Essay On Willy's Ambition In Death Of A Salesman

In the first act, Miller introduces Willy Loman (salesman), and Linda Loman (Willy’s wife) first. In this scene, Willy comes home early from the road and claims he wasn’t feeling. Linda fixes him something to eat but when he sits to eat he ends up talking to his flashbacks. In the flashbacks, He is in a hotelroom with another women. The women is revealed to be his mistress when they kiss and he hands her a pair of stockings. Willy uses this mistress to become “well-liked”with the buyers connected to the mistress. Then Willy comes back to reality and finds his wife mending old stockings back together. This makes him mad and begs Linda to stop mending them in front of him. After he cleans up his meal, he daydreams about his sons, Biff and Happy, who had just finished washing their father’s car after Willy has just returned from a sales trip. When Biff tells Willy that he “borrowed” a football from the locker room to practice, Willy laughs at him and whispers that “he will soon open a bigger business than his successful neighbor Uncle Charley because Charley is not as “well liked” as he is.” Willy is very happy in the flashback because he believes that his son is “well-liked” and will do well in the

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).

The most important quote in the story is when Happy says about Willy, “He’s never so Happy as when he’s lookin forward to something.” Willy’s spirit decline when he has nothing to look forward to, in effect, causes him to have flashbacks. For example, when he is in the restaurant expecting big news from Biff, he is all together and happy about the fact that the news will fullfill his

The relationship between Willy and Biff is complicated. Actually, Biff is everything for Willy. He doesn’t do well as a salesman anymore, so this situation makes him depressed but at least there is Biff. So Willy believes that Biff will reach the success and his dreams will become true. That makes him want Biff to take some responsibility, in other words this is a big pressure on Biff. “How can he find himself on a farm? Is that a life? A farmhand? In the beginning, when he was young, I thought, well, a young man, it’s good for him to tramp around, take a lot of different jobs. But it’s more than ten years now and he has yet to make thirty-five dollars a week!” says Willy and then Linda says “He is finding himself Willy.” Then Willy answers again “Not finding yourself at the age of thirty-four is a disgrace!” This shows how Willy mad at him because he thinks they couldn’t reach their dreams because of Biff. Willy says “Sure. Certain men just don’t get started till later in life. Like Thomas Edison, I think. Or B.F. Goodrich. One of them was deaf. I’ll put my money

Willy wants dearly for Biff to become a business success, although Biff has an internal struggle between pleasing his father and doing what he feels is

Willy’s biggest issue with his son is that he let him down by not being any more successful than him. He feels like Biff is failing on purpose just to make him look bad. Although, he has no decent job and is single; Biff has become disoriented about life. Earlier in the play Biff tells Happy, “I tell ya Hap, I don't know what the future is. I don't know - what I'm supposed to want” (Miller266). Biff once looked up to his father as a role model, but lost all faith in him once finding out that he was having an affair. Ever since he has rejected Willy’s commitment of being a husband and also a father. To add to his ruins are Willy’s ideas of how Biff should get ahead in life. Willy taught Biff that popularity was the right way to get to the top, rather than hard-work and dedication. Trying to live by his dad’s standards caused Biff to fail high school and become unable to put forth the effort to become

For instance, he has this dream of having a big, spectacular funeral. In the end when Willy dies, at his funeral, Linda says, "Why didn?t anybody come?Where are all the people he knew?" (137). All his life, he holds on to this fantasy, but he never faces the reality of how he could have made it come true. It is his vision of the people of the past that lead Willy to follow a particular path, leading to his demise in the end.

