An Analysis of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman
Arthur Miller's play (and book) Death of a Salesman is somewhat hardto follow in spots where it becomes difficult to separate Willy Loman'sfantasy world from his reality. It is, however, one of the greatest playsavailable to watch or to read, and Miller's genius really comes through inthe characters and what they go through during the story. The purpose ofthis paper is to utilize five different sources to analyze this story, andto show how different parts of the story are looked at in different ways. Death of a Salesman has been reviewed quite extensively in books, injournals, and on the Internet. One of these reviews discusses how Lomansuffers so greatly as he sees himself and his family slip into ruin. Hebelieved that his family was destined for greatness, but eventually heplaces all his hope in his children, who also fail him. This is the laststraw for Willy, because he finally realizes that nothing he and his familydoes will ever be good enough (Amazon, 2003). They are not destined forgreatness after all, but instead are doomed to misery and failure, which ismuch the way the human condition is, and this kind of difficulty is sharedby a great many people throughout the world.
Biff is miserable because he feels that he is nothing, andhe sobs in his father's arms. While this is sad, of course,it is also just the way of society, as many societies in the past haveeventually decayed and disappeared. Sometimes the things that one thinks areimportant are actually insignificant, and what really matters are thethings one didn't see as important until the end. Loman has had several opportunities in hislife to have great adventures and make a lot of money, but he has declinedthe offers each time, not realizing what they could have done for him. It is also possible that he was notlooking in the right place. There are many plays that came out in 1949, and most of them havebeen forgotten a long time ago, but Death of a Salesman remains popular,even today. Loman is torn between running for the money andsimply running away from everything, and it is taking its toll on his bodyand spirit (Shurley, 2003). Peopledo get down and discouraged, there are families that are failures no matterwhat they try to do, and people that have been depressed for a long timesometimes kill themselves to try to ease their burden and the burden thatthey place on others. Loman is somewhat or a metaphor for all of America and the way thathumanity seems to be slipping somewhat. While this is somewhat reassuring to Loman, Linda and Happyare also two of the most misguided characters in the play, and anythingthat they say is somewhat suspect in how much truth it actually contains(Dukore, 1989). Perhaps he felt that, through his death, he couldfree his family from the pain and sorrow that had been plaguing themthrough all of their failures (Aarnes, 104). Loman either failed to see hischances, or failed to take them. Biff never says whether he loves his father or not, althoughother members of the family are quick to say that he does, and that healways has. The fact that Biff keeps silent at the requiem could be a testamentto how deeply his father affected him, or it could also be because he didnot love the man and does not want to disturb the little bit of fragiledignity that is still left in the funeral service.
Common topics in this essay:
Death Salesman,
Linda Happy,
Willy Loman's,
Arthur Miller,
Arthur Miller's,
death salesman,
destined greatness,
dukore 1989,
reminds people,
shurley 2003,
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Acceptance Essays
