1. Title Death of a Salesman (Consider at least two different meanings)
The title has two significant meanings to it, considering the words “Death” and “Salesman”. The death foreshadows that Willy will die somehow in the story or it could also represent him losing his career. Later in the story you find out both these things happen to him. The second meaning is the salesman. Willy always pursued being the best salesman. Part of being a salesman is selling your self and later in the story Willy believes he is worth more dead than alive therefore he is metaphorically selling himself to death.
2. Tragic Flaws (Consider at least three or four for each character.)
• Willy
1. Tragic Hero — Even though I thought Willy was a coward for committing
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Denial — Willy denies reality which turns his life into a big delusion that he later suffers from
3. Suicidal — Willy had suicide problems earlier in life however those are kept hidden from reality.
• Biff
1. Lazy — Biff Does not like to study or do anything related to hard work other than farming. This is because he grew up being taught you only need to be popular to be successful. Things might have worked out for him even with believing this illusion, however he flunks math and loses all his scholarships.
2. Stubborn — Biff does not like to have a boss. He cant hold down any type of job that involves working for someone else than himself.
3. Thief — Biff grows up stealing without being punished and in result he steals from all his employers as an adult with even getting jailed once.
• Happy
1. Competitive — Happy cannot resist using his good looks to seduce all of his friends girlfriends and fiancées into sleeping with him. He thrives of this gratification, as it is a part of his illusion, similar to Willy’s.
2. Lies — Like his father, Happy also lies to himself and others to create an illusion of success.
3. Idealist — Happy follows in his fathers footsteps by setting many unrealistic goals and dreams.
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Discrete — Linda was the only person that new Willy was suicidal which is mainly why she cares for him greatly however she was the reason for Willy’s death. If she would have told someone else Willy could have got the help he needed before he was driven to kill himself.
2. Weak — Linda fears nothing more than loosing her husband however this is the very cause of his death. This lets Willy stamp over her with ridicule but according to her Willy is “only a little boat looking for a harbor”.
3. Linda treats everything like its inevitably going to happen. She goes with the flow and lets everything go against her. This is one of her major flaws is not defending her self or the actions of others that oppose her view.
3. Ben’s Purpose in the Drama (Consider how his appearances give meaning to the drama as a foil* to Willy.)
Willy admires Ben as his older brother and tries to be everything like him, however he lacks some of the characteristics like self-esteem. Ben’s success creates an illusion for Willy to be connected to him somehow. Most importantly ben represents all the fantasies of success that Willy desires for himself and his sons. Ben eventually leads willy into committing suicide to receive the insurance money because by making him believe money is
Willy had faith in his sons that they might will have success and wealth but they never succeeded. Willy was becoming mentally unstable when he couldn’t find success in life and saw that neither he nor his sons were able to fulfill the American dream.
But in the beautiful, ironic complexity of her creation, she is also Willy's and their sons' destroyer. In her love Linda has accepted Willy's Greatness and his dream, but while in her admiration for Willy her love is powerful and moving, in her admiration for his dreams, it is lethal. She encourages Willy's dream, yet she will not let him leave her for the New Continent, the only realm where the dream can be fulfilled. She want to reconcile father and son, but she attempts this in the context of Willy's false values. She cannot allow her sons to achieve that selfhood that involves denial of these values" (Gordon p. 316). Linda is also caught up in Willy's lies and therefore does nothing but help fuel the fire in the inferno of their dreams and ambitions. She lets this whole masquerade continue right in front of her instead of doing something to stop their out of control lies.
Even though his brother is dead, he plays a big part as a character in his problematic imaginative mind. Ben became Willy’s idol, the reason for that was the fact that Ben was adventurer, who got away from the world of business and became rich, because of finding diamonds in Africa. Willy did not go to Alaska with his brother and later in life it became one of his regrets. Ben was more down to earth and was not scared of taking risks. Ben stayed away from competitive world full of ambition. Willy truly believes that because of his brothers good fortune dreams that he has of making it big are rational. Ben for Willy associates with intelligence and self-assurance, which qualities he does not have. Willy loses his mind, by always asking his dead brother for advice. For the most part it is not that beneficial advice, since it is all of Willy’s sick imagination. He continues on having imaginative conversations with his older brother Ben. In those conversations He asks about his father, about his financial success as well as getting parenting advice on Happy and Biff. It is hard to understand Ben, since he is a product of Will’s imagination, furthermore with Will having complete lack of probability; it is hard to realize if Ben is memory or part of imagination. But one thing in particular it is possible to take as being truthful is when Biff fights with Ben. Even though, Ben wins he cheats, letting boys know that that is
Maybe if Linda had told Willy that she knew he was trying to kill himself, Willy would not have killed himself at the end of the play.
