Willy Loman In Arthur Miller's Death Of A Salesman

In Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, Willy Loman is an example of a failure as a good father. He did not discipline his sons well by not punishing them. He did not set a good example to his sons by not admitting his faults. He did not make his family his number one priority. Instead, it was his work, coming before his family, his friends, and even himself. Not only is Willy Loman not a good father and husband, but he was a failure by not becoming successful, not achieving the American Dream.

    In Arthur Miller's play, Death of a Salesman, a major theme and source of conflict is the Loman family's lack of morality.  This is particularly evident in the father, Willy Loman.  Willy has created a world of questionable morality for himself and his family.  In this world, he and his sons are men of greatness that "have what it takes" to make it in the competitive world of business.  In reality, Willy’s son Biff is a drifter and a thief, his son Hap is continually seducing women with lies, while Willy does not treat his wife with respect and lies to everyone.

In the Arthur Miller play Death of a Salesman, Willy Loman comes in contact with several characters, many of whom prompt him to examine his past as well as his conscience. Charley's son Bernard is such a character. Lacking dimension and depth of character, Bernard functions primarily as a foil to expose Willy's tragic and pathetic nature.

   "In his early sixties he knows his business as well as he ever did. But the unsubstantial things have become decisive; the spring has gone from his step, the smile from his face and the heartiness from his personality. He is through. The phantom of his life has caught up with him. As literally as Mr. Miller can say it, dust turns to dust. Suddenly, there is nothing" (Internet 1). The New York Times has expressed the tragedy in the ‘Death of a Salesman’ with no inaccuracy. The phantom of his life has been the American Dream that he has longed for and has not successfully achieved. Willy has terminated his life as an act of cowardice because of the failure of his

Toward the end of the story, Willy realizes that his life is falling apart: Biff does not have a stable job or family, is making only commissions for his job, his refrigerator and car are in despair, and he talks to himself. Willy just cannot figure out what has gone wrong, especially with Biff who to him seemed so promising because of his good looks and his charm with others. When Biff comes home again, Willy gets real nervous and starts talking to himself (Act I. Scene I). He is stressed out that Biff has done nothing with his life so he starts seeing visions of the past. When Willy talks out loud while seeing visions, he is trying to discover where he went wrong as a person and father. To find where he went wrong he begins to ask anyone in visions or in person. One character that he frequently asks for advice throughout the drama is his older brother Biff (Gross, 319-321).

This lack of awareness on Willy’s part that he was focusing on the wrong dream--the desire to make money--caused Willy intense displeasure in his work later in life. This misguided path to personal happiness not only interfered with Willy’s life decisions, but it drastically affected Biff and Happy’s perception of success because Willy did not stand up for what he truly believed. This is most easily seen when Biff comes home with a football and Willy--though he is fully aware that Biff stole the sports equipment--fails to warn Biff about the dire consequences of such actions and brushes the issue off. Time and time again, Willy ignores Biff’s record of thievery until he is informed that the police are after Biff for theft. “Shut up! He’s not stealing anything!” (51) Willy denies not only any wrongdoing on Biff and Happy’s part but as well as on his part as a parent, just as he did when Biff stole the football. “Loaded with it. Loaded! What is he stealing? He’s giving it back, isn’t he? Why is he stealing? What did I tell him? I never in my life told him anything but decent things.” (41) This animosity towards theft is countered by Willy’s earlier comment when he faced a scenario where Biff stole a ball from school and Willy somewhat willingly went along with the idea. “Willy, examining the new ball: Where’d you get a new ball? Biff: The coach told me to practice my passing. Willy: That so? And

Willy Loman is trapped in his life, often being suffocated by the things around him, but what is really trapping him in these “bricks and windows, bricks and windows” is himself. Willy is trapping himself from achieving success. In his head, success is thought as the same by everyone else in the society, to be rich, have kids, and a house. The reason why Willy himself can’t achieve it, is because of the things in his life happening around him that makes his mind think differently.

Willy Loman is a troubled and misguided man - a salesman and a dreamer with an extreme preoccupation with his own definition of success. Willy feels that physical impact is greater than the elements of his self-defined success. However, it is apparent that Willy Loman is no successful man, even by the audience's standards. He is still a travelling salesman in his sixties with no stable location or occupation, but clings on to his dreams and ideals. He compares his sons with Bernard, using him as a gauge of success. Nonetheless, he stays in the belief that his sons are better than Bernard. Willy recollects the neighbourhood years ago, and reminisces working for Frank Wagner, although he was also in the same condition then as now. He feels that the older Wagner appreciated him more, yet it was himself who voted Howard in. Arthur Miller presents Willy as a man with great bravado but little energy left to support it. He is always tired and has dementia, contradicting himself in his conversations and showing some memory loss, living in his world of illusions and delusions. He argues with Biff, both men without knowing why. The two sons of Willy display the physical appearance of adulthood, but their talk and attitude displays immaturity. Billy finds that he is a failure because of his lack of `success', while Happy thinks he is unfulfilled because he lacks failure.

  Willy Loman, the title character of the play, Death of Salesman, exhibits all the characteristics of a modern tragic hero. This essay will support this thesis by drawing on examples from Medea by Euripedes, Poetics by Aristotle, Oedipus Rex by Sophocles, and Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, while comments by Moss, Gordon, and Nourse reinforce the thesis.

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 Loman’s feelings of alienation and loneliness are direct psychological results of his interaction with society and the conditions that are found within it.  Although, he does not necessarily have the ability or allow himself to have the ability to define his feelings as such, they are still very much a part of his everyday existence.  This is evident in his constant bragging and attempted compensation.  He does not feel that he is truly a part of society.  Indeed, he is not.  Miller himself seems to be saying that this is not necessarily a bad thing; this society is not that wonderful.  Yet Willy still yearns to be like his brother, Ben, and the other men he sees making

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

Willy is offered help by his friend Charley, a successful Business man, Willies all time friend and only friends he has left, when Charley offers Willy a job, yet willy full of pride and envious of Charley rejects it yet does not rejects it but continues to borrow money from him. This is due to Willies flaw in his desire of being higher in society than anyone else.Willy cannot let go of the past and continuously refers to 1928, when his career was at its peak. His withdrawal into the past is a defense mechanism as he refuses to come to terms with his failure as a salesman. His illusions of grandeur lead to fierce exaggerations of himself. He tells Biff to "Go to Filene's go to the Hub, go to Slattery's, Boston. Call out the name Willy Loman and see what happens! Big shot!" (Miller, 62). He refuses to realize his personal failures and falsely believes that he is successful. Memories of a happier past Willy losing a grip on reality and on time escapes into the past. Despite his desperate searching through his past, The deep probing of dreams and memories in Death of A Salesman where quite important in illustrating Miller's point. Willy is a man stuck in the past reminiscing about times when things where good fabrication of those times really were as good as he imagines them to be? Like his inflated dreams of the future, the past may well be embellished by Willy's wild imagination. It seems

To what extent can Willy Loman be considered a tragic hero according to Aristotle’s rules?