ‘new American Empire in the making’ are taken as tokens of true value” (Bigsby). “Death of a Salesman” creates a challenge to the American Dream and shows that an American should live a prosperous and plentiful life instead of get lost and die tragically (Criticism of ' the American Dream' in 'Death of a Salesman'). Gradually throughout the play, Willy gets farther and farther away from achieving his idea of the American Dream. His income slowly decreases to nothing: “as a salesman, Willy stages a performance for buyers, for his sons, for the father who deserted him, the brother he admired. Gradually, he loses his audience, first the buyers, then his son, then his boss” (Bigsby). His problem is that he completely surrenders to the American Dream and by the team he realizes his mistake, he has nothing to fall back on (Panesar). If Willy would have embraced his natural talent for manual labor and his family’s love for the countryside, the Lomans could have a totally different lifestyle (Panesar). Towards the end of the play, Willy became overwhelmed

In Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, Willy Loman is an example of a failure as a good father. He did not discipline his sons well by not punishing them. He did not set a good example to his sons by not admitting his faults. He did not make his family his number one priority. Instead, it was his work, coming before his family, his friends, and even himself. Not only is Willy Loman not a good father and husband, but he was a failure by not becoming successful, not achieving the American Dream.

The story ‘Death of a Salesman’ written by Miller focuses on a man doing all he can to allow him and his family to live the American dream. Throughout the story it is shown how the Loman’s struggle with finding happiness and also with becoming successful. Throughout their entire lives many problems come their way resulting in a devastating death caused by foolishness and the drive to be successful. Ever since he and his wife, Linda, met she has been living a sad and miserable life, because she has been trying support his unachievable goals. Also by him being naïve put his children’s lives in jeopardy and also made them lose sight of who they really were. Miller uses the Loman family to show how feeling the need to appear a certain way to the public and trying to live a life that is not really yours can turn into an American nightmare.

Willy Loman, the central character in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, is a man whose fall from the top of the capitalistic totem pole results in a resounding crash, both literally and metaphorically. As a man immersed in the memories of the past and controlled by his fears of the future, Willy Loman views himself as a victim of bad luck, bearing little blame for his interminable pitfalls. However, it was not an ill-fated destiny that drove Willy to devastate his own life as well as the lives of those he loved; it was his distorted set of values.

He then gouges out his eyes and wonders of into the desert (#4). Willy Loman is the son of a middle-class man. He has been working as a traveling salesman for the last forty years. This is not the life of nobility. Nobility is someone that is of a high social class. A nobleman could also be a person in a position of high authority. Willy Loman was a peon of the firm that he was selling for. At one point, he may have been respected, but that time has come and gone. Willy Loman was not endowed with a tragic flaw. His failure in life came from the pretensions of the American dream. All he wants in life was to support his family and see his sons be productive in life. This is at time in American society when many people essentially worked themselves to death. Society cannot be a character flaw, because it represents everyone, not just a tragic flaw in a single man (#1). One could argue that Willy Loman’s tragic flaw was his pride. This was one of Willy’s flaws, but it does not cause his death. His pride kept him from accepting the job that Charlie offered, but it did not keep him from borrowing money from him. The excessive pride flaw did not cause Willy Loman’s death. The cause of Willies death was his desire to provide for his family. This was the American dream at its worst (#1). Willy never realizes that he made a few irreversible mistakes. The first mistake was how he raises his sons.

The success attained by Willy?s role models, his father, Dave Singleman, and Ben, is what he envisions to be the American Dream. He only visualizes the end product, being successful, and not the process they may have gone through to achieve that success. Willy?s father sold flutes and made that his living. In an encounter with his thoughts of the past, Willy listens to Ben, his brother, who refers to their father by saying, "Great Inventor, Father. With one gadget he made more in a week than a man like you could make in a lifetime" (49). Willy assumes that by being a salesman, like his father was, he is automatically guaranteed success, and that it wasn?t something that he would have to work for. Material success, such as money, luxury, and wealth, and popularity are his goals and his definition of success. On the other hand, self-fulfillment and happiness through hard work is not. By only focusing on the outer appearance of the American Dream, Willy ignores the

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.

Willy a sixty three year old man with a wife and two kids and he works as a traveling salesman. Willy has an image of America that is very controversial because he believes that America is the land of the free and the land of the opportunity but throughout the play you start to realize that it seems a different way. Willy’s life starts to fall apart and you start to see less and less opportunity for Willy. Willy definitely tries to live up to his land of the opportunity belief by the way that he approaches situations like talking to his boss and asking for a job change into a different department or the way dreams of his future by being known by everyone and having everybody like him and attend his funeral when he dies. Willy does not wanna be the only one living his american Willy tries to

Willy Loman was a man who gradually destroyed himself with false hopes and beliefs. Throughout his entire life Willy believed that he would die a rich and successful man. It was inevitable for him to come crumbling down after years of disillusions. We can look at Willy’s life by examining some of his character traits that brought him down.

To Willy Loman the main protagonist,his version of the American Dream is to become successful on being well liked alone.Willy believes being well liked is the key to success opposed to being productive.Throughout Willy’s life he is forced to deny reality in order to achieve it. Instead of acknowledging that he is not a well-known success, Willy retreats into the past and chooses to relive

What is the "American Dream?" How does one define success? Many people hold different views on how to obtain true happiness. One common view is the accomplishment of something yearned. A majority of individuals desire love, compassion, and a family. On the other hand, there are those concerned with self-image, material items, and the fact that money can indeed buy true happiness. In Arthur Miller's play DEATH OF A SALESMAN [published by Ted Buchholz (1993)]--the story of a sixty-three year old man named Willy Loman striving to achieve the "American Dream" and his family who suffer as a cause--contains many examples of trying to achieve material success. Willy's

The story Death of a Salesman begins in the home of Willy Loman in Boston. Willy, the protagonist of the play, is constantly tortured by his desire for success and his failure to achieve it. The play as a whole is a summary of his life and the last two days of it. At the beginning of this narrative writing, Willy is left to reflect wistfully on his past endeavors and mistakes he has made in his lifetime. The Death of A Salesman was made in 1949, a time where becoming a successful salesman and providing for family was billed as the “American Dream” Needless to say this was the dream of a young Willy just joining the business world. From a young age, Willy had become accustomed to seeing success around him as his brother Ben had struck a fortune by the age of twenty two through diamond mining in Africa. His obsession for success eventually drove him crazy as he couldn’t stand watching his brother become rich and not being able to replicate his success in sales. Willy