Willy from Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller: Abandoned and Flawed

The play opens with a description of the house. Which shows the house and Willy starting of as a failure, he fails by cheating on his wife and not respecting his friends.

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

Death of a Salesman was first written in 1949. It tells the story of Willy Loman’s life in a 24-hour period. Willy grew up without a father. His “role model” was his older brother Ben who went to Africa when he was young and became very well off. Willy was married to Linda Loman and

(Act 2). Biff has finally had enough of the lies his father has been telling his family all these years. Willy has always thought the boys would get rich quickly and be successful solely because they are his sons and he thinks they work hard. Biff wants to break out of the dreams so he can become what he wants to and not be held down by what his father thinks.

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’s biggest issue with his son is that he let him down by not being any more successful than him. He feels like Biff is failing on purpose just to make him look bad. Although, he has no decent job and is single; Biff has become disoriented about life. Earlier in the play Biff tells Happy, “I tell ya Hap, I don't know what the future is. I don't know - what I'm supposed to want” (Miller266). Biff once looked up to his father as a role model, but lost all faith in him once finding out that he was having an affair. Ever since he has rejected Willy’s commitment of being a husband and also a father. To add to his ruins are Willy’s ideas of how Biff should get ahead in life. Willy taught Biff that popularity was the right way to get to the top, rather than hard-work and dedication. Trying to live by his dad’s standards caused Biff to fail high school and become unable to put forth the effort to become

Arthur Miller begins his play with an excellent description of the setting of the play. This makes it easy for the reader to imagine themselves actually watching the play and causes the reader to be able to better relate to the play. Because Death of a Salesman can be considered an emotional play, it qualifies as being a timeless work of literature, especially because it has the ability to touch the human heart. Willy Loman is a salesman, who lives in New York City with his wife Linda. From the beginning of the play, Miller makes it obvious that Willy struggles with many obstacles, such as anger and even confusion since there are many times throughout the play where Willy becomes severely confused. Many characters throughout the play,

Death of a salesman is a tragic play made in 1949 by Arthur Miller. Like all of us Willy, ( the main character) wants to be famous and well-known. He lives in New York with his wife and son happy, while his other son,Biff, visits them. Willy is mad that Biff hasn’t done anything with his life. He isn’t notorious, he isn’t rich, these aspects force Willy to keep trying to be successful, something he struggles throughout the play. The author throws flashbacks and visions of people that are prominent like his brother Ben or his neighbor Charley. This struggle leads up to the unexpected ending. That fame can be beautiful but also deadly.

While Biff is in some ways desperate to impress his father, he is also conscious about the fact that Willy has failed his attempt to be successful in his career. He considers his dad’s dreams materialistic and unreachable. As a matter of fact, in the Requiem, even after his father’s death, Biff says: “He had the wrong dreams. All, all wrong.” Unlike Happy and Willy, Biff is self-aware and values facts; Willy never was a successful salesman and he never wanted to face the truth. On the other hand, Biff is conscious about his failures and the weaknesses of his personality. During an argument with his father, Biff admits that his dad made him “so arrogant as a boy” that now he just can’t handle taking

Death of a Salesman tells the poignant, yet bitter story of Willy Loman, a salesperson in his early 60s that has seen the viability of his profession of a lifetime wither and his ability to financially provide for his family completely evaporate (Miller, 1949/2012). This is a depressing thought for anyone, however it proves to be ultimately catastrophic for Willy Lohman given his illness, insecurities, and despair. To begin with, while Arthur Miller adeptly used flashbacks and Willy's spirited and direct conversations with other characters to provide audiences additional insight regarding the sequence of events that brought Willy to his current state of mind and circumstances (Harvey, 2012). Additionally, when the play was written in 1949, undoubtedly Miller used these literary concepts to convey Willy's plight as an ordinary man fighting to remain relevant in a rapidly changing world. However, while I am certainly not a medical professional, Willy’s difficulty driving, confusion,

"Death of A Salesman," by Arthur Miller, is a play that tells the story of a traveling salesman, Willy Loman, who encounters frustration and failure as he reflects on and experiences his own life. Willy's quest for the American Dream leads to his failure because throughout his life, he pursues the illusion of the American Dream and not the reality of it. His mindset on perfection, his obsession with success, and his constant reminiscence of the past and foretelling of the future, all contribute to his defeat in the end.

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

Death of a Salesman is a play written in 1949 by Arthur Miller, the man who would later go on to write the Crucible. Arthur Miller based the character of Willy Loman off of his uncle, who was a traveling salesman and felt competitive with his own sons towards Arthur and his own brother. After bumping into Arthur in Boston, Manny shortly committed suicide. In his life, Arthur had known three people who had committed suicide and two of those were traveling salesman. Arthur was so passionate about this play that he had finished Act 1 in only one day, and Act 2 was finished six weeks later (“Death of a Salesman: Study Guide.”). This play, considered by many to be one of the greatest plays of the 20th century, has featured on Broadway for

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

In the play Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller, Willy is both sympathized with and looked down upon throughout the story. Willy is a very complex character with problems and faults that gain both sympathy and also turn the reader off to him. Willy Loman is both the protagonist and the antagonist, gaining sympathy from the reader only to lose it moments later.