Willy Loman Tragic Hero Essay

English 102
April 14, 2009
Willy Loman: The Tragic Hero
The reasons behind why Willy Loman is a tragic hero, in Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman”, arise from Willy’s own delusions and misunderstanding of the people around him. In today’s world many people have the same delusions Willy has. Many people believe they are much greater than they are because they want to keep an optimistic outlook on life. Unfortunately, once these people do realize the truth they end up the same way Willy Loman ended up. For so many, the American Dream is all they want but for so few, does it come true or happen as planned. Many people and many families fail just as Willy had failed but not all of them end as tragically as Willy’s life ended. Willy’s
American Dream was to just be a well-liked and well-respected salesman. Willy believed that the key to success was to be well-liked and that it didn’t really matter what one accomplishes as long as they are well-liked.
Willy Loman has a grand image of himself in his head when in reality that is not how people perceive him at all.
Most of his family members don’t even see this because they are just as delusional as Willy is. However, his son, Biff, is not quite as delusional and sees the “phony” in his father. Biff continuously tries to bring this up to Willy but Willy continuously tries to avoid this inconvenient truth. For example, when Biff and Happy, Willy’s other son, meet Biff at the bar to discuss Biff’s situation with Bill Oliver, Biff’s previous employer, Willy thinks everything went great and that Biff is going to have great new job with Oliver. Biff is trying to tell Willy that this is not how the meeting went at all. However, because Willy doesn’t want to hear it, he doesn’t let Biff finish many of his sentences. Willy is very ignorant to reality. He does not want to believe any of the truths his son is telling him and the only way he knows how to cope with that is by rudely interrupting Biff. The old saying of “ignorance is bliss” really pertains to Willy because he is mostly a jolly old man who ignores all the troubles, even though they may be true, that surround him. Although, it is hard to be ignorant of the troubles around you, especially when someone close to you is trying to remind you of
them.
Willy’s ignorance also shows through his occupation, from which he was fired from during the play. Willy was a salesman, hence “Death of a Salesman” and his eventual suicide, but instead of trying to sell his product he basically went around trying to sell himself (Simon 1). He tried harder to make the customer like him than the product. This is also another instance of his delusional state of mind because it shows that he believes that as long as people like him, he will be considered a successful salesman. This is an interesting theory and to an extent it may be true but in reality to be a success there has to be an accomplishment or an achieved goal. In Willy’s case the accomplishment he is trying to attain is the selling of his products, which he rarely does. According to Sandra Brooks of the Denver Post, Willy believes “a man’s two most important tools for success are ‘a smile and a handshake’. (Brooks 1) This shows Willy’s ignorance because he believes that in order to fulfill the American Dream one must be well-liked. This shows his ignorance also, because his idea of the American is to be well-liked instead of something bigger and better such as providing a comfortable, stress-free life for himself and his family.
With Willy’s delusional idea of himself and his entire family he is really just tearing his family apart. He does this by believing that he is this great salesman and that his sons are much greater than they really are as well. This is ruining not only himself but also his family because his family now has no money and they are just simply ignorant to the reality that they are poor and have never really accomplished anything with their lives. Biff was the closest to accomplishing something because if he had only passes math in high school he would have been a football star in college, but just like most everything else in the Loman family’s world he failed. Arthur Miller gives Willy the last name “Loman” because he is just that, a “low-man”. Willy is nothing more than an average, everyday guy but he believes he is some great “leader among men”, he even believes his two sons are the same way when in reality none of them are what he wants and envisions them to be. As for his idea of success, he thought of success as making the world a home. This means that he wanted to make himself comfortable amongst anyone and just be himself. However, this was not attainable for Willy because he was constantly doing things to gain the approval and admiration of others. His son, Biff, made the world a home when he stopped yearning for affection and admiration from others (Jacobson 251).
Throughout the play Miller hints at Willy being suicidal, for example, when Biff says to Willy “All right, phony! Then let’s lay it on the line” (Miller 1315), Biff puts the rubber hose on the table and Willy pretends he has never seen it before. Also, at the beginning of the play there is a reference to “Willy’s accident” which was really him purposely driving off the road in an attempt to kill himself. These references to Willy trying to commit suicide are really just foreshadowing of his eventual suicide and death. Willy committed suicide in the end of the play by purposely crashing his car. The reason why Willy eventually did kill himself was because after failing as a salesman he was actually worth more dead, the life insurance settlement, than he was alive. This is one reason why Willy is a tragic hero, because he gave his own life instead of his personal dignity. To many this might seem foolish but for the rest of the Loman family it was a big help, not that they wanted him to die but, now they have enough money to pay off the mortgage on their home, which was a life-long dream of Willy’s. Some people might believe that Willy took the lazy way out of life instead of actually accepting the truth that he was not as great as he saw himself and working hard to make a better a life. Willy was just trying to fulfill his idea of the American Dream without putting in too much work or effort. This is no way to go about getting what one wants. In order to be a success in life one must work extremely hard. That is of course unless one’s perception of success isn’t very difficult to attain.
Arthur Miller’s main goal in this play was to show the readers and viewers that so many Americans have the wrong perception of success in that most people base success on materialistic ideas instead of self accomplishment. This was one of Willy’s major flaws because he measured self-worth based on what people have instead of what people have done. Miller also wanted to show that in American society people are used for a short while to accomplish something for the “big brother” and then they are tossed away and forgotten. Just as Willy was used for a while as a salesman but when his boss thought he was too old to travel the country anymore he fired Willy. All in all, this is the story of the "Low Man". Many believe in ideals like Willy's, many have had the American Dream fail and many did not see that their family lost their way because of them. It is a tragedy that a man with so much potential lost everything by believing in the wrong things and never realizes his situation.