Willy Loman Character Analysis

In the first act, Miller introduces Willy Loman (salesman), and Linda Loman (Willy’s wife) first. In this scene, Willy comes home early from the road and claims he wasn’t feeling. Linda fixes him something to eat but when he sits to eat he ends up talking to his flashbacks. In the flashbacks, He is in a hotelroom with another women. The women is revealed to be his mistress when they kiss and he hands her a pair of stockings. Willy uses this mistress to become “well-liked”with the buyers connected to the mistress. Then Willy comes back to reality and finds his wife mending old stockings back together. This makes him mad and begs Linda to stop mending them in front of him. After he cleans up his meal, he daydreams about his sons, Biff and Happy, who had just finished washing their father’s car after Willy has just returned from a sales trip. When Biff tells Willy that he “borrowed” a football from the locker room to practice, Willy laughs at him and whispers that “he will soon open a bigger business than his successful neighbor Uncle Charley because Charley is not as “well liked” as he is.” Willy is very happy in the flashback because he believes that his son is “well-liked” and will do well in the

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).

The internal conflict begins with Willy’s expectations for his sons and The Woman. Willy struggles throughout the play with having extremely high expectations for his sons, Happy and Biff. Happy and Willy get along well because they are most alike of the two sons. Happy has the same materialistic mindset as

In the play, Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller establishes Charley, a humble and successful salesman as the foil to Willy Loman, a prideful and arrogant man. Charley is the perfect character to help depict Willy’s flaws. Although the two contrast with each other, their characteristics help maintain a balance between them. Willy Loman lives in his own world, where he believes that in order to be successful, one must be well liked with a great appearance. “The man who makes an appearance…is the man who gets ahead” (Miller 1568). These are obvious words from Willy which proves that he does not believe in hard work. He instills within both of his children that looks and personality are all that matters. The characteristics of Willy allow us to grasp the idea that he lives within a false reality. He is a man living within a child’s fantasy based off of the life of Dave Singleman. The very words he spoke against his neighbor Charley and his son, Bernard, are the very words that prove him wrong.

Willy Loman, the central character in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, is a man whose fall from the top of the capitalistic totem pole results in a resounding crash, both literally and metaphorically. As a man immersed in the memories of the past and controlled by his fears of the future, Willy Loman views himself as a victim of bad luck, bearing little blame for his interminable pitfalls. However, it was not an ill-fated destiny that drove Willy to devastate his own life as well as the lives of those he loved; it was his distorted set of values.

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

Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman follows protagonist Willy Loman in his search to better his and his family’s lives. Throughout Willy Loman’s career, his mind starts to wear down, causing predicaments between his wife, two sons and close friends. Willy’s descent into insanity is slowly but surely is taking its toll on him, his job and his family. They cannot understand why the man they have trusted for support all these years is suddenly losing his mind. Along with his slope into insanity, Willy’s actions become more aggressive and odd as the play goes on. Despite Willy and Biff’s “family feud”, his two sons Happy and Biff truly worry about their father’s transformation, Happy saying: “He just wants you to make good, that’s all. I

As people grow old their bodies and their minds tend to slow down and with this process comes the need for retirement or the necessity to take on less responsibility. There is a belief in society that as people age they cannot produce or be a strong commodity like they were in their youth. This belief that the elderly cannot keep up with the younger workforce is evident in Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman as the protagonist, Willy Loman, is not as competent of a salesman as he was in his younger age. In the play, Willy is constantly showing signs of old age by experiencing hallucinations, not performing his job well, and ultimately losing his job because he is not producing. Arthur Miller’s play showcases ageism through its portrayal of an elderly person. Ageism is displayed by how Willy Loman is considered not valuable in his workplace, by how Willy is not able to contribute to his family while also creating rifts between himself and his family, and finally by how Willy has low self-esteem and does not show confidence in himself like he did in his youth.

The play surrounds the Loman family, specifically the relationship between Willy Loman, the husband to Linda Loman, father to Happy and Biff Loman. The relationship between Willy and Biff Loman are intensely similar to the relationship between Troy and Cory Maxson in the play Fences. Biff has this amazing offer to go play college football and Willy is there the whole way boosting him up. Until Biff fails a class and goes to see Willy working a sales job and finds him cheating on his mother, Linda. When willy offers to help with the school situation, Biff just says “never mind” (Miller 438). This moment was the beginning of all the dreams Biff had, all the respect and love for Willy, all died. Years later, Biff pops back into town causing constant fire between the two. Biff tries for Willy’s sake and tries to go for a sales position but realizes as he was leaving the office building he thought “I saw the things that I love in this world. The work and the food and time to sit and smoke. And I looked at the pen and said to myself, what the hell am I grabbing this for? Why am I trying to become what I don’t want to be” (Miller 446)? Biff feels like Willy screwed him over in life, telling Willy “I never got anywhere because you blew me full of hot air I could never stand taking orders from anybody” (446)! Biff begs Willy to let him go and to “take that phony dream and burn it before something happens” (447). These dreams and

The play begins with Willy as the antagonist, fighting with his wife Linda and a generally mean person. He insults his sons and scolds Linda for buying the wrong cheese. Willy shows his biggest personality flaws early on in the story; contradicting his own thoughts, being verbally abusive, and showing his over developed sense of pride. Willy loses

"Death of a Salesman" by the author Arthur Miller revolves around one family and the troubles they are facing due to growing older and becoming senile. Willy Loman was born on May 13, 1889, and in 1949 when the story is set, he was 60, this is during post-WW1 America, this was a different time with different social cues and norms that will be evident throughout the story. Willy’s ambition is to take part in "the American dream" and strike it rich by the sweat of his own brow. The kind of success Willy is looking for is not merely being able to provide for his family but having people know who he was what he was about and what a great character he had. Once Willy starts lacking the success he is used to he becomes disconnected with the world and this is when his senile tendencies start to show these things hint at a deeper medical problem; things like having flashbacks to when he was happy and satisfied with his performance and the still unsquandered potential of his progeny.

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."

The possibility of failure can weight heavy on someone, and the way a person handles such stress tells a lot about what kind of character they have. In Arthur Miller’s short story “The Death of a Salesman” the main character, Willy Loman, is facing just such thing. Throughout his life, Willy has always strived to capture his version of the American Dream. His dream is to be well liked, respected, rich, and successful just like many of the other supporting characters in the story. Although he has worked extremely hard to achieve his goals, a few unfortunate turn of events has kept Willy from reaching his dreams. In the final few days of his life Willy has become unpredictable, frustrated, prone to sudden bursts of anger, and always seems to be stuck with his mind in the past.

Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman tells the tale of Willy Loman, a man who falls from the top of the capitalism system in a resonant crash. Being controlled by his fears of the future, and stuck in his memories of the past, Willy fully contributes to his self-victimization by putting little blame on his own mistakes. Although Willy is perceived as selfish, it is important to see that he is misguided. His character is one of a common man, he has never been anything special, but he chose to follow the American Dream and continue the “destiny” it gave him. However, in my reading of the play, I feel it was not an unlucky destiny that pushed Willy to damage his own life and the lives of his family,