“Death of a Salesman” Detailed Analysis Essay

ARTHUR MILLERArthur Asher Miller (October 17, 1915 February 10, 2005) was an American cheerw set and essayist. He was a smashing(p) figure in American th cancel outre, writing dramas that include foregathers such as All My Sons (1947), Death of a Salesman (1949), The Crucible (1953) and A View from the bridge deckMiller was often in the public eye, erupticularly during the late 1940s, mid-fifties and early 1960s, a period during which he testified before the House disloyal Activities Committee, received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Prince of Asturias Award, and was married to Marilyn Monroe.SUMMARYIt is important to brave out that the story is told by means of the idea and memory of Willy Loman and there is a invari equal rearward and forth between dickens periods ,1928 and 1942.The set- keystone period is wiz of the happiness and contentwork forcet when Willy Loman is young and dynamic and the children , punch and Happy ar running play nigh in shorts the s econd is one of gloom and discontentment -Willy is instantly old and ,virtually out of a crease and the children argon cock-a-hoop up and gone their different ways. The play is thus structured in such a way to show the pleasures of the past ,the dreamings and hopes the features had and how these aspirations had turned sour. Willy Loman had create his flavor in such a way that he had ultimately trapped himself in an impossible situation.Willy Loman ,the protagonist in the play was a travelling salesman in the profits of the wagnor telephoner for 34 years. When his old gaffer died ,his male child Howard took over the administration of the company .Willys family consists of cardinal former(a) members ,his married fair sex Linda, garget,the elder son and Happy, the younger son.Willy unexpectedly returned on the identical day he had left for New England territory on a business concern tour. Linda felt that her husband is thoroughlyexhausted both physi telephone cally and psychically and he has almost reached the breaking designate. Willy, who is 63, has driven the car mop up the road twice or three times and when he reached lieu he was instal to be panic stricken ,desolate and shattered.Willy liked his first son poke,who was vigorouskn deliver as a football game champion. Though he is 34 , it is unfortunate that he could non settle in life. Inspite of the fact that three colleges offered him scholarship in recognition of his proficiency in football, he did not join any college . Happy, the women chaser in like manner could not settle in life.For the next devil days, immediately after his unexpected return, Willys mind was rather disturbed with thoughts of todays realities inter mingled with yesterdays half forgotten episodes. He felt that it was mistake on his part not to have followed his elder brother Ben ,who dared his way into the diamond minds of Africa and amassed mythologic wealth . Willys guilty consciousness pricked him at the flash back scene of Boston hotel room, when his son laggard makes a surprise chide and finds his take having an affair with a strange lady .After this episode, pummel seemed to continue a grudge against his father and could never again bring himself to give Willy. As suggested by Linda, Willy visits Howard, the young Boss and request for a channel of job in the New York City office as he is physically and mentally incapacitated as a travelling sales man. When the request was unceremoniously turned down by Howard and Willy dismissed from service he protest You cannot eat orange and throw the peel by man is not a gear up of fruit. Willy is very such(prenominal) frustrated and disillusioned at the behavior of capitalists who lacked the homo familiar milk of kindness, apprehension and gratitude.Biffs onrush to raise a loan from broadsheet Oliver, the proprietor of sports goods company also failed. Oliver, who once liked Biff immensely, now refused to recognise him now b ecause Biff has stolen a fountain pen, Charley ,Willys d vigorous extended a helping hand in those days of adversity. He ,not except advanced a loan to him except also offered him a job to him. provided Willy refused to accept it with a false sense of dignity. The two sons invited the father for a dinner party at a large(p) restaurant in the metropolis. But Happy picked up two call girls and left the place along with Biff,leaving Willy alone.Willy felt humiliated and this familiarity was shocking and unbearable when Biff and Happy returned home, Linda ordered them out of the sign of the zodiac by the next morning. She was planning to commit suicide on a particular night .Willy was left alone while all others went upstairs. He has insured his life for 20,000 dollars. Once he dies, the family will be empower to receive the amount from the insurance company. So Willy got into his car and drove devilish through darkness, only to bulge himself. His funeral was attended only by Linda, the two sons, charley and his son Bernard. Linda could not stand the strain of separation from her beloved husband but tranquil she stooped down and dropped flowers on the grave of Willy. end OF A SALESMAN AS A TRAGEDY tally to the traditional