The Internal and External Conflicts of Willy Loman Essay

     The single most weighted factor that edges Willie to his demise is his inability to make a living and achieve his “American Dream”. After being a salesman for many years, Willy just can’t cope with the fact that he hasn’t been successful at all. He believes that he is a terrific salesman. His imaginative thinking won’t let him accept the fact that he has become a failure instead of a wealthy businessman. Willy believes that to be well liked is the means to being

A common occurrence in the play is Willy constantly alternating between past and present, shown by the numerous times where he is living his past and believes it is happening in the present. This mental condition pertains to bipolar II disorder, where Willy suffers from delusions and hallucinations in extreme forms causing racing thoughts (An EMS Guide…). Not only does it reflect the complications of his bipolar disorder, it shows that his tangential thinking is out of his control, as he imagines “sounds, faces, voices, [that] seem to be swarming upon him” (Miller 136). This indicates that Willy as a character cannot differentiate his own thoughts from reality, which concerns his family to a point of guilt, shown when Happy says “[s]omething’s happening to [Willy]… [h]e talks to himself” (Miller 21). Not to mention, hallucinations are similar to conditions for posttraumatic stress disorder, specifically when the victim experiences a vivid recall to an event (Gurevich). In particular, at one point Willy constructs Ben’s persona indicating the madness dwelling in Willy’s mind. He then tries to relate the idea of success with Ben’s achievements when explaining “[Ben] was rich… [t]hat’s just the spirit I want to imbue [my children with]” (Miller 52). In doing so, Willy feeds false hope from his past into his children since he fails to

As the play progresses, one begins to feel sorry for Willy and his problem, but at the same time angry and frustrated with him for his foolish pride. With this trait, it prevented him from accepting a job from Charlie, something that could have saved his life. Also, it is with this false pride that has been sparking the family flame for years, the fact that the Loman name was well known and well-liked. The family lie that was amongst themselves is revealed during the climax of the play. One example is the way in which Willy led Biff to believe that he is a salesman for Oliver, which at the end left Biff disappointed. The reason for this estimation of the truth may be because of Willy’s idea that he has not raised Biff and Happy the right way.

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.

Apart from Willy’s delusion of his own success, he also sees his sons as great successes in the business world, and that they will amount to so much in their lives. These boys cannot be successful because they have been “[blown] so full of hot air [they] could never stand taking orders from anybody” (131). Willy’s illusions about his sons not only ruined Willy’s life, but it caused these boys to have a false sense of reality, which is the theme. This false sense of reality leads to their downfall in the business world because Willy had built them up so high that they believed they should be the one giving the orders, not taking them. When Willy tells his boys “together [you] could absolutely lick the civilized world” (64), this is an example of the way Willy falsely sees his boys and fills their

Willy thinks, as most children do, that he is more important than he actually is.  At various times throughout the story, he brags about himself, calling himself a great salesman.  He says that he is known everywhere. In daydreaming of

The story ‘Death of a Salesman’ written by Miller focuses on a man doing all he can to allow him and his family to live the American dream. Throughout the story it is shown how the Loman’s struggle with finding happiness and also with becoming successful. Throughout their entire lives many problems come their way resulting in a devastating death caused by foolishness and the drive to be successful. Ever since he and his wife, Linda, met she has been living a sad and miserable life, because she has been trying support his unachievable goals. Also by him being naïve put his children’s lives in jeopardy and also made them lose sight of who they really were. Miller uses the Loman family to show how feeling the need to appear a certain way to the public and trying to live a life that is not really yours can turn into an American nightmare.

When the boys are in they are in their 30's, Willy focuses on the past, too mentally ill to think of Happy or his feelings. Happy spends most of his life in the shadow of his brother. Nothing Happy did is ever good enough for Willy and Happy don't truly get to know each other. As shown in the text after Willy's death when Happy is speaking of memories of his father.

