The Tragic Outcome of a Salesman’s Dream
The Tragic outcome of a Salesman’s Dream
Willy Loman is an aging salesman in “Death of a Salesman” by Arthur Miller. He is married to his wife Linda, with Biff and Happy being his two sons. In the play, Willy tries to accomplish the American dream, but is only concerned about his past success which make him oversee the tragic position he is in and that his life and actions are a complete failure. This leads to the three major themes within the play; denial, contradiction and unhappiness. In the play, each individual of the Loman family lives in denial, whether about their position in real life, or to their relational conflicts. For example Willy Loman was denying the painful reality of his recent failure as a salesman because he was not capable of accepting the abominable position he was in and changing his critically wrong thinking about the honor and fame he pretended to have. The worst factor is that he only thought back to his previous success in his career which caused him to deny the reality that he has not achieved anything of real value, such as his obsession with a dream to become rich, famous and happy, which resulted in losing touch with reality and with himself. An example of this is when Charley, the Loman’s neighbor and Willy’s best friend, offered the old salesman a job when he got fired, but Willy’s egotism and self-importance got in the way, however, and he couldn’t bring himself to work for Charley, since this would be admitting failure. His sons Biff and Happy also adopted, to some degree, their father’s habit of denying and manipulating reality, which they displayed many times in their lives, until they also, ended up corrupting part of their lives and their minds. The one exception of this tendency was Linda who saw the reality and knew that things were going wrong and that her husband would soon be corrupted. Even though she could see the end coming, she kept the reality to herself and went along with Willy’s fantasies and even encouraged
Willy Loman is an aging salesman in “Death of a Salesman” by Arthur Miller. He is married to his wife Linda, with Biff and Happy being his two sons. In the play, Willy tries to accomplish the American dream, but is only concerned about his past success which make him oversee the tragic position he is in and that his life and actions are a complete failure. This leads to the three major themes within the play; denial, contradiction and unhappiness. In the play, each individual of the Loman family lives in denial, whether about their position in real life, or to their relational conflicts. For example Willy Loman was denying the painful reality of his recent failure as a salesman because he was not capable of accepting the abominable position he was in and changing his critically wrong thinking about the honor and fame he pretended to have. The worst factor is that he only thought back to his previous success in his career which caused him to deny the reality that he has not achieved anything of real value, such as his obsession with a dream to become rich, famous and happy, which resulted in losing touch with reality and with himself. An example of this is when Charley, the Loman’s neighbor and Willy’s best friend, offered the old salesman a job when he got fired, but Willy’s egotism and self-importance got in the way, however, and he couldn’t bring himself to work for Charley, since this would be admitting failure. His sons Biff and Happy also adopted, to some degree, their father’s habit of denying and manipulating reality, which they displayed many times in their lives, until they also, ended up corrupting part of their lives and their minds. The one exception of this tendency was Linda who saw the reality and knew that things were going wrong and that her husband would soon be corrupted. Even though she could see the end coming, she kept the reality to herself and went along with Willy’s fantasies and even encouraged