views establish on Aristotelian cannons, the tragic hero was to be a mortal of high rank and status. So that his down fall could produce an inescapable emotional effect on the hearing. In ancient Greek tragedies, fate or destiny is mainly responsible for the downfall of human beings. But Shakespeare and Marlow attributed human misfortune mainly to the personal draw backs of the tragic heroes themselves and simply to the hidden forces which we describe as fate or destiny.Miller broadly departs from both these concepts of catastrophe as in the tragic hero in the Death of a sales man belongs to the middle class. He does not hold the view that tragic effect can be produced only by the downfall of a highly placed individual in societ y. It matters not at all whether hero falls from a great height or small one, whether he highly conscious or dimly aware of what is happening ,if the intensity is their America grows like a giant in unimaginable proportions .Willy symbolically stands for all the low men in American business community not just salesmen -who in a way sell themselves. Willy sells himself and in the process wears himself out and he is ultimately discarded when he is no longer useful. Willy begins as a salesman 36 years ago, opens up unheard of territories to their trade mark, but in his old age they take his salary away. It is pity that once Willys energy is exhausted by the work thatsociety has assigned to him, he is thrown aside and dismissed by the son of his old boss. Willy protests, you cannot eat the orange and throw them peel . Man is not a piece of fruit no doubt ,Willy loman is a superannuated employee, but he is rejected and ill treated by his employer at the end of his career. thus far a ch ange of job with less travelling was denied to him.But still it may not be fully correct to say that Willy is alone a victim of the prevailing social system. His own responsibility of his tragedy is by no means insignificant or negligible. In the first place he failed to realize his own limitations and short comings Willy has the conviction that victor depends on personality, contacts and good cloths and that these will bring everything one desires in life. ostensibly Willy is a prey to that magical book of Dale carnegies How to win friends and set batch we know that mistake is that Willy had chosen a wrong professing for himself under the impression that the selling profession is the best in the world. secondly the sense of guilt which he carries with him due to his past infidelity to his wife has also serious repercussions in his mental stability .His affair with the woman in the hotel when he was visited by Biff hangs on his conscience. Biffs discovery of Willys infidelity marks the crucial turning point in the relationship between the father and the son .There after Biff no longer believes Willy .Another point to be noted is Willys incurable optimism .He has had higher expectation about the future of his elder son Biff who looks so charming as the genus Adonise in Greek mythology and who has pull in high re contriveation as a good football champion. Biff has become disillusioned .For Biff ,life came to be an end with his match. He could neither make a mark in business nor could he go back to school to finish his course. Ironically Bernard who never represented University of Virginia, Bernard who pleaded to conceptualize Biffs helmet or shoulder guards , prospered. Bernard wins glory by imploring before the supreme court ,but he does this without any pushing from his father. According to Willy, they ought to be success at all for both Charley and Bernard were not well liked. These tragic experiences shatter Willys conception of American dreams. No human or super natural agency interfered his life .The sense of thwarting and psychological neurosis upsets hismental equilibrium and shatters him to pieces.CHARACTER LISTWILLY LOMAN An insecure, self-deluded traveling salesman. Willy believes wholeheartedly in the American ideate of easy success and wealth, but he never achieves it. Nor do his sons fulfill his hope that they will keep abreast where he has failed. When Willys illusions begin to fail under the pressing realities of his life, his mental health begins to unravel. The overwhelming tensions caused by this disparity, as well as those caused by the societal imperatives that drive Willy, form the essential conflict of Death of a Salesman.BIFF LOMAN Willys thirty-four-year-old elder son. Biff led a trance life in high school as a football star with scholarship prospects, good male friends, and fawning female admirers. He failed math, however, and did not have enough credits to graduate. Since then, his kleptomania has gotten him fired from every job that he has held. Biff represents Willys vulnerable, poetic, tragic side. He cannot ignore his instincts, which part him to abandon Willys paralyzing dreams and move out West to work with his hands. He ultimately fails to reconcile his life with Willys expectations of him.LINDA LOMAN Willys loyal, loving wife. Linda suffers through Willys grandiose dreams and self-delusions. Occasionally, she seems to be taken in by Willys self-deluded hopes for future glory and success, but at other