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"DEATH OF A SALESMAN" (ARTHUR MILLER).
Term Paper ID:25569
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Essay Subject:
Examines central role of past & present family relations in character development.... More...
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6 Pages / 1350 Words
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Paper Abstract:
Examines central role of past & present family relations in character development.
Paper Introduction:
Willy Loman's tragedy in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman is partly the result of his being out of place in a business world that has passed him by, but it is mainly the result of the fact that he never had a secure place within his own family. Willy was abandoned by his father and unable to find an adequate replacement in his older brother Ben. The result was that he looked for love in the wider world and failed to do anything that would enable him to find love in his own wife and two sons. Willy believed that all he would need in terms of respect, admiration, and love could be found in the world of business where the men he admired had flourished. But, when events gradually prove to him that this has been an illusion, he turns back to his own family and discovers that he cannot find these things with them either. Willy Loman abandoned his own family--
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115-26.Foster, Richard J. But as it also points up the sadness and longing that hefeels toward a past that he cannot understand at all, the audience comes tounderstand that Willy has never truly been in touch with the actual worldaround him because he has always been blinded by his vision of types ofsuccess and modes of living embodied by his heroes. Martin. He is both right and wrong about this. Foster notes that the model of fulfillment and success that Willylooked up to was consistent and was always an illusion. Willy Loman abandoned his own family--evenwhile being present--in a variation on the abandonment by his own fatherwhose behavior simply seems to have been passed down a generation. Willy Lomanlooks forward to "a funeral as massive as Singleman's, one that would leaveBiff 'thunderstruck'" (Jacobson 5 ). Robert A. Death of a Salesman. This desire to continue with his illusions leads to Willy's decisionto use his suicide, and the insurance money that it will produce, not as ameans of correcting what he has done wrong but as a means of"synthesiz[ing] the values of Ben and Singleman" (Jacobson 5 ). They arecharacters who stand, in various ways, above the rest of humanity, and they"do not give love but receive it, and at an impersonal distance" (Foster85). New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1961. He turns instead to his old vision which, in the version ofBen that appears on the stage, remains untarnished. Hurrell. Ed. Ed. ArthurMiller said that in the play Willy has reached a point where "the voice ofthe past is no longer distant but quite as loud as the voice of thepresent"(quoted in Brater 124). Willy has been berating Charley for not being a man because of hishome-repair failure and Charley's mild protest, "Don't call me disgustingWilly," accompanies the appearance of the imagined figure of Ben (44). But even in dealing with his mildfriend he retreats from the possibility for self-examination that theoccasion calls for. success-centeredsociety that Willy lives in," but it constitutes "a denial of the deeplypersonal and human capacities for love that are inherent in Willy's nature"(Foster 85). When the figure of Ben appears he is described as "utterly certain ofhis destiny" and this projection of Willy's notion of success mirrors hisown pathetic failure to achieve anything like such confidence in his life(44). His "vision offulfillment is made up of characters who stand alone," his father, brother,"Biff as a public hero," and Dave Singleman (Foster 85). James J. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1982. K. Willy tells Charley that ""if I'd gonewith him to Alaska that time, everything would have been totally different"(45). The past, meaning his father, was never obtainable,but Willy had been engaged in the search for it all his life. "Miller's Realism and Death of a Salesman." Arthur Miller: New Perspectives. Ed. But he did this at the cost ofthe things Willy Loman wanted most. the only dream youcan have--to come out number-one man" (138-39). Ed. 6 -85. . Jacobson describes Willy's hopes as a need to "transform a relativelyimpersonal social world into a home that offered familial warmth" (45).In his early desire for the warmth, love, and admiration that had beentaken away by his father's abandonment of the family Willy had turned tothe only possible source, his brother Ben. Boston: G. Theresult was that he looked for love in the wider world and failed to doanything that would enable him to find love in his own wife and two sons.Willy believed that all he would need in terms of respect, admiration, andlove could be found in the world of business where the men he admired hadflourished. Because Willy, in his emotional confusion, chooses Ben and otherswhom he thinks are like his imagined version of his father as his models heremoves himself from genuine contact with the elements in his world thatwould have provided the love he was looking for. Even Biff, who is more aware that hisfather has made fundamentally wrong choices in his life, sums up Willy'sfailure as "a hard-working drummer who landed in the ash can like all therest of them"--thereby fundamentally accepting, like Hap, the terms inwhich Willy expressed his own perception of his failure (132). Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997. Ignoring thereality of Charley's actual presence and the reality of his friendship,Willy is drawn to the idea of Ben, who then makes his unreal appearance.This scene in Act One makes it appear that Willy is starting to lose touchwith reality. His father's failure toward Willy invadesthe present because the moments shown in the play's present-day scenes arethose in which the seeds of his abandonment bear fruit. Withoutunderstanding what he was doing, Willy encouraged his sons to follow thesame path in the search for respect and love that ultimately failed him.By the end of his life the only thing he feels he has left to give anyoneis his death. In choosing suicide as his finalgesture, therefore, Willy wants to be, at last, as adventurous as Ben by"entering the dark, unknown 'jungle' of death" and to achieve the kind oflove and respect Singleman had when he died (Jacobson 5 ). Hap has learned nothingfrom his father's wasted life except to fully absorb the twisted messageand hopes that misled his father. Willy's vision of themeaning of genuine success and a way of being at ease in the world is"created and enforced by the norms of the competitive. Dave Singleman and his brother Ben seemed, toWilly's emotionally uneducated eye, to be men who had solved, or couldsolve, the problem of emptiness that his father's abandonment had broughtabout in Willy. Hall, 1979. Once the audience has this knowledge it becomes clear that thehaunting sound of the flute "evokes the whole spirit of an unobtainablepast" (Brater 124). His decision not to followthe adventurous Ben was "a choice rooted in an ethic oriented to thefamily" and, while his life might have been very different had he gone,Willy clearly was looking for something different from what Ben sought(Jacobson 46). . This connection is understood when it isrevealed that his father not only traveled and sold flutes but made them aswell. 82-81.Jacobson, Irving. Willy Loman's tragedy in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman ispartly the result of his being out of place in a business world that haspassed him by, but it is mainly the result of the fact that he never had asecure place within his own family. The great tragedy of Willy's life turns out to be that he was neverable to replace the love he lost when his father left and he finallybequeathed his own sense of loss and longing to his sons. His desire for familyresults, ironically, in his rejection of family. "Family Dreams in Death of a Salesman." Critical Essays on Arthur Miller. In his early searching he soughtmodels of behavior that resembled his father in some ways and thistragically misled him. Willy's ignorance of his mistake in this respect is powerfully evoked bythe appearance of Ben during his conversation with Charley. Willy might have been required to ask himself why hehad been driven to make this rude remark about failure and, since itclearly applied to himself rather than to Charley, he retreats from thispossibility. Atthis juncture, in a normal conversation, Willy would have had to eitherwithdraw his remark or explain himself. The importance of Willy's abandonment by his father, and his lack ofa real family life in his youth, is stressed from the very beginning of theplay by the sound of the flute. The entire play is concerned with the"fundamental practical and metaphysical question, what does it mean to befulfilled in one's very existence?" (Roudané 78). The untarnished visionof Ben is, of course, the clear sign that Willy has utterly failed to learnanything from his experience and will resolutely stick to his illusions tothe end. And Willy's greatestmistake has been looking in the wrong direction for this type offulfillment. Willy failed to find any of thefulfillment that is possible on many different levels in an individual'slife, and the ability to pass on what one has learned to one's children isone of these types of fulfillment. New York: Viking, 1949.Roudané, Matthew C. Ben was more at ease in the world because did not expect orhope to find love there. But, when events gradually prove to him that this has been anillusion, he turns back to his own family and discovers that he cannot findthese things with them either. The past which isthe source of Willy's failure has begun to invade a present where Willywill, in effect, pass his father's failure and his own down to his sons.This point is made with great strength by Hap's ridiculous and patheticspeech in which he tells Biff at Willy's grave that "I'm gonna show you andeverybody else that [Willy Loman] had a good dream . But Willy's need was so strong that it wouldcontinue to blind him throughout his life and, in the end, he would be asdeeply confused, and feel his lack as greatly, as at the beginning. Dave, for example, can simply reach out and receive love with a phonecall, while Biff is adored by the anonymous crowd for his sports' prowessand Ben is, it seems to Willy, the pinnacle of success because he hasbeaten down everyone else and emerged wealthy and, as Hap puts it, "number-one man" (139). "Confusion and Tragedy: The Failure of Miller's Salesman." Two Modern American Tragedies: Reviews and Criticism of Death of a Salesman and A Streetcar Named Desire. This is the only response that his family is capable of making toWilly's death and their loss and it is, in the most horrible irony of theplay, the sign of his complete failure. Ben was extremely skilled atmaking a place for himself in the world. Achieving success in the business world seemed to hold thekey to fulfillment. Willy doesrecognize the need to restore the integrity of the family--but he engagesin one more deception to bring it about, thereby perpetuating the strain ofdishonesty (his own self-deception, his unfaithfulness to Linda, Biff'sstealing, and many other examples) that has characterized the family'srelationships throughout its existence. John D. Willy neverlearns and manages to block out anything that might force him to face thefact that his visions were illusions. 44- 52.Miller, Arthur. Christopher Bigsby. Because Willy Loman pinned his hopes for finding the love he had lost(with his father's disappearance) on the outside world, the world ofbusiness, he was doomed to failure. Works CitedBrater, Enoch. Martine. At his graveside his sons adopt thesame terms that made up the essence of Willy's illusion and the cycle offailure continues. Willy was abandoned by his father andunable to find an adequate replacement in his older brother Ben. "Death of a Salesman and the Poetics of Arthur Miller." The Cambridge Companion to Arthur Miller. The mistake leads him, for example, to ignore the love and respectthat could have come from Linda and from Charley, Willy's only true friend.
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