The Crucible: Questions And Answers

Throughout his life, Willy Loman thinks of himself as well-liked in the play "Death of a Salesman" by Arthur Miller. It is the most important attribute to him. Willy lived his life thinking he had thousands of friends all over the New England territory and that he would be recognized anywhere he would go. He boasts this to his sons and they think he is the greatest man on Earth. He raises his two sons, Biff and Happy, to be well-liked and Willy does not care about their grades. He believes they will be better prepared for the business world if they are well-liked, and does not think education matters as much as personality, appearance, and physical skill. Although he has set high standards for sons, his morals are being well-liked, he

The Crucible is a complex and intriguing novel with events, characters and themes comparable to almost every period of human history. It is common for humans to fear change and what is unknown, in the play The Crucible this is witchcraft and the devil, in more recent times it can be seen in post World War Two and Cold War United States, through McCarthyism. The themes in the crucible are as important to people in the 21st century as in Salem in 1692. These include justice, reputation, hysteria, intolerance and empowerment. All of these are common themes throughout human history. The characters in The Crucible are also important to people of the 21st century as they can teach us a little bit about people around us and their reactions when

Willy undermines her authority with the boys. He denies any negative comments out of her mouth when their children are discussed. He interrupts her. He shouts at her. Linda reacts with veiled hostility to Willy?s disrespect. She laughs at the idea of planting a garden, pointing to Willy?s past failures at growing a garden. Every time Linda pokes at his failures, she is retaliating against Willy?s failures and the fact that she has been pulled into Willy?s dead end dream against her will.

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,

A little girl, named Sophia walker, was given a large doll by her parents. It was a gift from her great grandmother who had sadly passed on. Sophia was instantly unsettled by the doll, it had big black eyes that seemed to follow you around the room. Sophia, had the impression that she was expected to take the doll, because she was well raised and didn't want her parents to be upset by not taking it. The doll's name was Suzie, which made Sophia even more scared of it. Sophia thought to herself, “It was just a doll. There was nothing to worry about.” So she put her mind at ease.

The play The Crucible, was written by Arthur Miller in 1953. It is a story he wrote after his own experience being accused of communism. This affected a lot of well-known people in the United States during this time, and was considered a witch hunt similar to the Salem witch hunts. Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible about a man, John Proctor, who has an affair with Abigail Williams. She catches feelings for him and tries to cast a spell on John Proctor’s wife to kill her; this gets out of hand when Abigail’s uncle catches her and some other girls dancing during the spell in the woods. Suddenly, the whole town is living in fear of who is practicing witchcraft, who could be a witch, and innocent people are killed if they don’t confess to being witches. Overall, mass fear and panic, and false accusations are seen over and over throughout the play.

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: “Bigger than Uncle Charley! Because Charley is not — liked. He’s liked, but he’s not — well liked.”

Miller amalgamates the archetypal tragic hero with the mundane American citizen. The result is the anti-hero, Willy Loman. He is a simple salesman who constantly aspires to become 'great'. Nevertheless, Willy has a waning career as a salesman and is an aging man who considers himself to be a failure but is incapable of consciously admitting it. As a result, the drama of the play lies not so much in

This play is a non-tragic because Willy does not have the ferocity which is an key element of the genre. Through Willy's obsession of being “liked” verses being “well liked” and the insecurities and internal limitations this created he was a character that lacked the audacity to fight for a worthy goal; one that could rock their audiences soul that great tragedies can do.

There is a quote from Willy that fully describes his motto in life: “Be liked and you will never want”. In my opinion, this is precisely where the root of his problems lies: his interpretation of success. He reduces the success of a person to the

Willy Loman, a salesman in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman had the American dream which is impractical and unrealistic, which is wanting success through recognition. However he struggles to fulfil his dream because he is caught up in his own spiritual redemption to realize what’s most important to him. During the play his role as a tragic hero which is a literary character who makes a judgment error that inevitably leads to his/her own destruction. This play is a tragedy because of Willy’s flaw in his personality, also The three Aristotelian characteristics that are represented in WIlly Loman are: hero's story should arouse fear and empathy, hero must be noble in nature, but imperfect so that the audience can see themselves in him, and hero must have discovered his fate by his own actions, not by things happening to him.

Death of a Salesman, a play written by Arthur Miller, is revolved around the concept of tragedy and a tragic hero. Aristotle defines tragedy as “the consequence of a man’s total compulsion to evaluate himself justly”. A tragic hero is defined as “a literary character who makes a judgement error that inevitably leads to his/her own destruction”. These two concepts apply to the play in the sense that Willy Loman is a man of good intentions, but there is often an undesirable outcome of them. Also, Willy is a victim of himself and his own beliefs. Arthur Miller states in his New York Times article that he believes “the common man is as apt a subject for tragedy in its highest sense as kings were”. Based on this quote, it can be concluded that

Willy imagines that being "well liked" by other is the key to success as a salesman. It's challenging from the script to know if Willy happened to be a good salesman; the suggestion is that he was just an average person.

Willy Loman, the troubled father and husband in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, can be classified as a tragic hero, as defined by Aristotle in his work, Poetics.