times, she seems far more(prenominal) realistic and less fragile than her husband. She has nurtured the family through all of Willys direct attempts at success, and her emotional strength and perseverance support Willy until his collapse.HAPPY LOMAN Willys thirty-two-year-old younger son. Happy has lived in Biffs shadow all of his life, but he compensates by nurturing his relentless sex drive and professional ambition. Happy represents Willys sense of self-importance, ambition, and blind servitude to societal expectations. Although he works as an suspensor to an assistant buyer in a departmentstore, Happy presents himself as supremely important. Additionally, he practices bad business ethics and sleeps with the girlfriends of his superiors.CHARLEY- Willys next door neighbor. Charley owns a successful business and his son, Bernard, is a wealthy, important lawyer. Willy is wishful of Charleys success. Charley gives Willy money to pay his bills, and Willy reveals at one point, choking back tears, that Charley is his only friend.BERNARD Bernard is Charleys son and an important, successful lawyer. Although Willy used to mock Bernard for canvas hard, Bernard always loved Willys sons dearly and regarded Biff as a hero. Bernards success is difficult for Willy to accept because his own sons lives do not measure up.BEN Willys wealthy older brother. Ben has recently died and appears only in Willys daydreams. Willy regards Ben as a symbol of the succes s that he so desperately craves for himself and his sons.THE WOMAN Willys mistress when Happy and Biff were in high school. The Womans attention and admiration boost Willys fragile ego. When Biff catches Willy in his hotel room with The Woman, he loses faith in his father, and his dream of passing math and going to college dies.HOWARD WAGNER Willys boss. Howard inherited the company from his father, whom Willy regarded as a masterful man and a prince. Though a lot younger than Willy, Howard treats Willy with condescension and eventually fires him, despite Willys wounded assertions that he named Howard at his birth.STANLEY A waiter at Franks chop up House. Stanley and Happy seem to be friends, or at least acquaintances, and they backchat about and ogle Miss Forsythe together before Biff and Willy vex at the restaurant.MISS FORSYTHE AND LETTA Two young women whom Happy and Biff play off at Franks Chop House. It seems likely that Miss Forsythe and Letta are prostitutes, judgi ng from Happys repeated comments about their moral character and thefact that they are on call.JENNY Charleys secretaryTHEMES, MOTIFS & SYMBOLSTHEMESThemes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.THE American DREAMWilly believes wholeheartedly in what he considers the promise of the American romance- that a well liked and personally attractive man in business will indubitably and deservedly acquire the material comforts offered by modern American life. Oddly, his fixation with the superficial qualities of attractiveness and likeability is at odds with a more gritty, more rewarding recording of the American Dream that identifies hard work without complaint as the key to success. Willys reading material of likeability is superficial-he childishly dislikes Bernard because he considers Bernard a nerd. Willys blind faith in his stunted version of the American Dream leads to his rapid psychological rectify when he is unable to accept the disparity b etween the Dream and his own life.ABANDONMENTWillys life charts a course from one desertion to the next, leaving him in greater despair each time. Willys father leaves him and Ben when Willy is very young, leaving Willy neither a tangible (money) nor an intangible (history) bequest. Ben eventually departs for Alaska, leaving Willy to lose himself in a warped vision of the American Dream. Likely a result of these early experiences, Willy develops a fear of abandonment, which makes him want his family to conform to the American Dream. His efforts to raise perfect sons, however, reflect his inability to understand reality. Theyoung Biff, whom Willy considers the embodiment of promise, drops Willy and Willys zealous ambitions for him when he finds out about Willys adultery. Biffs ongoing inability to succeed in business furthers his estrangement from Willy. When, at Franks Chop House, Willy finally believes that Biff is on the cups of greatness, Biff shatters Willys illusions and, alon g with Happy, abandons the deluded, babbling Willy in the washroom.BETRAYALWillys primary obsession throughout the play is what he considers to be Biffs betrayal of his ambitions for him. Willy believes that he has every right to expect Biff to fulfill the promise inherent in him. When Biff walks out on Willys ambitions for him, Willy takes this rejection as a personal contumely (he associates it with insult and spite). Willy, after all, is a salesman, and Biffs ego-crushing disregard ultimately reflects Willys inability to sell him on the American Dream-the overlap in which Willy himself believes most faithfully. Willy stick outs that Biffs betrayal stems from Biffs discovery of Willys affair with The Woman-a betrayal of Lindas love. Whereas Willy feels that Biff has betrayed him, Biff feels that