Examples Of Materialism Willy Loman

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

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”.

When Linda refers to Willy as a "little boat looking for a harbor," another wind blows against Linda, pushing her to act with pity (1247). To her, he is nothing more than a small, helpless old man. She blames the business for forgetting Willy in his old age, and passing him over like an orange peel. Toward the end of Act I, Linda presents a sorry image of Willy, describing his past greatness as a salesman and ending with a sad description of treachery. She tells her sons that Willy is "exhausted" from driving 1400 miles without earning a penny, and that his reward from the ones he loved the most, his sons, is spite and rejection (1237). The picture she paints of her husband is on filled with pity and sorrow.

Throughout the whole play the only thing Willy Loman would act upon being his need to fulfill what he thought the “American Dream” was in society. He based his whole life around the concept that being successful only comes if you’re well liked by everyone: (Quote). In a way that is true, due to the fact that people who are well liked tended to have it easier in life. Willy wants to influence his family’s lives with his strong belief. Therefore,

He begins by highlighting the ways that Willy Loman views himself and how they ultimately affect his life negatively. Willy often acts and dresses a creatin way to keep up this persona of a successful business. However, when he looks into the mirror he sees a completely different image of himself. Willys sees himself as a man who is “very foolish to look at”(1443), and he often tries to cover up his insecurities by lying to himself and his family. He lies to cover up the fact that he is not happy with his life, and feels that he has not accomplish enough. Ironically, it is these

Willy Loman is a senile salesman who lives a dull life with a depleting career. He has an estranged relationship with his family and believes in the American Dream of effortless success and affluence, but in no way accomplishes it. Feeling like the aim of life is to be favored by others and gaining a materialistic fortune, Willy lives in a world of delusion where

He would give his mistress brand new stockings, as a gift, while Linda would mend her old ones at home. When Willy would see this, an overwhelming state of realizing all he had done wrong would come over him, he was furious with himself and the amount of guilt brought upon him, which then turned to anger that was to be taken out on Linda. “I won’t have you mending stockings in this house! Now throw them out!” (Miller 26) The guilt from his infidelity caused him to further abuse Linda. Not only was Willy’s cheating affecting his relationship with his wife, but it was also hurting his children. When Willy’s son Biff, came to him for help, regarding a math credit, he saw Miss Francis in Willy’s room and realized that his father was having an affair. The perfect image of the Loman family was then shattered in Biff’s eyes. Biff insulted Willy, yelling, “You fake! You phony little fake! You fake!” (Miller 95) The perfect marriage that Biff believed his parents had, held enormous dishonesty. With his family falling apart, Willy’s disappointment grew. Willy was a family man who had so much pride in his children. He believed that his sons were outstanding scholars and athletes and would one day make excellent salesman. Like any parent he wanted them to achieve success so badly that even much after their high school careers he still found it necessary to defend and support their high school success (Miller 105) In reality Willy was building his kids up to be something

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.

Willy also obtains an idea that image is equal to success. This is known to be his hubris; excessive pride. He takes pride in material objects “Riding on a smile and a shoe shine… personality wins the day” shows how he puts his faith into his personal appearance, and how he appears to smile on the outside but fails to admit that he isn’t on the inside. He thinks personality can be judged on what he says, but forgets that it ‘shines’ through when he speaks. “I won’t have you mending stockings in this house! Now throw them out”. The stockings can be seen as a representative of Loman’s unfaithfulness as a husband as the sight of them brings back memories of when Biff caught him cheating on Linda and found out the Willy had given ‘the woman’ the expensive stockings he was supposed to give his wife as a gift. Willy Loman’s reasoning behind doing this may be because he didn’t want to come across as ‘low’ to his mistress, so by giving her expensive stockings out of the blue it

Throughout this play Miller portrays his main character, Willy Loman, as senile, unsuccessful and slightly insane. Willy’s deranged personality is in part because his father abandoned him at a young age. Willy also feels abandoned by his cherished brother Ben. Ben went off to become a big success and rich. Willy sees this and it helps lead him to feel inadequate as a man

One of the central themes related to his essay and play is that the presence of fear in a common man’s life is more prevalent and perhaps draws us closer the character. Willy Loman’s fear of not meeting the standards to the successful people around him, such as his brother and neighbor, and the failure in his job as a father that correlates with his children’s failures is the storyline Miller presents in his play that weights down the

Willy Loman’s feelings of alienation and loneliness are direct psychological results of his interaction with society and the conditions that are found within it.  Although, he does not necessarily have the ability or allow himself to have the ability to define his feelings as such, they are still very much a part of his everyday existence.  This is evident in his constant bragging and attempted compensation.  He does not feel that he is truly a part of society.  Indeed, he is not.  Miller himself seems to be saying that this is not necessarily a bad thing; this society is not that wonderful.  Yet Willy still yearns to be like his brother, Ben, and the other men he sees making

Willy Loman has many traits of a young child. He never really lives outside of his own unrealistic world. When children are young, they think they are able to achieve whatever their imaginations believe. Willy has the same idea as this throughout his whole life. He never lets go of that dream even though he knows its not the smart decision. He knows he would be more successful as a tradesman working with his manly hands but he refuses to follow the wiser choice. Mainly because he is searching for that American Dream that society proclaims to be the best.

Through the play Willy is striving to live the American Dream; to have a better, richer and happier life. He is obsessed with materialism thinking that acquiring possessions will make him and his family happy. When Linda tries to mend her stockings, Willy tells her “I won’t

More than that, he wanted to become that man that he admired who died “the death of a salesman” in his “green velvet slippers” whose funeral garnered many loving friends and family (Miller 81). Audiences can relate as they too have had an idol in their head that they have aspired to become. Seeing the aspirations of Willy warrants pity in the audience when they see what a failure Willy Loman becomes. Failure is what consumes Willy. He understands that that is his life. But in his deep deluded mind twisted with broken memories and false hopes he can never truly accept it. He never has that point of discovery that a tragic hero does. Willy Loman never realizes the doom waiting for him at the end of his downward spiral. Even his attempts at suicide, and finally his one successful one, were misguided and were attempts to become something greater. No one shows up at the funeral besides his family. He is not great like a tragic hero. Willy Loman is a nobody, he is only a tragic hero to himself, just like everyone in the audience. Everyone sings the song of their own tragedy . That is the American tragedy. Everyone is the American tragic hero with their own tragedy. Arthur Miller captures the Average man with the average family and average dreams, living an average life with no gain in the end.