masterful aspects of Death of a Salesman is the extent to which playwright Arthur Miller leaves it ambiguous regarding Willy Loman's culpability for his own condition. On one hand, he is part of a capitalist system which values people solely upon th Continue Reading...
Death of a Salesman: Tragedy in Prose Tragedy, can easily lure us into talking nonsense." Eric Bentley In Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, we are introduced to Willy Loman, who believes wholeheartedly in what he considers the promise of the Am Continue Reading...
Death of a Salesman The new millennium has brought with it new and interesting challenges. Our values and ideals have evolved along with the changing times. This is also true of business and the things that constitute success. For these reasons, man Continue Reading...
He can't let go of the idea that popularity and wealth are what are most important in a man. In the second act, Willy receives a terrible blow. He explains to his boss, Howard, how he met a salesman when he was about 19, and admired the man's skill Continue Reading...
He cannot provide for his family financially, and emotionally he feels bankrupt. That is why the brief, transient sense that Biff likes him provides him with so much joy -- it is the proof, however small, that he has succeeded at something in life. Continue Reading...
Death of a Salesman In all of twentieth-century American drama, it is Arthur Miller's 1949 masterwork Death of a Salesman that has been lauded as the best American play. The play deals with important aspects of American life, discovering and explori Continue Reading...
The example of Willy coming home from a business trip bragging, "I'm tellin' you, I was sellin' thousands and thousands, but I had to come home" is classic living in a fake world behavior. And Jacobson goes on to explain, poignantly, that Willy's "f Continue Reading...
Willy treats Linda carefully, because he is always afraid she will find out about the affair. He lies to her, which is extremely harmful to any relationship, and because he lies to her, he ends up lying to himself. He will not admit, even to himsel Continue Reading...
Death of a Salesman In order for a family to be fully and healthily functioning, it has to be honest and communicative, supportive and nurturing. The Loman family, however, lacks these characteristics and appears more dysfunctional than functional. A Continue Reading...
The reality of this truth is that is Nora does not know herself, her husband cannot possible know who she is. Nora experiences the pain of a blind love that has finally seen the truth. In a moment of enlightenment, she tells her husband, "You don't Continue Reading...
Finally, there is a sense of release or uplifting at the end of the play. Linda's comment, "We're free" (Miller 1054) seems to encapsulate the family's struggles and inner turmoil. Willy has died in a blaze of glory, utterly convinced he is doing t Continue Reading...
Critic Heyen says, "There is no question but that the play is elusive. As Miller himself has said, 'Death of a Salesman is a slippery play to categorize because nobody in it stops to make a speech objectively stating the great issues which I believe Continue Reading...
As Northrop Frye states, tragic heroes are “the inevitable conductors of the power about them...instruments as well as victims.” Tragic heroes experience great pain and suffering themselves, through which the audience members can contempl Continue Reading...
protagonist Willy Loman from Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. The writer provides the reader with an exploratory journey through the character of Willy Loman including his strengths, weaknesses and downfall. There were nine sources used to compl 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...
i.148-9) his actions will cause, Oedipus sits in oblivion. He refuses to listen to his wife and brazenly tells her, "I will not listen; the truth must be made known" (II.iii.146). Iocaste morphs from being Oedipus' wife to his enemy because she is sp Continue Reading...
He blames his father his personal failure because he, "blew me so full of hot air I could never stand taking orders from anybody! That's whose fault it is!" (1108). Willy's failure extends beyond the workplace and spills over into his family life. T 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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Death penalty is generally conceived of as the supreme legal sanction, inflicted only against perpetrators of the most serious crimes. The human rights community has traditionally held a stance against the death penalty for a wide variety of reasons: 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...
Guideposts Death of a Salesman: Biff's monologue I've got to make Pop see me. I've got to make Willy see me for who I really am, not the dream son he wanted me to be so many years ago, the smiling, smart-mouthed kid with the football. They say you 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...
"(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 also wants to be a successful father so that his sons will be successful as well. Willy especially wants his son, Biff, to succeed. Biff has inherited some of his father's dreamy nature and has never followed through on anything since he grad Continue Reading...
In a fighting scene, we see how he is filled with an "intense hate" (111) and when he "was firing, when all those near him had ceased. He was so engrossed in his occupation that he was not aware of a lull" (111). After this incident, Henry throws hi 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...
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...
Arthur Miller was certainly aware of the nature of Greek tragedy and made a deliberate decision to use the structure of Greek drama as a basis for his play A View from the Bridge, as he had previously done for All My Sons. The central character, Ed Continue Reading...
loss affects not just Yank, who wrestles with it throughout the play, but perhaps also Yank's shipmates, Mildred and her aunt, the rich people on Fifth Avenue, the prisoners, and the union members. In what ways does the play suggest that modern exis Continue Reading...
In this scene, she is deliberately planting an idea in Laura's head that someone will show up out of the blue and ask for her hand in marriage. Even Laura knows that the likelihood for this occurring is small. Even when Jim enters into the picture, 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...
David Mamet From the perspective of pure plot, David Mamet's 1974 play, Sexual Perversity in Chicago, is not exactly easy to summarize, although this difficulty is formally built in to the play, itself, which quite consciously rejects a standard nar 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...
Fences (Wilson, 1986) August Wilson, one of America's preeminent black playwrights presents the mercurial nature of one, Troy Maxson. Not much effort is needed before the real and metaphorical fences become evident. Delving deeper into Troy's charac Continue Reading...
e., the "P.O." Of this story's title). Sister has been driven to take up residence here by family discord. From here, we then learn, mostly implicitly, just how deep indeed the domestic discord (i.e., in today's psychological parlance, "dysfunctional Continue Reading...