Moreover, throughout the play the upbringing of Biff and Happy can be seen mirroring the childhood of Willy and his older brother Ben. During the requiem, Happy feels it is his duty to avenge his father in a way so “Willy Loman did not die in vain.” “Did not” provokes a strong feeling of confidence that he will be the one to make his father proud after his death. Through the play Happy is undermined by his father and seen to be “second best” to Biff; therefore him claiming to be the one to “win it for him” could suggest that he’s never overcome this feeling of neglect from his father,

Willy foolishly pursues the wrong dream and constantly lives in an unreal world blinded from reality. Despite his dream Willy constantly attempts to live in an artificial world and claims “If old Wagner was alive I’d be in charge of New York by now” (Miller 14). As a result, Willy often ignores his troubles and denies any financial trouble when he says “business is bad, it’s murderous. But not for me of course” (Miller 51). Another false segment of Willy’s dream includes the success of his two sons Happy and Biff. Biff was a high school football star who never cared about academics and now that he needs a job says “screw the business world” (Miller 61). Ironically, Willy suggests that Biff go west an “be a carpenter, or a cowboy, enjoy yourself!”, an idea that perhaps Willy should have pursued. Constantly advising his boys of the importance of being well liked, Willy fails to stress academics as an important part of life (Miller 40). Furthermore, Willy dies an unexpected death that reveals important causes of the failure to achieve the American dream. At the funeral Linda cries “I made the last payment on the house today... and there’ll be nobody home” to say that she misses Willy but in essence his death freed the Lomans from debt and the hopes and expectations Willy placed on his family (Miller 139). Very few people attend

Willy continued to think that he was this big salesman that everyone knew and loved even though many people tried to show him that he was not the great salesman that he believed he was. Willy proved this that he when he said, “My God! Remember how they used to follow him around in high school? When he smiled at one of them their faces lit up” (16). This proves the point that Willy lies to make him feel like his son is this important person making him the great person he wants to be. Then later in the play Willy continued to make things up to allow himself to accept not who he was but who he wanted himself to be. This was proven when he says, “It’s true, Ben. All he has to do is go into any city, pick up the phone, and he’s making a living and you know why” (86)? Willy continues to lie to himself by talking to himself and Ben even though ben is not there because he is dead. Willy constantly lied to himself to make himself the person who he wanted so he could accept who he was as a person. Willy never was able to accept who he was as a person which eventually led to him taking his own life because he was unhappy with who he was.

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

Throughout the play, Willy’s ideas of happiness prevent him from realizing that his acts are cowardly. To him, financial success embodies happiness. His comparisons of himself to others show his idealizations. Mainly, he idolizes Ben, who walked into Africa at age seventeen and walked out four years later as a wealthy man. Willy also compares himself to Dave Singleman, a salesman he met on the road early in his career. Dave prospered as a salesman even at age eighty-four. Willy asks his boss, Howard, "What could be more satisfying than to be able to go, at the age of eighty-four, into twenty or thirty different cities, and pick up a phone, and be remembered and loved and helped by so many different people?" (Miller 1251). Due to his belief that money creates happiness, Willy feels that money will mend the broken

This is what Willy has been trying to emulate his entire life. Willy's need to feel well-liked is so strong that he often makes up lies about his popularity and success. At times, Willy even believes these lies himself. At one point in the play, Willy tells his family of how well-liked he is in all of his towns and how vital he is to New England. Later, however, he tells Linda that no one remembers him and that the people laugh at him behind his back. As this demonstrates, Willy's need to feel well-liked also causes him to become intensely paranoid. When his son, Biff, for example, is trying to explain why he cannot become successful, Willy believes that Biff is just trying to spite him. Unfortunately, Willy never realizes that his values are flawed. As Biff points out at the end of the play, "he had the wrong dreams."

Willy’s obsession with success leads to the start of him living in his own fantasy world. He lives in the past, for there was hope for him then, but now he is completely subject to failure. Willy’s demise could have been avoided had he changed his dream, and had he not conformed to society. In the end his dream did not pay off, and he ultimately fell victim to the American Dream, and the deceitful ideals of freedom that factored into the