Willy Loman

In Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller’s character, Willy Loman, is desperately trying to achieve the unattainable American Dream. Throughout the play, Willy encounters many challenges that have derailed his course and his perseverance drives him and his family insane.

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”.

Willy Loman, the main character in Arthur Miller’s play, Death of a Salesman, wants to live the American dream. He is consumed with his own misguided beliefs regarding success, which causes his life to be similar what Wyoming Senator Craig L. Thomas said about the American Dream: “You stuff Someone into the American dream, and it becomes a prison.” Willy’s obsession with the American Dream, believing that being well liked equates with success, keeps both he and his sons in a state of emotional immaturity. These beliefs causes the American Dream to be a prison. The Loman family’s American Dream becomes their prison, constructed of deception and false pride. They cannot escape their immature behavior of

In Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, the author conveys the reader about how a person lives his life when he or she cannot live the “American Dream.” Willy Loman, the main character in the play is a confused and tragic character. He is a man who is struggling to hold onto what morality he has left in a changing society that no longer values the ideals he grew up to believe in. Even though the society he lives in can be blamed for much of his misfortune, he must also be the blame for his bad judgment, disloyalty and his foolish pride.

Willy Loman 's American dream, was to become a well-known and loved salesman. Unfortunately, his life was built upon lies and exaggerations in order to escape the pain staking the truth. Willie would have flash backs from his better days at work and with his

Through this, Miller demonstrates that self-deception can lead to even more problems. In accordance with Arthur Miller’s definition of a tragic hero, Willy is unwilling to remain passive when his dignity is challenged. When his neighbor Charley offers Willy a steady paying job, Willy refuses. By taking the job from Charley, Willy feels as though it would hurt his pride. Willy’s inability to see past his pride blinds him to the basic rationality of taking a steady paying job. Miller shows that one must differentiate between an appropriate time to protect one’s honor, and an appropriate time to be pragmatic in order to make ends meet. Willy’s unwillingness to remain passive is seen when he pleads with his boss to allow him to work closer to home. He says, “Forty dollars a week, that’s all I’d need... I put thirty four years into this firm, Howard, and now I can’t pay my insurance! You can’t eat an orange and then throw the peel away! A man is not a piece of fruit!” (82). Miller has Willy fired from the job altogether after this meeting in order to show that people that have become useless will often be rejected by society. Willy’s expectations that he would continue to live a dignified life are thwarted, and Miller thrusts Willy even deeper into despair, proving that unfulfilled expectations can potentially ruin one’s life.

Arthur Miller presents characters that have their own interpretation of their American Dream that plays a toll on the main character, Willy Loman. Living in Brooklyn, a decade after The Great Depression, rebuilding the economy along with building your reputation. The American Dream has its benefits as Willy tried to live out his dream through his personality. Constantly reiterating to his wife how he's well liked or his sons that they need

In 1949, the forlorn life of Willy Loman is introduced in Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman”. At this time the American Dream was something everyone craved during the peak of suburbia. The American Dream was the golden standard of living like Donna Reed, all wrapped up with a white picket fence. To Willy Loman, The American Dream was not the golden standard, but the only standard. His wife Linda dutifully greeting him as he came home from a successful day as a salesman, and sits down to dinner with his sons Biff, the former football star and now successful salesman that takes after his father, and Happy, a husband and father of three who lives a humble life. This idea infested Willy’s mind to such an extent that reality was swept away.

No matter who you are or where you live, every person in this world will have the unfortunate opportunity to watch a loved one die. Whether is slow and peaceful or suddenly, having someone close to you pass away is the inevitable that we are unable to avoid. In the play, Death of a Salesman, the main character, Willy Loman, is starting to lose control of his mind. Because of this, conflicts start to arise in his family, work, and in his everyday life. To everyone else, the Loman family is a typical quaint family with a mother, father and two boys who are both smart and athletic.

In Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, Happy Loman initially disagrees with the American Dream, but soon fully accommodates it. Discontent with his job, a position where “[a]ll [he] can do is wait for the merchandise manager to die,” Happy, wonders why he continues to work without enjoyment. Feeling no purpose, Happy “do[es]n’t know what the hell [he is] workin’ for.” However, because of Willy’s ideals of living in the city to make money, Happy trudges through his life in the city, as he convinces himself that “it’s what [he] always wanted” (23). Eventually, he fully conforms to Willy’s view of the American Dream.

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.

Willy Loman is a man on a mission. His purpose in life is to achieve a false sense of the "American Dream," but is this what Willy Loman really wants? In Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller analyzes the American Dream by portraying to us a few days in the life of a washed up salesman named Willy Loman. The American Dream is a definite goal of many people, meaning something different to everyone. Willy's version is different from most people though; his is based more on being well-liked and achieving monetary successes rather than achieving something that will make him happy. Willy never becomes part of the "American Dream" because he never follows his true dreams and

Willy Loman Syndrome is a term used to describe an individual in the midst of a midlife crisis. A midlife crisis is where someone experiences a flip in their stable reality and experiences a drastic change in their lifestyle due to an unforeseen change in economic or social stability. It is during these changes in economic and social stability that individuals begin to become dissatisfied with their lives. When people become stressed in their daily lives—especially during a midlife crisis— it is not uncommon for the individual to turn to their family for support. Such is the case for Willy Loman in Arthur Miller’s The Death of a Salesman, which not only reveals the struggles in achieving an unrealistic American dream, but highlights the ironic consequences of becoming overwhelmed by not only the events transpiring in daily life but those closest to you. Furthermore, Miller provides the basis of Willy Loman’s character, revealing how his traits and characteristics and dreams are projected onto his family in the midst of a midlife crisis. Tragically, Willy does not overcome his midlife crisis and commits suicide as a result. Ironically the cause of this tragedy is due to his family’s personal revelations of the American dream. Unlike Willy, the members of Willy’s family represent the American dream for its darker truth, and ultimately, it is that truth that pushes Willy to commit suicide. Moreover, The Death of a Salesman’s text and character development ultimately focus on

More than that, he wanted to become that man that he admired who died “the death of a salesman” in his “green velvet slippers” whose funeral garnered many loving friends and family (Miller 81). Audiences can relate as they too have had an idol in their head that they have aspired to become. Seeing the aspirations of Willy warrants pity in the audience when they see what a failure Willy Loman becomes. Failure is what consumes Willy. He understands that that is his life. But in his deep deluded mind twisted with broken memories and false hopes he can never truly accept it. He never has that point of discovery that a tragic hero does. Willy Loman never realizes the doom waiting for him at the end of his downward spiral. Even his attempts at suicide, and finally his one successful one, were misguided and were attempts to become something greater. No one shows up at the funeral besides his family. He is not great like a tragic hero. Willy Loman is a nobody, he is only a tragic hero to himself, just like everyone in the audience. Everyone sings the song of their own tragedy . That is the American tragedy. Everyone is the American tragic hero with their own tragedy. Arthur Miller captures the Average man with the average family and average dreams, living an average life with no gain in the end.

In the midst of the nineteenth century, a period of time in which many individuals immigrated to the United States of America in complete search of the American Dream. As well as the theory and image the American Dream showcases, as American citizens we neglect the fact that freedom is a privilege whereas immigrants from other countries would simply cherish striving to become a part of American Society at all possible costs. Our Founding Fathers put into pursuit the ideal aspect that each person’s particular desire to purse happiness in any way was not just self-indulgence but through the factors of driven ambition and originality. In Arthur Miller’s “Death of A Salesman” Willy Loman fulfills the role of a man in his sixties who has attempted to accomplish the overall meaning of what the American Dream possess for over thirty years in which he practically failed endlessly to achieve that goal. The American Dream is well interpreted as the idea that many can strive to achieve financial stability through hard work, dedication, and commitment. In Miller’s play “Death of A Salesman” he begins to illustrate the many triumphs and flaws the American Dream has and the investment Willy Loman gave to embrace and encourage the overall importance of what the theory had to offer.