Willy Loman In Death Of A Salesman

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 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.

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).

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.

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

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.

Arthur Miller, A play writer in the twentieth century, wrote a play entitled Death of a salesman that won him the Pulitzer Price just a year after its release. In the play Miller expresses the life of a 60 year old salesman that undergoes through lack of success in his life and sees the same thing happening ,to his two grown sons now in their mid-thirties, as the American dream faded away being replaced by capitalism in the late 1940s. The play starts of by introducing Willy Loman, the protagonist, and tells the story of the final twenty four hours in Willy’s life all the way to his death and funeral. Between that time laps the audience is able to see Willies past thanks to his constant daydreams, along with his sons past and wife and

Arthur Miller made the comment that a tragic hero “has the inherent unwillingness to remain passive in the face of what he conceives to be a challenge to his dignity.” Nowhere is this more evident than in Miller’s play Death of a Salesman, where salesman Willy Loman desperately struggles to regain a sense of dignity after experiencing a number of setbacks in his life. Despite not being able to provide for his family, Willy Loman continues the futile struggle to earn a living, which shows the despair of falling from a position of respect to a position of uselessness. The hopes and dreams that he has for his kids in the past never come into existence, but Willy still enthusiastically pushes his adult children to accomplish unrealistic

He becomes so caught up in his life on the exterior, he fails to accomplish something numerous people in the world fail as well: self-knowledge. At the same time, Willy never attempts to do anything to assist in the situation, he buries himself in the past, causing a mental illness that includes delusions of happier times. He refuses to accept reality. Similarly to Hamlet, Arthur Miller's viewpoint of a hero relates to Willy as well. Willy represents a common misfortune that several human beings face in the world, and before he has the ability to fix it, he turns the other cheek and commits suicide; for the final time, an easy way out.

Famous Greek philosopher, Aristotle, pondered many questions over 2,300 years ago. Eventually, he set the definition of a tragic hero. Tragic heroes are often veneered but have a downside that leads to their unfortunate downfall. Aristotle’s definition of a tragic hero is widely accepted, and Willy Loman in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman fits the definition. Willy Loman is a tragic hero because he embodies greatness, has flaws, and his downfall resulted in an increase of awareness.

Willy Loman is a tragic hero based on what Arthur Miller has described as the “Tragedy of the Common Man”. Not a hero of hierarchy, but one who understands and knows the fear of being displaced and “torn away from our chosen image of what and who we are” (Miller, 1949). During “Death of a Salesman”, Loman lives the tale of a tragic hero with many tragic flaws that leave him ready sacrifice everything in order to secure his dignity. Based on the definition that Miller has given, he has created Willy, a perfect example of a common tragic hero.

During the story, I had the chance to witness how Willy slowly by slowly begin to lose himself and his mind in this materialistic life he has created for himself. It becomes clear that the only thing Willy desired and concerned about is keeping up with the people around him in terms of being financially success and possessions. Willy slowly realizes that the man he used to be his no longer that man, he no longer the respected man, he can’t really work or make the same amount of money anymore. Willy unwillingness to understand how everything could have gone so wrong for his sons, and he believes, and thinking that the world owed him for the person he used to prove that he wasn't able to change with society but instead he remains the same. Willy

            Pity for Willy is hardly avoidable when reading Death of a Salesman. His low rank, the lack of respect displayed by his sons, his misguided dreams, all lead to sympathy for a character on the verge of senility. ?Nobody dast blame this man,? (231) says Charley at the grave site, because, despite what Willy was lead to believe, they understood the position he was in, even though the means do not justify the end. His dream of success as a salesman failed. The sons whom he took so much

Notwithstanding the frantic looking on the past, Willy fails to accomplish self-acknowledgment and self-information regular to its shocking legend. Semi determination that his suicide offers him speaks to just an incomplete disclosure of reality. Accomplishing an expert comprehension of himself and the basic way of the business calling, He neglects the understand his own disappointment and double-crossing of his spirit plus family through the fastidiously built guile of his life. He can't get a handle on the genuine individual, enthusiastic, otherworldly comprehension of himself as a strict "low man." Willy is excessively determined by his own unreasonable "unyieldingness" to perceive its inclined reality that his urgent personality has manufactured.

The Presentation of Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller Willy Loman is presented as both a tragic hero and an unconscious victim in "Death of a Salesman". "Death of a Salesman" is very much based upon the American Dream, and whether we are slaves or conquerors of this dream. This is an idea that the playwright Arthur Miller has very passionately pursued both through Willy's own eyes, and through his interaction with the different characters in the play. Firstly, the definitions of a hero and a victim very much influence the way that Willy is viewed by the audience.