Analysis Of Willy Loman

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.

At the peak of Arthur Miller's success, Death of a Salesman arose as one of America’s exceptional dramas composed in the twentieth century. Due to the significant measure of brilliance and originality the play exhibited and brought upon the era, it earned a Pulitzer Prize award in 1949. Plainly, the notable piece of Miller’s identifies as a tragedy since it reveals the tragic hero-like qualities and actions of the main character, Willy Loman. Moreover, the nature of Willy's role illustrates Willy as a tragic hero in the form of what Aristotle described as a tragic hero in Poetics, regarding the traits a tragic hero conveys.

The author Arthur Miller wrote the book Death of a Salesman and it tells the tale of a dysfunctional family and its members. This family is comprised of Willy Loman, a salesman, Linda, Willy’s wife and mother of Biff and Happy, Biff, eldest son of Willy and Linda, and Happy, younger son of Willy and Linda. Each of the characters in the book all have flaws such as Willy being suicidal, Linda being an enabler, Biff being lost, and Happy being a liar. These flaws have created an atmosphere where conflicts will occur time and time again. In fact, the main plot of the literary work revolves around Willy, the salesmen, coming to turns that his whole life has been nothing but a lie that he gets caught up in causing his son to confront him.

    In Arthur Miller's play, Death of a Salesman, Miller probes the dream of Willy Lowman while making a statement about the dreams of American society. This essay will explore how each character of the play contributes to Willy's dream, success, and failure.

Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman tells the story of the failure of a salesman, Willy Loman. Although not all Americans are salesmen, most of us share Willy’s dream of success. We are all partners in the American Dream and parties to the conspiracy of silence surrounding the fact that failures must outnumber successes.(Samantaray, 2014)

The American Dream is what many people strive for. What makes The Dream impossible for some is a hamartia, or a fatal flaw. Willy Loman, from Death of a Salesman, is a common man trying to achieve The American Dream. This aspiration compounded with a fatal flaw is what makes him an apt subject for tragedy in the highest sense. This fatal flaw is his incapacity to make proper life decisions. The poor decisions Willy makes spiral his life into a rut that ultimately claims his life, leaving his family with nothing. Similarly, the unnamed main character (who, for simplification, will be referred to as Gary) from Weird Al Yankovic’s “Trapped in the Drive-Thru,” as the name suggests, also finds himself in a rut that ultimately leaves him worse

In Arthur Miller’s novel, Death of a Salesman, he writes about a salesman and his relations with his family, friends, and his job. Miller argues that Willy Loman is a tragic hero, for he failed to make friends, be a successful businessman, and a good husband/father due to his appalling attitude toward others and his hubris, or excessive self-pride. He interacts with people in the present, along with having flashbacks and talking to himself, trying to interact with the ones that are in his flashback. He sees himself as a well-known and a hardworking salesman, but in reality, he is uncharismatic, contradicting, and an overall failure of a man.

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 was a man who gradually destroyed himself with false hopes and beliefs. Throughout his entire life Willy believed that he would die a rich and successful man. It was inevitable for him to come crumbling down after years of disillusions. We can look at Willy’s life by examining some of his character traits that brought him down.

Arthur Miller was a well-known American playwright. His 1949 play “Death of a Salesman” tells the story of Willy Loman, a salesman and father who is captivated by the idea of success. Miller shows how Willy's obsession with the American Dream and his relentless denial to acknowledge his failure to reach that dream affect his mental state and actions and ultimately lead to his death through contradictions in Willy’s behavior and statements and the symbolism of Willy’s seeds, diamonds, and the jungle. Throughout the entire play, Willy is preoccupied with chasing the 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.

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.

Many workers today go through a low time or a struggle and give up. Today’s workers do not necessarily commit suicide when they are in a low point but they do things such as quitting the job or relying on government assistance. Willy strives to achieve the American dream and he eventually realizes that he has failed and gives up on life. This dream is a belief in America and that all things are possible if you work hard enough (Criticism of ' the American Dream' in 'Death of a Salesman'). Arthur Miller uses this story to expose the problems with pursuit of such a dream: “What Miller attacks, then, is not the American Dream of Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, but the dream as interpreted and pursued by those for whom ambition replaces human need and the trinkets of what Miller called the ‘new American Empire in the making’ are taken as tokens of true value” (Bigsby). “Death of a Salesman” creates a challenge to the American Dream and shows that an American should live a prosperous and plentiful life instead of get lost and die tragically (Criticism of ' the American Dream' in 'Death of a Salesman'). Gradually throughout the play, Willy gets farther and farther away from achieving his idea of the American Dream. His income slowly decreases to nothing: “as a salesman, Willy stages a performance for buyers, for his sons, for the father who deserted him, the brother he admired. Gradually, he loses his audience, first the buyers, then his son, then his boss” (Bigsby). His problem is that he completely surrenders to the American Dream and by the team he realizes his mistake, he has nothing to fall back on (Panesar). If Willy would have embraced his natural talent for manual labor and his family’s love for the countryside, the Lomans could have a totally different lifestyle (Panesar). Towards the end of the play, Willy became overwhelmed

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

“Death of a Salesman “ by Arthur Miller is interpreted differently by many people.  In the critical review titled “Family Values in Death of a Salesman” by Steve R. Centola, he characterizes Death of the Salesman as am a modern tragedy. He draws more focus on the family core values and self-exert.  In his analysis, he states that as the humans try to be competitive, they have dehumanized the American dream and have turned it into an urban nightmare. He claims that the author simply tells a story of a dying man who wants to justify the purpose of his life before he meets his death. He states that the consequences of his choices are a challenge he has to overcome to attain what he needs. Centola points out that through the realization of what Willy Loman values, it is easy to discover the reason for the conflict between him and Biff. He refers to Death of a Salesman as a tragedy of a human struggle that is rooted in the metaphysical and also based on the social and psychological concerns. He also asserts that by discussing the values of Willy Loman, readers will be able to identify the reasons behind Willy’s agenda to perform suicide.