Willy’s self- image that he portrayed to others of being successful was a lie that he had lived with for so long
he is now no longer able to experience and enjoy that freedom with Linda. It is immensely tragic that at the time when Willy and Linda should be happy, Willy chooses to kill himself. Willy spent his entire life trying to be successful, but he always viewed himself as a failure. However, at the end of the play, they had all of their house payments paid off. He actually was successful and did not know it.After working for so many years in a job that he was never suited for, Willy has finally paid of his mortgage. The irony is that now that he and Linda
His sense of failure, however, does not derive solely from his unsuccessful career. He also sees himself as having failed in his private life. Although his marriage to his loyal wife Linda has survived, despite the fact that he has on occasions been unfaithful to her, his relationships with his two sons are strained. Biff, the elder, showed promise when young in both the academic and sporting fields, but failed to win a place at university after failing a maths exam at school, and since has become a rootless drifter, alternating between dead-end jobs and petty
Willy's most prominent illusion is that success is dependant upon popularity and having personal attractiveness. Willy builds his entire life around this idea and teaches it to his children.
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
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
Along with her motives, Linda attempts to keep any voice of reason away from Willy, showing that her selfish desire of her well-being is more important than his. In a discussion with her boys in Act I, Linda says, "I'm- I'm ashamed to. How can I mention it to him? Every day I go down and take away that little rubber pipe. But, when he comes home, I put it back where it was. How can I insult him like that?"(1184) Linda claims that acknowledging the truth about Willy's possible attempt to kill himself is an insult. But, in order to develop a solution to any preoblem, one must start with the truth. Linda merely wants to accommodate Willy's mental problems rather than get rid of them, causing him to stay in his troubled state of mind. In another conversation in Act II, Linda tries to push Biff away from speaking with his father:
The play begins with Willy as the antagonist, fighting with his wife Linda and a generally mean person. He insults his sons and scolds Linda for buying the wrong cheese. Willy shows his biggest personality flaws early on in the story; contradicting his own thoughts, being verbally abusive, and showing his over developed sense of pride. Willy loses
Willy is also fired from his long time job. He feels abandoned by his boss and snubbed after all his long years of hard work. Perhaps the most damaging abandonment in Willy’s life is from that of his sons. All these factors combined attribute to Willy’s feelings that a he is worth more dead than alive. Consequently Willy makes many failed attempts at committing suicide. Ironically he does so many times by inhaling gas through a rubber tube. This is ironic being that gas is used to provide an essential element of comfort he struggles to provide his family. Willy is metaphorically and literally being killed by the gas particles. In the end Willy is successful in his last suicide attempt. He has reached bottom low and feels he is truly worth more to his family dead than alive. Throughout this play, Miller uses Willy’s failed goal of reaching the American Dream to show the effects of abandonment on the ability of Willy to decipher reality from fiction, the toll on his family, and his fragile emotional state.
However, things begin to fall apart. From Willy having an affair on Linda, (his wife) to him denying a job, to his mysterious death. In other words, his constant mercurial sequences leads to him suffering from overwhelming depression. That until his
Biff is the apple of his father’s eye. Young, handsome, strong, intelligent, and full of ambition, Biff is going to take the world by storm, and Willy intends to living vicariously through him. This is not to be however. After Biff’s disastrous attempt to get his father to discuss grades with his math teacher, Biff gives up. Entirely. At one point, he wanted to work and to succeed in order to please his father, but after he discovers Willy cavorting with another woman, Biff does not want to give his father the satisfaction of a flourishing son. Suddenly, Willy is a liar in his eyes, and later in life, this causes Biff to have an almost violent relationship with him. (1268) What makes the strain worse is Willy’s guilt, because he knows whose fault the tension is, yet he cannot bring himself to admit it.