Throughout the play, Willy longs for the wealth, privilege, and equality the America was alleged to have been built upon until he can no longer deny that the promises of the American dream are just an illusion. While this is without a doubt a scathi Continue Reading...
While the family does move anyway, they are changed. Walter learns that he cannot trust everyone and every fly-by-night idea is probably just a fraud. Curing the sick was the most important thing to Beneatha before Walter lost the money. After the i Continue Reading...
The Grapes of Wrath" novel written by John Steinbeck portrays the Joad family as it tries to cope with all the difficulties that migrant laborers had suffered during the Great Depression. Across the novel, readers are presented with the 1930 farmer Continue Reading...
Willy Loman's Failures as a Husband, Employee, and Father in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman Arthur Miller's play, Death of a Salesman (1949), depicts the slow disintegration of an ordinary man, a traveling salesman named Willy Loman. Willy is p Continue Reading...
Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman" and the death of the American Dream: The play "Death of a Salesman" by Arthur Miller shows the falseness of the American dream, namely that by obtaining material security for one's self and one's family, one fin Continue Reading...
To make matters worse, he never even considers that he might not be as good as he thinks so he never seriously considers doing anything else. Willy does not know when to cut his losses and let go. Charley gives us an accurate description of Willy wh Continue Reading...
Death of a Salesman" by Arthur Miller, and "The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts" by Maxine Hong Kingston. Specifically, it will discuss conflict between generations and the "American Dream" in the two works. Both of these works cle Continue Reading...
"(Miller, 96) However, even if it can appear that Willy's death is a further failure and humiliation, Happy points out at his funeral that Loman had the braveness to pursue his dream to the end, despite the fact that he did not succeed: "I'm gonna sh Continue Reading...
Willy depends on influence, personality, and people liking him. The trouble is, old age has robbed him of these -- if he ever had them -- so he's living in a dream world. He idealizes the death of an 84-year-old salesman who died alone in a hotel ro Continue Reading...
The drama is tragic but what makes it more tragic is how the father passes down the doomed dreaming legacy to his sons. Robert Spiller observes that Willy Loman is Miller's "most beautifully conceived character" (Spiller 1450), who dies at the end o Continue Reading...
In her eleven years, no one had ever noticed Pecola. But with blue eyes, she thought, everything would be different. She would be so pretty that her parents would stop fighting. Her father would stop drinking. Her brother would stop running away. If Continue Reading...
The truth is simply too difficult to accept, so he turns a blind eye to it. For Willy, denial is easier than reinventing a new life. He believes that somehow, he will get an advance and "come home with a New York job" (Miller II.1070-1). He believes Continue Reading...
At the same time, every new failure only adds more to his need to hide from reality. This leads to the final point where he decides to commit suicide to save his family. This is his final illusion, where he wrongly believes that his family will be p Continue Reading...
The scene is interrupted by the laughter of a woman, Willy's mistress, which only Willy could hear. When Willy approaches his mistress, he engages in another daydream. This is how discontinuity is illustrated in the Death of a Salesman. In this mann Continue Reading...
He continued to repeat the same behavior without at least trying to do something different. His dream probably kept him alive a little longer than he might have lived otherwise. As pathetic as his dream was, he owned it and believed he could reach i Continue Reading...
Eugene O'Neill's play, "The Emperor Jones (1921)," is the horrifying story of Rufus Jones, the monarch of a West Indian island, presented in a single act of eight scenes of violence and disturbing images. O'Neill's sense of tragedy comes out undilute Continue Reading...
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 somet Continue Reading...
Willy suffers from the consequences of the internal and external conflicts in his life. One of the antagonists in this story is the false promise of the American Dream, not another person per se. Willy is unable to become rich and show his family h Continue Reading...
Appearance vs. Reality Discrepancies between inner and outer realities: 1984 versus Death of a Salesman Both George Orwell's dystopian classic novel 1984 and Arthur Miller's realist stage drama Death of a Salesman create a contrast between appeara Continue Reading...
Pygmalion -- George Bernard Shaw George Bernard Shaw -- one of the most well regarded playwrights -- wrote this comedy and first presented it to the public in 1912. He took some of the substance of the original Greek myth of Pygmalion and turned it Continue Reading...
All along, Miller's salesman was creating a tableau vivant, in his work and in his family. If you put the right characters on stage, you create the right image. In Willy Loman's mind, Dave Singleman, that "single" salesman, no doubt created the pro Continue Reading...
Miller and Eliot on Beauty Comparing and Contrasting "Beauty" in Miller and Eliot Arthur Miller and T.S. Eliot are two 20th century American playwrights. While the latter is more commonly noted for expatriating to Britain and writing some of the mo Continue Reading...
It is an act of sacrifice by which Willy creates the premises for Biff to potentially live the American Dream, unlike himself, who has not. The capacity to gives one's life for another man's dream is certainly grandiose, in a tragic manner, timeless Continue Reading...
Father and Son Relationships Though written from very different perspectives, "Death of a Salesman" and the Namesake share a number of important similarities, particularly with regard to similar messages about fathers and sons. The conflicts and com Continue Reading...
Arthur Miller / Lorraine Hansberry The idea of the "American Dream," of achieving material success through one's own efforts, is not merely a constant topic in American literature, it seems to be a fundamental archetype of American national mytholog Continue Reading...
It becomes his way of escaping reality. The boundaries between the past and the present are withdrawn in his fantasies, where his illusions become real. But the truth is that the family is in severe financial condition and, in the end, Willy decides Continue Reading...
Familiar-Unfamiliar Part of the process of staging a play is to make the familiar unfamiliar, to isolate elements so as to suggest reality, the familiar, in an unfamiliar way. Plays do not take place in the real world but in a created world, a worl Continue Reading...
Walter's desire for financial success and his stories of rich white people are a metaphor for the self-respect he lacks in himself. It's easy to say that Walter should pay more attention to what is really important in life: family, respect, love, et Continue Reading...
His failure at both appears to perpetuate each other: his failure as provider translates to his failure as business and family man, and indeed to his failure as American success. In this way, the American Dream is representative of ultimate success. Continue Reading...
While the dilemma in this situation is less obvious, the effects of internal dishonesty are illustrated clearly as being equally destructive as dishonesty to others directly. Thus, while there is no obvious dilemma faced, at some point a decision is Continue Reading...
Tragedy and the Common Man," he contemplates the idea that only the wealthy, noble characters can fully understand tragedy, and therefore appreciate it. That thought is not a reflection of his own opinion, as Miller argues the case of tragedy and th Continue Reading...
This skilled use of ironic prose is also observable in "A Jury of her Peers" by Susan Glaspell, as when the woman who has just committed murder tells the investigators: "after a minute...'I sleep sound.'" the tale depicts how a group of women gradua Continue Reading...
Of course, Fuller is not the only one to draw connections among hockey, the media, and differences between Canadian and American national identities. In fact, Gruneau and Whitson get the name of their book from Canada's most famous television progra Continue Reading...
While hockey may have masculine connotations for the single sportsman watching a game, a father watching the same game may see the sport as a way to bring the family together, while a mother next to him in the stands may marvel at its sociological i Continue Reading...
