Willy Loman's Fate

As a result of these lies, as the months past, his debt grew bigger because he had to get loans to cover up his lie. To the damage of his son’s moral, Biff knew about his father’s deceit to his mother and therefore saw dishonesty as a good thing. In the footsteps of his father, Biff went ahead to lie to his mother that he was ready to sire a family with a woman. He only lied to please Linda, his mother just as his father did. Willy should have taught his sons that dishonesty was against social norms and ethically incorrect and unacceptable.

Later, Willy asks both Biff and Hap to steal lumber and sand from a construction site for the front porch.  He is not dismayed as the security guard chases Biff. He also raises no objection when Ben encourages Biff to fight unfairly. Willy's mixed moral messages eventually lead to Biff's habitual stealing, which is responsible for his continued failure in life.  Even when his sons are older, Willy continues to promote immoral behavior.  Willy urges Biff to lie to Oliver about his work experience so that Biff might borrow $15,000 and start a business.

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).

Linda does not want Biff talking to Willy in fear that her indisposed attemp to keep Willy in his troubled state of mind will be unraveled. But in reality, Willy needs to hear the truth rather than the promotion of a dead-end dream. Linda,

At one point in the play, Willy says, “Biff is a lazy bum”(16). Moments later in the same conversation with Linda, Willy adds, “There’s one thing about Biff, he’s not lazy”(16). Even when confronted by his boys, Willy is unable to deal with the truth, that his sons won’t amount to very much at all. He ignores reality very well, and instead of pointing out that Biff hasn’t established himself yet, Willy tells Biff, “You’re well liked, Biff….And I’m telling you, Biff, and babe you want…”(26). The boys are clearly aware of their status and the status of their father, and Happy is found putting Willy’s personality in a nutshell, “Well, let’s face it: he’s [Willy] no hot-shot selling man. Except that sometimes, you have to admit he’s a sweet personality”(66). Obviously, Willie’s failure to bring up his children effectively, and his delusional thinking including denial of reality helps fortify his depleting condition and confusion.

To make a change in his life, Biff decides he will ask his old employer Bill Oliver for money to start a ranch. The boys then suddenly hear willy downstairs talking to himself, and attempt to sleep. Next the lights on the stage move to Willy, who is sitting in the kitchen lost in memory. Willy remembers when biff and happy were young boys and helped him wash their car. He goes on and tells the boys that when he travels he is well liked, and that soon he will open a successful business. Next the neighbors son Bernard enters wondering why Biff has not come over to study with him. After Bernard leaves Willy tells Biff that he can't be successful without being well liked. Soon a younger version of Linda appears. She asks Willy about how much money he made on his trip, at first he says he made $1,200, then drops it to $200, but then admits to it only being 70 dollars. As Willy continues talking to Linda, a laughter appears over hers. Soon, the scene shifts and Willy flirts with The Woman, a secretary for a buyer. He gives her stockings and she thanks him for

Linda only wants Willy to be treated the way he deserves to be treated, like the hard working, family man he is. In the beginning of the story, Linda and Willy discuss Biff and Happy being back home and Willy is confused on why Biff is back home when he is a fully capable adult and should be on his own just like his younger brother Happy. Linda assures Willy that Biff is just lost and trying to find himself but Willy does not agree at all. “Not finding yourself at the age of thirty-four is a disgrace”(5). From this, we can infer that Willy is acting the way that he is because his oldest grown boy has come home at the age of thirty-four. Biff has no job and is not working to make enough money to provide for himself. Biffs lack of success aggravates Willy because Willy has worked all his life to provide for himself and most importantly his family. Willy had lots of faith in Biff to be successful but is now to find out Biff cannot even provide for himself, let alone anyone else. With Willy’s mind being stuck on a “look good, feel good, do good” basis, it is hard for him to believe his own son is a “disgrace” within an all judgment

Arthur Miller wrote many plays in his time, but one in particular, written in 1947 and directed in Beijing in 1983, was the “play that established him as a great American playwright” called “Death of a Salesman”. This play was about the difference between a New York family’s life in reality and what they dreamed it would be. An old man, by the name of Willy valued popularity and his friends way more than skills or even a real personality. His goal was to die a man that had all of these things, and he ends up killing himself in the end. Miller’s goal was to “take the audience on an internal journey through the mind, memories, fears, anxieties of his central character.” “Death of A Salesman” has been very popular for over a decade, performed internationally, and was even produced into movies (Kristofoletti). Many people remember this play because of how inspiring it was, also because it did not compare to any other of the ones he had ever written.

