Death Of A Salesman Failure

Success is What You Say it is[a]
Sometimes in life, admitting to one’s own faults or false theories can be a beneficial turn around. If an engineer never sits down to look at the faults in their prototype and redesign it based on its weaknesses, then they will never make anything out of it. In Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller a hard working businessman lives a stressful life chasing after the irrational quest to die the death of a salesman. Abandoned at a young age, Willy Loman was not born into an ideal situation, and with his lack of guidance he formulated his own, immature morals which he would center his entire life around. Willy finds what he thinks is his salvation and path to success through the Singleman Story, where
he wrongly binds success to being well-liked. Willy subconsciously realizes that he is not a success, and he attempts to fulfill his cycle through Biff, but when Biff doesn’t live up to Willy’s unrealistic expectations, it leaves Willy feeling confused and frustrated.
After Willy gets fired from his job, he realizes that he can no longer support his family, and his relentless drive to be a success results in his own suicide for insurance money. The earliest years of one’s life are often times the most important, and with childhood abandonment, Willy was already at a loss in life.
At the age of four, Willy’s brother selfishly left him at alone while he went to Alaska, leaving him traumatized and alone. Willy knows deep down that there was no way that he could have gone to Alaska with his brother Ben, but he makes himself truly believe that it was his own fault for not going. He gets frustrated at himself because in his mind, it was a missed opportunity that he could have took to turn out a success like Ben, when in reality there was never a choice. “That man was a genius, that man was succes incarnate! What a mistake!
He begged me to go… Well I was just a baby, of course, only three or four years old--” Willy contradicting himself about his childhood clearly shows the lack of love that he was given growing up. Willy was born missing a piece, and that was love and support for him growing up, and he admires Ben for the simple reason that he is something that Willy could only dream of becoming. This aspect of being born missing a piece in the “cycle” that is to become a success, directly translates to why Willy never felt accomplished in his lifetime. Willy, having no true guidance or advice during his childhood, took after a story of a successful businessman who, in the eyes of Willy, seemed to have it all. “‘Cause what could be more satisfying than being able to go… into twenty or thirty different cities, and pick up a phone and be remembered and loved… when he died, hundreds of salesmen and buyers were at his funeral.” Misinterpreting this story, all Willy sees out of it is the fame which he connected with being well liked. Willy formulates a cycle for success and engraves it into his mind that said likeability leads to success which leads to love, and vice versa. He takes this story and sees a man with anything and everything one could ever want, when in reality this is the story of a lonely man, a story would parallel that of Willy Loman’s. Willy was never made to be etched into the side of a mountain, but neither were the vast majority of the rest of the world. After raising an athletically gifted child, Willy quickly fell in love with Biff, because according to Willy’s cycle, Biff was a massive success, which made Willy feel credited because he is the one who raised him. Willy’s improper teachings to his children were temporarily shielded by Biff’s high school football success. The only time Willy was truly happy with himself was the day of Biff’s game at Ebbets Field, and seeing thousands of people chanting his sons’ name gave Willy the feeling of being important that he otherwise never would have felt.
“Like a young god. Hercules--something like that. Remember how he waved to me?... Right up from the field, with the representatives of three colleges standing by? And the buyers I brought, and the cheers when he came out--Loman, Loman, Loman! God Almighty he’ll be great yet. A star like that, magnificent, can never really fade away!”
With Biff fulfilling the first part of Willy’s cycle, which was the aspect of being well-liked, in Willy’s mind he saw how well liked Biff was, so applying that to his formula, he had expectations that Biff was going to be a huge success. The feeling Willy gets from this puts him at such a high state of mind it leads him to believing Biff could do no wrong. This leads to Willy teaching Biff all of the wrong lessons in life, and it would later catch up to him after a series of incidents, revealing Biff’s far from perfect self because of Willy’s wrong teachings. It becomes evident to the reader that Biff is not who Willy talked him up to be, and in truth, he was on track to becoming a failure.
