¶ … Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller. Specifically it will contain an analysis of the play that answers several questions. Miller's work is a classic play that has run for years on Broadway and around the world. It tells the story of a traveling salesman who has passed his usefulness to his family and himself. It is a tragic story of the American dream gone terribly wrong.
The setting of the play is New York City, mostly inside the Loman's small home. The play does shift to a few other settings, such as the offices Willy and his sons visit, and the restaurant where they have dinner. However, most of the play takes place in the small home Willy and his family has shared for decades.
The major characters of the play are Willy Loman, the "salesman," Linda his wife, and Hap and Biff, his two sons. There are also several other minor characters, including Ben, Willy's brother, Howard Wagner, Willy's boss, Charley, the next door neighbor, and Bernard, Charley's son. The most important characters are the Loman's themselves, and the others support the action, the plot, and the outcome of the story.
There are several pivotal events throughout the play. One is the opening scene when Willy returns after a failed business trip and dreams about his life. He fantasizes about his wife, his children, and his own success. This sets the stage for the play, and gives the audience a background into the Loman family. They have always seemed to have money troubles, the sons have not amounted to much and Willy is disappointed in them, and Willy has not always been faithful to Linda.
Many of the important...
Death of a Salesman Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman is about a sad salesman, Willy Loman has spent his entire adult life in sales, with little success, but always believing affirming that a man who is well-liked is always successful. There have been many film and television versions of Miller's play since its first performance in 1949. The 1966 version directed by Alex Segal and starring Lee J. Cobb has
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 skills, and decided that sales was the very best job a man could have. But he tells Howard he's tired, and he
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 his own worth through material possessions, despite his hard work and perseverance, which is a conflict to him because he believed that would happen. He believes
"(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 show you and everybody else that Willy Loman did not die in vain. He had a good dream. it's the only dream you can have
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 he can still get a promotion and never have to "get behind another wheel" (II.1071) again. These beliefs, while they are positive,
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 mythology. The autobiography of Benjamin Franklin and the popular stories of Horatio Alger in the 19th century established this motif as central to the American concept of manhood: we can see the precise
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