How Is Escapism In Death Of A Salesman

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 “Death of a Salesman” by Arthur Miller, Willy Loman is the well-developed protagonist of the story. Willy struggles throughout the story with daydreams and delusions that he confuses with reality. These delusions have a huge effect on the story and greatly impact Willy’s life. Willy has a difficult time keeping his bills paid with his job as a traveling salesman. He works long hours and drives long distances for very little success. His delusions cause him to believe that his work is successful when it is far from it. “Willy is self-deluded, believing wholeheartedly in the American Dream of success and wealth. When he fails to achieve this, he commits suicide—yet until the end he never stopped believing in this American Dream” (Sickels).

In the play The Death of a Salesman, it is a play of how one dream can affect your whole look on life, that dream can either make your life or break it, it all depends on how you pursue it. It is a tragic play, the Loman family faces a lot of difficult circumstances due to all of the lying, betrayal and the one dream Willy is trying pursue for his family. Willy then confuses the difference between reality and illusion, he is so caught up in trying to reach the perfect life, which was the “American Dream”, that he lost track of himself and his own

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 chooses to exaggerate his success in front of his family and even his boss in Act 2, but when he is contradicted “Now, Willy, you never averaged...” he still continues on with his façade thus further emphasizing his delusional nature. He teaches his children that they should be “liked and you will never want,” which implies that for Willy popularity is more important as it is this that will deem how prosperous one is in business as that man “is the man who gets ahead.” This contradicts the initial ideals of the American dream where you work hard in order to achieve success, and hence could be used by Miller to indicate how futile the concept was as well as how it lead to people conceiving inconceivable dreams - “He had the wrong dreams” as mentioned by Biff in the requiem.

Willy’s difficulty with change in his life can be seen when Linda tries to help him. Linda tells Willy outside their bedroom, “...life is a casting off. It’s always been that way.”. (Miller, p.15) She states the truth that life is about change and not knowing the future ahead. She attempts to get Willy to see that he needs to take chances to be successful but he does not want to accept that. Willy wants

In Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller uses motifs and symbols to express some of the problems of the main character, Willy. Miller motivates Willy to start a garden in the backyard of his apartment, even though the garden won’t grow. This showed Willy to be the type who does not accept defeat, as he believes he can grow a garden, but to the reader, it’s obvious that he can’t. Although filled with the desire to grow a garden in order to start anew, Willy is unable to do so due to his apartment and his thoughts.

He is so terrified of not being what and who he thinks he is in society, that he cannot let go of his illusions and clings to them until his death.  However, this is not because he is a common man.  It is because he is a man who lacks the courage, conviction and strength to move past his illusions, grasp the truth and prevent himself from stifling his, or his sons, full flowering and whole development.  This is because his fears and insecurities, not to mention failures, have arisen from his adopting unquestioningly a set of values that have been irreconcilable with the natural outpouring of his love and creativity.  There is a "wrong" or an "evil" in Willy's environment that has prevented this because he has based his career choice, his method of parenting, and his lifestyle on a value system that is based on "appearances" not truth.  When he discovers these values are illusions he stubbornly refuses to admit his mistakes, and, instead, becomes pathetic instead of tragically heroic because he clings all the more to his illusions and imposes them on anyone around him-or becomes irate with those who point out the errors of his actions and/or logic.  The truth of modern society is that it represents one that thwarts man in his effort to achieve his "rightful dignity", but Willy never accepts the discovery of the moral law (which to Miller is the illumination of tragedy) which supports a man's right to achieve such dignity.  Instead, he tries to live by the

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 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.

As though to recreate the connection in life, literature often shows the relationship between past events and a character’s present actions and values. In Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, Willy is haunted by memories of his older brother, father, and salesman Dave Singleman. Willy’s character and values are constantly influenced by the memory of the three men, compounding upon his deliria throughout the play. Willy considers these men the epitome of success, thus explaining his dependency on all three. Miller’s view on society, men, and the success of the American Dream are portrayed through Willy’s interactions with the men. The American Dream is synonymous with the phrase “the world is your oyster,” but Miller uses Death of a Salesman to criticize the American Dream through Willy Loman and his interplay between the past and present.

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

In the play once Willy realises he has failed he puts all his hope in

On the contrary, we are not immediately introduced to this delusional, flaky character. At the beginning of scene one, we see the more assertive side of Willy as he discusses business possibilities with his wife Willy. Miller balances out the audience's perception of Willy towards the end of the act where the more vulnerable side of Willy is illustrated, with the use of his behaviour and the response of others to his attitude. An example of this would be Linda diligently agreeing with Willy's strange statements. One of Willy's traits which qualify him as a hero is his eternal sacrifice, and the way that he throws everything into the balance in order to secure his rightful place in society, and to live the American Dream.

In spite of all of his setbacks, Willy still has hope things will improve for his family.  The seeds that he plants in the backyard garden represent this.  By being successful at this one little thing, Willy will show that he cannot be written off.  He will prove that everyone is wrong about him; he can be successful at something.  And the garden will be something nice for his family to enjoy.  Yet Willy's seeds of hope are doomed to failure.  He plants them at night so no one can see