The reality of Biff is that he is a thief and a bum, but because this didn’t equate according to the cycle, Willy rejects that reality. Willy would not let go of his dream, and he wanted his sons to aid him in rebuilding the fantasies that deny him his own reality of being a defeated man.
“Let’s hold on to the facts tonight, Pop. We’re not going to get anywhere bullin’ around. I was a shipping clerk” Willy’s response: “I was fired, and I’m looking for a little good news to tell your mother... So don’t give me a lecture about facts and aspects. I am not interested. Now what have you got to say to me?” The firing of Willy is so detrimental that Willy is not able to mentally accept the fact the he is what he would describe to be as a failure. With the doors closed on Willy’s opportunity to be the number one man, the only other way out he has to live up to his dreams is through Biff to become what he wasn’t. Unfortunately, because of Willy’s lack of discipline of Biff during his childhood, Biff did not have the characteristics or potential to do so. Going back to Biff’s high school days, Willy’s wrong teachings finally caught up to Biff when he flunked out of high school, ruining his chances of going to college and living up to Willy’s hype. As Bernard, a huge success, explains to Willy, Biff had the opportunity to make something
out of his life, maybe not what Willy wanted, but certainly better than he turned out to be. “There’s something I don’t understand about it. His life ended after that Ebbets Field game. From the age of seventeen nothing good ever happened to him… Why? Why! Bernard, that question has been trailing me like a ghost for the last fifteen years. He flunked the subject, and laid down and died like a hammer hit him.” The answer to Willy’s confusion about Biff is simply because he was taught that because he was good at football and popular, things would come to him in life, rather than him actually having to work them. Biff lived in a lie his entire life, and when he flunked out of high school he realized this. Still through all of this proof of how Willy’s cycle is completely defective, his mindset remains adamant.
One characteristic that Biff doesn’t have that Willy does is a drive to get things done and put in countless hours of hard work. The problem with Willy is that his immaturity does not allow him to see beyond his dream, and not accepting anything other than what he already believes, he takes it to Biff to carry it out. Pressured by Ben to become as “successful” as he turned out to be, Willy is willing to do anything it takes to achieve that title so Ben will love him. Still following the cycle, Willy still sees a huge amount of potential within Biff because he was well-liked, so he planned to fake an accidental suicide to put money insurance money if Biff’s hands so he can start a business. “Can you imagine that magnificence with twenty thousand dollars in his pocket?... Oh, Ben, I always knew one way or another we were gonna make it, Biff and I.” In Willy’s mind, he accomplished his dreams, going out believing that Biff would take that money, start a business, and become the Dave Singleman in which Willy saw. He went out delusionally believing that he was well-liked, and that he was a success. In truth, the amount of people who showed up to his funeral could be counted on one hand, and Biff will never be the man Willy dreamed he would be. Willy was so caught up in his dreams that he acted as someone who he wasn’t and realistically could never be. He was a hardworking man who had the American Dream others strive to have, he just didn’t see it.
Willy Loman was born into a place where he was taught by miracles, and he learned that to be anything short of Albert Einstein was a failure. Deep down, all Willy needed in life was to be loved, and he was loved, but because of his irrational quest for success, he didn’t acknowledge it. Left to out to die as a child, Willy was unloved and unguided, and the first teachings of his life came from a misinterpreted story about a salesman where his dream began. Still chasing after the Singleman Dream, Willy raises Biff off of this principle, and the lack of discipline and wrong teaching catches up and ruins Biff, but Willy doesn’t understand why. After he loses his job, Willy, refusing to be defeated, realizes that he has no way for him personally to succeed, so he sacrifices himself to make a success out of Biff. The problem with Willy was that he didn’t know himself who he was. He and Biff were both a dime a dozen, regular, average people living the American Dream. Because of Willy’s single-minded quest for success, he could never feel accomplished of anything in life because what he was trying to achieve simply was not feasible. Many times people feel so pressured to be as smart as another person, or as athletic as another person that they develop a tunnel-visioned mindset in which the do not accept themselves for being not as gifted as another person. People who do not branch out of this dream will more often times than not fall short and live their entire lives on a treadmill, never being able to reach tranquility.