What Do the Flashbacks Sequences in ‘Death of a Salesman’ Contribute to Our Understanding of Willy Loman’s Character?

One of the first times Willy looks for his past mistakes in his memories is when he is looking around the kitchen for cheese after he almost got into a car accident and after

The most important quote in the story is when Happy says about Willy, “He’s never so Happy as when he’s lookin forward to something.” Willy’s spirit decline when he has nothing to look forward to, in effect, causes him to have flashbacks. For example, when he is in the restaurant expecting big news from Biff, he is all together and happy about the fact that the news will fullfill his

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.

Willy Loman was a failure as a family man who never achieved the American Dream. His life is an example of a true downfall, which affects all of those close to him. By living in an illusion, Willy guaranteed that he would be unable to achieve all that he thought he should. As a result, his death is the final confirmation of his failed life. Truly, success could never be achieved in his life, even if he had made plenty of sales. By giving up his dreams and true desires, Willy Loman died long before he crashed his car, and that led him to become every bit the failure that he will

        Willy is like an impetuous youngster with high ideals and high hopes.  Children always have high hopes for their

Willy’s desire to plant seeds symbolizes his wish for a new beginning of success even though nothing can grow in the garden. At this time, Willy is escaping reality because Willy wants a road to success to redeem himself from his previous failures. Miller does not have Willy admit that his reality is different from his ideal dreams because he wants him to have the hope that everything will be better even when he does not have to face it. Willy and Linda both understand that his seeds will most likely not grow because there is “not enough sun.” (72) to help the seeds grow. Miller makes Willy believe that planting seeds will have a positive outcome so that his dreams will become a reality. However, in this situation, it never will because the ingredients of success, like the sun, are not prominent in their lives therefore, they cannot grow to be successful. The seeds could also symbolize Willy’s attempt at being a good father so that he can provide for his children; however, since he lost his job and cannot grow food, it is seen as tragic. Miller has made Willy a pathetic character which allows it be acceptable for Willy to want to escape reality into his own dreams and

he is now no longer able to experience and enjoy that freedom with Linda. It is immensely tragic that at the time when Willy and Linda should be happy, Willy chooses to kill himself. Willy spent his entire life trying to be successful, but he always viewed himself as a failure. However, at the end of the play, they had all of their house payments paid off. He actually was successful and did not know it.After working for so many years in a job that he was never suited for, Willy has finally paid of his mortgage. The irony is that now that he and Linda

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

To start off, Willy’s inability to grow a garden is majorly due to the environment his apartment is placed in. In this story, the apartment is a tool of symbolism used to develop the idea of the modern world. The apartment that blocks the sun into his backyard limits Willy’s ability to grow a garden. This modern society shadows over his house, keeping the sun away, also keeping him in the past. This leads to the way the modern world is run, and because it is different than what Willy can handle, he cannot adapt to modern society. The modern world restricts Willy from starting anew, but the irony being that not only does Willy not have the money to move on from his house and into a place where he could grow a garden, he simply doesn’t want to. He wishes to stay, but needs money to pay off the house. His lack of money is expressed as Linda mentions for him not to “forget to ask for a little advance” (53). What Linda is referring to is that Willy

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.

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

Arthur Miller begins his play with an excellent description of the setting of the play. This makes it easy for the reader to imagine themselves actually watching the play and causes the reader to be able to better relate to the play. Because Death of a Salesman can be considered an emotional play, it qualifies as being a timeless work of literature, especially because it has the ability to touch the human heart. Willy Loman is a salesman, who lives in New York City with his wife Linda. From the beginning of the play, Miller makes it obvious that Willy struggles with many obstacles, such as anger and even confusion since there are many times throughout the play where Willy becomes severely confused. Many characters throughout the play,

When he confronted Willy in he end, he just yelled at him and brought him to the realization that he wasn't special, and that he was a dime a dozen. Willy eventually realizes this, and that is why he crashes the car and kills himself.

Willy’s relationship with Biff and Happy also becomes strained throughout their lives. Since Biff was the older son and football star he made his father proud, and Happy was left without the praise that he needed and deserved, as he was always second best. Biff also was the one who caught his father having an affair with a woman in Boston, causing friction between himself and Willy. More importantly, Biff is extremely disturbed by his father's later behavior, including participating in imaginary conversations and reacting to his memories as though they were happening in the present. Willy's job also falls apart from the beginning of the play towards the end. Willy had been making enough money to support his family, but his unwillingness to learn new sales techniques or utilize modern technology resulted in lackluster sales and the loss of his job. Willy’s house had a mortgage until his death, implying that the family was not even secure in their own home. Finally, the family car, a symbol of pride within the Loman household, was destroyed when Willy committed suicide. This was the last example of Willy's destruction of all that was once important to him. Willy Loman, in this regard, follows Aristotle's suggestion that the tragic hero has "...a change of fortune... from prosperity to misfortune...." (Aristotle,1303)

Another thing that Willy looks for throughout the play is a way to fix or cope with his mistakes and regrets. He is haunted with delusions of memories about his regrets. Willy shows his effort to fix one of his mistakes when he offers to buy Linda new stockings. Since he bought stocking for the woman he was having an affair with, he realized that Linda shouldn’t have to mend her own stockings when he could just buy her new ones as well.