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 past his prime, and unpleasant realities are beginning to close in on him in a deeply personal way. Willy has by now lost most of his grip on reality. In this

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 graduated from high school. Biff cannot keep one job for very long and he appears to be bored with no direction. Willy wants him to succeed but

Willy depends on influence, personality, and people liking him. The trouble is, old age has robbed him of these -- if he ever had them -- so he's living in a dream world. He idealizes the death of an 84-year-old salesman who died alone in a hotel room. He ignores the loneliness of such a death and exaggerates the importance of the man's funeral. He likes to think his

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

" Though critics such as Sheila Huftel characterize Willy Loman's "fall" as only a fall from "an imagined height," it is nevertheless still a fall, which makes Willy Loman, like Oedipus, a tragic figure. Willy has created very powerful ideas about what he wants his life to be and what he wants his sons lives to be. But these ideas are part of what make Willy who he is. He cannot

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