Willy’s unreasonable expectations of Biff creates a hostile relationship between Biff and Willy. Ever since Biff was in highschool, Willy always expected Biff to be very successful without instilling the tools

The relationship between Willy and Biff is complicated. Actually, Biff is everything for Willy. He doesn’t do well as a salesman anymore, so this situation makes him depressed but at least there is Biff. So Willy believes that Biff will reach the success and his dreams will become true. That makes him want Biff to take some responsibility, in other words this is a big pressure on Biff. “How can he find himself on a farm? Is that a life? A farmhand? In the beginning, when he was young, I thought, well, a young man, it’s good for him to tramp around, take a lot of different jobs. But it’s more than ten years now and he has yet to make thirty-five dollars a week!” says Willy and then Linda says “He is finding himself Willy.” Then Willy answers again “Not finding yourself at the age of thirty-four is a disgrace!” This shows how Willy mad at him because he thinks they couldn’t reach their dreams because of Biff. Willy says “Sure. Certain men just don’t get started till later in life. Like Thomas Edison, I think. Or B.F. Goodrich. One of them was deaf. I’ll put my money

In the play The Death of a Salesman, written by Arthur Miller, Willy Loman is a very troubled and distraught character. He is an ordinary man with nothing to show for himself. This leads him to a constant internal battle. A tragedy, being defined as, “a play dealing with tragic events and having an unhappy ending concerning the downfall of the main character.” The Death of A Salesman can be thought of as a tragic play because the main character sets out to achieve something that will inevitably lead to his downfall. While trying to live out a perfect version of the American dream but falling very short. Often, Willy Loman is debated as a tragic hero, “a character who makes a judgment error that inevitably leads to their own destruction.” When people think of a hero, they automatically turn to kings or people of high nobility. The author, Arthur Miller, believed that the common man makes the best tragic hero. In his essay, “Tragedy and The Common Man”, Miller argues for Willy Loman by stating, “a tragic hero does not need to be of high nobility, it can be in an average person who possesses a tragic flaw”. Arthur believed that there were many heroes in the world, and tragedy can affect even the lowest of the classes. A tragic hero often makes the decision to end his life due to his tragic flaw. Willy Loman can be defined as a tragic hero because he exhibits excessive pride, is noble in nature, but imperfect so that the audience can relate to him, and is faced with a very big decision that he has to make.

Willy’s perseverance to direct Biff into success has resulted to Biff’s desperate acts to earn praise from his father. However, Biff’s dishonest acts of stealing are often justified by Willy through disregard and excuse, even expressing that the “Coach will probably congratulate [Biff] for [his] initiative”. Instead of correcting his mistakes, Willy continuously expresses his belief of Biff’s predetermined success as a result of being attractive and well-liked. These acts effectively exemplifies Biff’s adherence to self-deception as he imagines himself as an important figure in other people’s lives. It can be seen that his belief of being destined for success prevents him from allowing himself recognize the destruction it brings. As a result, Biff has allowed how Willy views him become how he perceives himself. This self-deception has not only affected the actions in his childhood but as well as his decisions when finding his role in the workplace. As stated above, Willy’s consistent beliefs of his son’s predestined success results to Biff’s immense confidence in himself. However, this confidence have provided him a false perception of himself as he struggle to keep a stable job and even faces imprisonment. It can be seen that Biff’s lack of self-perception and compliance to ideals of Willy has only allowed him to restrain and prevent him from recognizing the difference between illusion and reality resulting in the lack of his

The father-son conflict between Willy and Biff is complex. First of all, there is a strong personal attachment. He wants Biff to love him. He remembers the fondness shown for him by Biff as a boy, and he still craves this. At this point, however, relations are strained. Although Willy shies away from remembering so painful an episode, he knows in his heart that his affair with the Boston woman left the boy bitterly disillusioned. Feeling some sense of guilt, Willy fears that all of Biff’s later difficulties may have been really attempts to get revenge. In other words, Biff failed to spite Willy. Although outwardly resenting such alleged vindictiveness, Willy still wants to get back the old comradeship, even if he has to buy it dearly. For instance consider when he asked Ben, “Why can’t I give him something and not have him hate me?” and his final moment of joy and triumph occurs when he exclaims, “Isn’t that remarkable? Biff… he likes me!”

Death of a Salesman, a play by Arthur Miller, is based on a patriarch named Willy Loman living in 1940’s New York City who struggles to get by with his career as a salesman and the failure of his son Biff. In the play WIlly Loman battles with the reality of what his life has succumbed to and commits suicide to escape his problems. A tragedy is an event that ends in suffering with the downfall of an important character. Death of a Salesman portrays the traits of a tragedy due to the great demise of Willy Loman and the turn of events that transpired before his downfall. According to Aristotle, a tragic hero is a character who “dies a tragic death, having fallen from great heights and having made an irreversible mistake.” Before death, that hero has a realization, an anagnorisis, that their actions led to their downfall. Arthur Miller believes the “common man” makes the best tragic hero because the mass of mankind should cherish tragedy above all other forms, let alone be capable of understanding it.” (Miller, Arthur) This means that the “common man” experiences tragedy just as much as any royal being or person of high stature. In this case, he is referring to WIlly Loman being that he is the typical middle class worker with bills to pay and a family to provide for. Based on Aristotle’s definition of a tragic hero, I do not concur that Willy Loman is a tragic hero. Although he possesses some of the traits of a tragic hero for example, he exhibits excessive pride which causes an error in his judgement and leads to a demise far greater than he deserved, he does not have an anagnorisis.

Willy’s final words of advise to Biff are no different than his first and no more educational. Biff, like Willy, does not learn from his mistakes and steals a fountain pen from Bill Oliver, leaving him unable to face Oliver again to ask for money. Willy’s advice on the