An Analysis Of Willy Loman's Death Of A Salesman

Willy’s buying into the American Dream of material success does result in its share of arguments between the Loman family. After all, you can only push your family so much before they begin to crack under the pressure. Willy constantly pushes his sons in the business field, mistreats his wife, Linda, who has been nothing but supportive, and even arguing with Charley who is more than compassionate and loans Willy money every month. Biff, Happy, and Linda never argue with Willy directly because they are afraid that it will completely deteriorate any sanity he has left. They resort to arguing behind his back, but Linda is the only one that sticks up for Willy. Biff shouts at her, “Stop making excuses for him! He always, always wiped the floor
P. Morgan, Thomas Edison, BFGoodrich are famous businessmen of the 20th Century mentioned in Death of a Salesman. During a conversation between Willy and Charley, Charley tries to compare Willy to J. P. Morgan saying, “Why must everybody like you? Who liked J. P. Morgan? Was he impressive? In a Turkish bath he’d look like a butcher. But with his pockets on he was very well liked” (Miller 97). J. P. Morgan was known as an American financier, banker, and industrial organizer. He was in influential figure in the world of corporate finance as well as industrial consolidation. He had so much power in this area of business and contributed in the reorganization of highly profitable corporations such as United States Steel and General Electric. Charley is insists to Willy that if J. P. had no riches, he would not be well liked. J. P. is referred to as a “butcher” due to the fact that businessmen like himself are often emotionless and do not feel much for others but themselves. Businessmen like Morgan could not afford to make any mistakes because one mistake could have broken his entire company. Arthur Miller mentions J. P. to convey to the readers the indisputable similarities between J. P. and Willy. Although Willy was not nearly as successful as J. P., they were both deluded in gathering that money is everything. Nevertheless, living a cutthroat and power hungry life is certainly not living at
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 on Biff” (Miller 18). Thomas Edison was a lucrative businessman and inventor. In fact, some people consider Thomas Edison to be one of the greatest investors of America. He was born on February 11, 1847, but did not become the successful inventor of the light bulb until October 21, 1879. Furthermore, BFGoodrich had his fair share of success of in the business world and was known for being an industrialist in the rubber industry. He success reached beyond boundaries and he went on to discover his own company, the B.F. Goodrich Company, an aerospace manufacturing company. This company is still around today, but most people recognize it as the Goodrich Corporation. Biff is around the same age as these men were when they attained their success. Willy becomes so infatuated at an early point in the play with his delusional version of the American Dream that he compares his son with arguably the two of the greatest businessmen the country has ever seen. From this point in the play, Willy’s relationship with Biff gets more strained until it reaches the breaking point and results in more arguments between the family. Willy’s corruption is to blame for these arguments as well as Biff’s initial