Willy, a phony little fake, has betrayed him with his unending stream of ego-stroking lies.MOTIFSMotifs are recur structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop a nd inform the textbooks major themes.MYTHIC FIGURESWillys tendency to mythologize people contributes to his deluded understanding of the world. He speaks of Dave Singleman as a legend and imagines that his death mustiness have been beautifully noble. Willy compares Biff and Happy to the mythic Greek figures Adonis and Hercules because he believes that his sons are pinnacles of personal attractiveness and power through well liked-ness to him, they seem the very incarnation of theAmerican Dream.Willys mythologizing corroborates kinda nearsighted, however. Willy fails to realize the hopelessness of Singlemans lonely, on-the-job, on-the-road death. Trying to achieve what he considers to be Singlemans heroic status, Willy commits himself to a pathetic death and meaningless legacy (even if Willys life insurance policy ends up paying off, Biff wants nothing to do with Willys ambition for him).THE AMERICAN WEST, ALASKA, AND THE AFRICAN jungleThese regions represent the potential of ins tinct to Biff and Willy. Willys father found success in Alaska and his brother, Ben, became rich in Africa these exotic locales, especially when compared to Willys banal Brooklyn neighborhood, crystallize how Willys obsession with the commercial world of the city has trapped him in an unpleasant reality. Whereas Alaska and the African jungle symbolize Willys bereavement, the American West, on the other hand, symbolizes Biffs potential. Biff realizes that he has been content only when working on farms, out in the open. His atomic number 74 escape from both Willys delusions and the commercial world of the eastern join States suggests a nineteenth-century pioneer mentality-Biff, unlike Willy, recognizes the importance of the individual.SYMBOLSSymbols are objects, characters, figures, or color used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.SEEDSSeeds represent for Willy the opportunity to prove the worth of his labor, both as a salesman and a father. His desperate, nocturnal attempt t o grow vegetables signifies his shame about barely being able to put food on the table and having nothing to leave his children when he passes. Willy feels that he has worked hard but fears that he will not be able to help hisoffspring any more than his own abandoning father helped him. The seeds also symbolize Willys sense of failure with Biff. Despite the American Dreams formula for success, which Willy considers infallible, Willys efforts to cultivate and nurture Biff went awry. Realizing that his all-American football star has turned into a lazy bum, Willy takes Biffs failure and lack of ambition as a reflection of his abilities as a father.DIAMONDSTo Willy, diamonds represent tangible wealth and, hence, both validation of ones labor (and life) and the ability to pass material goods on to ones offspring, two things that Willy desperately craves. Correlatively, diamonds, the discovery of which made Ben a fortune, symbolize Willys failure as a salesman. Despite Willys belief in th e American Dream, a belief unwavering to the extent that he passed up the opportunity to go with Ben to Alaska, the Dreams promise of financial warranter has eluded Willy. At the end of the play, Ben encourages Willy to enter the jungle finally and retrieve this knobbed diamond-that is, to kill himself for insurance money in order to make his life meaningful.LINDAS AND THE WOMANS STOCKINGSWillys strange obsession with the stipulate of Lindas stockings foreshadows his later flashback to Biffs discovery of him and The Woman in their Boston hotel room. The teenage Biff accuses Willy of giving away Lindas stockings to The Woman. Stockings assume a metaphorical weight as the symbol of betrayal and sexual infidelity. New stockings are important for both Willys pride in being financially successful and thus able to provide for his family and for Willys ability to ease his guilt about, and suppress the memory of, his betrayal of Linda and Biff.THE galosh HOSEThe rubber hose is a stage p rop that reminds the audience of Willys desperate attempts at suicide. He has apparently attempted to kill himselfby inhaling gas, which is, ironically, the very substance essential to one of the most introductory elements with which he must equip his home for his familys health and comfort-heat. factual death by inhaling gas parallels the metaphorical death that Willy feels in his shinny to afford such a basic necessity.QUESTIONSThe play Death of a Salesman revolves mainly around a conflictbetween ?What are the reasons for Willys failure as a business man?American dream in the play Death of a salesman.What is the central theme of the play Death of a salesman.The father son conflict in the play Death of a salesman.The hotel scene in the play Death of a salesman.The role of mother Linda Loman in the play Death of a salesman.why did Biff Loman leave the school?The significance of the titleDeath of a salesman.Why did Willy commit suicide?The flash back scene in the play Death of a s alesman.Millers play as a critique of the American way of life.