Willy is offered help by his friend Charley, a successful Business man, Willies all time friend and only friends he has left, when Charley offers Willy a job, yet willy full of pride and envious of Charley rejects it yet does not rejects it but continues to borrow money from him. This is due to Willies flaw in his desire of being higher in society than anyone else.Willy cannot let go of the past and continuously refers to 1928, when his career was at its peak. His withdrawal into the past is a defense mechanism as he refuses to come to terms with his failure as a salesman. His illusions of grandeur lead to fierce exaggerations of himself. He tells Biff to "Go to Filene's go to the Hub, go to Slattery's, Boston. Call out the name Willy Loman and see what happens! Big shot!" (Miller, 62). He refuses to realize his personal failures and falsely believes that he is successful. Memories of a happier past Willy losing a grip on reality and on time escapes into the past. Despite his desperate searching through his past, The deep probing of dreams and memories in Death of A Salesman where quite important in illustrating Miller's point. Willy is a man stuck in the past reminiscing about times when things where good fabrication of those times really were as good as he imagines them to be? Like his inflated dreams of the future, the past may well be embellished by Willy's wild imagination. It seems

In Arthur Miller’s play, “Death of a Salesman”, Biff Loman demonstrates a change in character through his relationship with his father, Willy Loman.It is with the fall of Willy that Biff rises as a character despite not being sure of his identity. Biff realizes that the pointless direction his life is taking, is caused by his father.For example, Biff left Texas because after being influenced by his father so much, he, like Willy, believed he was wasting his life.It wasn’t until later on in the play that Biff became aware of his actions and decided to change his ambitions and way of thinking. It was because he left Texas to return back home that Willy believes that Biff is letting his potential go to waste and that he has no idea on what to

Later in a flashback, Willy and Biff are on their way to Ebbets Field for a football game when Charley appears and beings a conversation with Willy. Merely joking around, Charley makes a few comments which Willy takes great offense too and beings insulting Charley and telling him to put his hands up as if to fight. Willy's arrogance shows it's face once again when Willy is talking to Biff about his meeting with Oliver. Completly ignoring what Biff is saying, Willy goes on about how good of a kid Biff is and how impressive he is. Though not directly insulting, Willy ignores what his son has to say and goes off on his own tangents, losing the respect of the reader. Willy then ends up in another flashback in the bathroom of the restauraunt where he met Happy and Biff for dinner. The most disgusting part of Willy is revealed here. Biff walks in on Willy and his woman friend whom hes had a secret relationship with. Willy attempts to cover it up and when that doesnt work he orders Biff around and shows how bad of a person he can be.

Willy Lowman had an affair fifteen years before the actual day that is depicted in the play. His son Biff adored Willy before finding out about the affair. Once Biff knew, he couldn’t stand his father. His father denied that it ever happened and so did his wife. Denial is extremely unhealthy.

Because of Willys inaction, he suffers terribly in the play. His lack of backbone and willingness to make change destroys him. He struggles to take the first step towards happiness, and thus never achieves happiness. In Death of a Salesman, Willy can not find happiness because of his inability to learn how to create a dream of his own, see through his own lies, and find happiness. To exemplify this, Willy’s constant focus on achieving a dream

Willy is a person looking to be successful while Biff is trying to be happy, and this creates the story to have two totally

Having Willy base his success off of his job was a weakness because he became obsessed with money. Willy saw that the only way to be successful was by becoming rich, which is probably why Ben saying “When I walked out of the jungle I was 21. And, by God I was rich” (49) haunted him. Willy shows that he is not happy with his lack of income even though he has a family, wife, and his mortgage is almost paid off. Having Willy see his regrets through flashbacks is a strength because the reader can see he has remorse for his actions. For instance, when Willy met Bernard at Charley’s office, he saw how well he was doing in his job, but the fact that Charley “…never told him what to do…You never took any interest in him” bothered him because he knew he took too much interest in his son Biff

In Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller expresses his social commentary by illustrating in his play that society has worked hard to achieve the American Dream. Society says that anyone can successfully achieve this goal, no matter their social status, but his play says otherwise. Miller wrote the protagonist, Willy, to be viewed as a tragic hero. In addition, Willy and his neighbor Charley, created a foil in the story, bringing that American Dream to life. Willy Loman's tragic flaw in Death of a Salesman has reflected his way of life through ignorance.