Willy Loman, Pecola Breedlove and Term Paper

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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 only she could be beautiful. If only people would look at her."

Pecola has numerous problems and several wishes but her deepest desire to attain a beautiful skin i.e. fair complexion. She believes that being beautiful would solve her problems and she would become a popular girl that everyone desired. But like Willy Loman, 1) she lacks the means to change her reality 2) she suffers because she cannot be content with what she has. By refusing to accept herself as she was, she gave immense power to others just like Willy Loman did. Both of them turned their abusers or those who had victimized them into something larger than life and this in the end results in tragedy for them as they are swallowed by the monsters they had created with their own flawed response to already bad circumstances. As Claudia observes in the novel: "We were so beautiful when we stood astride her ugliness. Her simplicity decorated us; her guilt sanctified us, her pain made us glow with health.... And she let us, and thereby deserved our contempt."

We know Willy and Pecola couldn't possibly have the power to attain what they wanted and we do accept that they were victims of bad circumstances. But it is man's response to these circumstances that make all the difference. Willy Loman could accept his position in life and live happily with his family but instead he turns into a schizophrenic and chooses to live in an imaginary world of his own where everything goes according to his will. Pecola also allows her tormentors to consume and destroy her sense of self-worth and pride.

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By behaving as a weak, timid person at the mercy of circumstances, Pecola gave immense powers to others and thus suffered in the end like Willy Loman.

Matt Fowler also followed suit in the Killings. Remember while there are two killers in the story, the title is killings which helps us focus on the nature of what is really important i.e. The killings and not the killers actually. Matt Fowler was anything but a killer. He was nothing like the killer of his son. Folwer was a loving father, an important and respected member of the community who could never commit a murder. "He had always been a fearful father: when his children were young, at the start of the summer he thought of them drowning in a pond or the sea, and he was relieved when he would come home in the evenings and they were there"(26) but when bad circumstances hit him as a violent repeated offender Richard Strout kills his son, Fowler takes law into his own hands and decides to avenge the death of his son. He cannot accept the court's decision to let Strout go free and the anger wells up inside him so much so that it drives him to the point of murder.

Though he has avenged the death of his son, Fowler cannot forgive himself for committing such a horrendous act and his life takes an unpredictable turn from that point onwards. He becomes more withdrawn, starts leading a solitary life mostly as he cannot shun the guilt, shame and remorse that haunt him. Fowler commits suicide in the end, as there appears no way out of his situation. We notice that his flawed response to bad circumstances led to even bigger tragedy. He could have appealed against court's decision and fight a legal battle but by responding in a wrong manner, he turned already unfortunate circumstances….....

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