Family Values In Death Of A Salesman, By Steve R. Centola

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.

In the play “Death of a Salesman”, by Arthur Miller, the primary theme can be seen as a conflict between man and society. In which the ambition to achieve the “American Dream” controls the life of Willy Loman and the influences he has. When success is not reached, sends Willy’s mind on a mental ride.

Willy’s self- image that he portrayed to others of being successful was a lie that he had lived with for so long

Over time the American Dream has been changed fundamentally with the introduction of new ideology and values. Death of a Salesman illustrates how Willy Loman has been shaped by society. It conveys the impact of this ideology on his children, raising them to believe in quantifiable values being benchmarks of success. Throughout the play his mental health takes a downward spiral as he encounters various failures in his life and his sons’. This can be attributed to the conflict between the shifting values of the time. The values of hard work and individualism are no longer important. Miller utilizes Willy Loman’s inability to succeed and address his own failures to convey the corruption of the American Dream with values such as capitalism, personal attractiveness, and entitlement to success.

Regardless of his fraught looking to the past, Willy's character creates internal conflict which makes him to realize that he does not have the knowledge to be a tragic hero. His attempt to kill himself gives him a limited awareness to real life situation. Whereas he accomplishes a self-realization learns the essential nature of the sales career, Willy misunderstands his own failure. He is not able to control the true sensitive and mystical understanding of himself as a correct “loman” or else “low man.” Willy is too ambitious about his world that he creates

The play “Death of a Salesman” by Arthur Miller is about the loss of personality as well as a man’s incapability to admit the change in himself and society. The play is a montage of memories, confrontations, dreams, and arguments that all make up the last 24 hours of Willy Loman’s daily life. The author uses the Loman’s family that comprises of Willy, Linda, Happy, and Biff to construct a constant cycle of contraction, denial, and order versus disorder.

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.

The lives of the Loman’s from beginning to end seems troubling, the play is centered on trying to be successful or trying to be happy, and the sacrifice which must be made of one to achieve the other. The environment that these characters live in encourages them to pursue the American dream, which can be said to devalue happiness through the pursuit of material success. Death of A Salesman written by Arthur Miller has several themes that run through the play, one of the most obvious is the constant striving for success. Willy Loman put his family through endless torture because of his search for a successful life. Willy, Biff, and Happy are chasing the American dream instead of examining themselves

Death of a salesman is a resemblance to the American society in the forties in which the play’s protagonist, Willy Loman, strongly tries to attain the dream of making a fortune through salesmanship. Miller denotes the artificiality of the American dream, the play’s major theme, which possessed the people at that time. In his play, Miller also signifies the stark difference between the delusive dreams and the actual reality as another vehement theme that leads the characters into anger and disappointment. The death of the salesman, Willy, comes to be shocking and unanticipated as it suddenly occurs at the end of the play. Furthermore, Death of a salesman is an expressionistic tragedy that is mainly characterized by symbolism and flashbacks as the means of establishing the dramatic depth in the play (Murphy and Abbotson

Many believe that “Death of a Salesman” represents a working man’s goal of achieving the American dream, but the disillusioned Willy Lowman uses it as a façade. This façade conceals his narcissistic personality while accommodating for his lack of self-esteem and failures. Willy lives in his own utopic fantasy where everyone knows who he is and he’s treated like a king. A man full of delusion in an ever changing world which is advancing and leaving him both mentally and physically stale, if only he could see through his grandiosity. In the following text we’ll see that “Death of a Salesman” reflects the delusions of one man and his image as seen by himself, his family and others, through the examination of the theme, his character and the time period for his existence.

    In Arthur Miller's play, Death of a Salesman, Miller probes the dream of Willy Lowman while making a statement about the dreams of American society. This essay will explore how each character of the play contributes to Willy's dream, success, and failure.

This book was written by Arthur Miller to display his opinion on the relationship between tragic novels and the common man. “I believe that the common man is as apt a subject for tragedy in its highest sense as kings were” (Miller). Miller believed that the real feeling of tragedy is evoked in the audience when the character of the novel is willing and ready to lay down their life. This situation occurs in The Death of a Salesman when Willy Loman commits suicide after his decision that he is worth more to his family dead than alive because his family will receive money from his

Willy Loman struggles to accept his situation due to his misconception of him being someone greater than who he really is, and denies the reality. The Loman family is living in denial except Linda who goes along with it just to make her husband not feel like he’s going insane. Willy is not willing to accept that he is not

In Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman Willy Loman has an obsession with material wealth and popularity. These obsessions get in the way of him achieving true happiness in his life with his family .Willy was inspired by Dave Singleman , his dreams of being like him were also ruined because of his obsessions. Willy said to his wife Linda describing Dave“His name was Dave Singleman… and he’d drummed merchandise in thirty-one states. And old Dave, he’d go up to his room… −I’ll never forget−and pick up his phone and call the buyers, and without ever leaving his room, at the age of eighty-four, he made his living” In most scenarios people think that the more items they own the happier they will be in life, Willy quickly learns that is not the