Failed American Life Depicted in Essay

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Even when has the opportunity to make things better, he does not act. He refuses Charley's job offer because it seems easier to ask for money than it is to do something other than sell. He would rather see the family suffer than try to work at something else for a little while. After he is gone, she tells the kids, "First time in thirty-five years we were just about free and clear" (Requiem 1112). This statement illustrates just how disconnected to two were. She knew enough to know that they were almost at a place where they could stop and breathe but Willy does not see things that way. He does not look at retirement as a way of beginning something refreshing with Linda. He fails her because he is not the strong, dependable man she deserves.

Willy also fails his children. While he does not beat his children of deliberately harm them, he certainly does not do anything to help them advance in the world. We can the perfect example of this with Biff, who is shaped by his father's misguided sense of the world. Biff has no drive and he allows his father's opinion to cloud reality. As a result, Biff can find no real direction for his life. He admits to Happy that he does know what he wants to do with his life even though he has had "twenty or thirty different kinds of jobs" (Miller 1038).

He blames Willy for this telling him, "I never got anywhere because you blew me so full of hot air I could never stand taking orders from anybody! That's whose fault it is!" (1108). Biff might be lazy but he is not as idealistic as his father is. He sees what this type of thinking did to his dad and realized that while he had dreams they were "wrong dreams" (1113) for him. He even tells Happy that carrying on the Loman Brothers ideas was not going to happen because, "I know who I am, kid" (1113).

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Here we see that Willy's life had a profoundly negative effect on his son. This example illustrates how he failed his family because he could not be the type of father figure the needed in their lives.

Arthur Miller's play, Death of a Salesman, is one of the greatest inspirational stories because it illustrates what it is that we should not do if we want to succeed. Willy makes all of the wrong decision in his life but has a difficult time owning up to them. We can learn from Willy that dreaming is simply not enough - we must act and never give up or make excuses. Willy fails his wife because he can never be the kind of strong man that she deserves in her life. In addition, he can never be the kind of father his children deserve because he is too busy wallowing in his own despair. Willy has no outward characteristics of being a bad man but he did live a rather bad life. He failed himself and his family because he could never face certain truths about life. He was so busy drowning himself in what he did not have that he could not enjoy what was already his. Because he could not find a way to reach any dream at all, Willy is the epitome of the failed American life.

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"Failed American Life Depicted In" (2008, October 19) Retrieved May 4, 2024, from
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