The following paragraphs are the ones I draw on the most for essays. Most essays can be seen as a compare/contrast between Willy and Biff.
What is Willy’s reality?
Willy is typical of those who believe that through hard work and ambition they can aspire to a life of fame and popularity lived according to the values of the American dream.
For this reason, Willy is captivated by the memorable salesman who at 84 could command an audience.
In this regard, Willy Loman, fashions his own personal vision based on the American Dream – the myth of the popular, well-liked, influential salesman. It includes the ability to climb ladders, make a name and fortune for oneself, irrespective of background and origins, and prosper. His dream revolves around the need to attract another’s respect and become one’s own personal star. Willy idolizes Dave Singleman, who in his “green velvet slippers in the smoker” still manages to etch his name in stone at the ripe old age of 84. Dave Singleman, in the Parker House, captured Willy’s imagination and changes the direction of his life forever. He lets go of his plans to travel with his father and brother, Ben to Alaska.
The dangers of illusions: American dream : Willy increasingly invents illusions to mask his failure.
Willy boasts to Biff that he is greeted by mayors in the major cities such as Providence and that he is well known, “they know me up and down New England” (24). As a measure of his status and reputation, he states that he can park “my car in any street in New England and the cops protect it like their own” (24). He imagines that his funeral will be massive. He tells Ben, “they’ll come from Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire”. (100) He rejects Charley’s offers because he is not “well liked” (23)
Willy is typical of those who Leunig believe also life “feeling not quite attractive enough and not really quite good enough”.
How and what we remember shape our realities
Xinran the author of The Good Women of China states: “When you walk into your memories, you are opening a door to the past; the road within has many branches, and the route is different every time.”
In this regard, Arthur Miller structures Death of a Salesman in a way that enables Willy to move in and out of the narrative sequence of his life. In his stage directions, Miller expressly notes that in the present, there is an imaginary border. The characters are to observe the “wall-lines”. In the scenes of the past, “these boundaries are broken” and characters enter or leave a room by stepping “through” a wall onto the forestage.” Symbolically, the past appears then as unbroken line with the present, influencing everything that happens. As Miller also suggests Willy’s past decisions clearly influence the choices he makes. Most significantly, he remembers how he was about to follow his brother Ben and his father to Alaska, “And I was almost decided to go, when I met a salesman in the Parker House.” As we know, Dave Singleman with his “green velvet slippers” could command an audience and still made a very respectable living. In this regard, both Dave and Ben are characters who loom large in Willy’s past imaginings. Ben is the reminder of just how much Willy has lost through the choice of role model. Ben explains, “I walked into the jungle, I was seventeen. When I walked out I was twenty-one. And by God, I was rich!” (41)
However, the more elusive the dream, the more unstable one becomes.
If one becomes too obsessed with a very impractical dream, and if it starts to alter one’s grip on life, then it can become dangerous. Arthur Miller shows that the more illusory and fake the dream becomes, the bigger Willy’s fall. The metaphoric car crashes symbolises his unstable personality .
Willy rejects all those who question his grip on the American dream and who question his illusions about his successful sales career.
• Willy does not accept that his job is so insecure that he is dependent upon Charley for $50 hand-outs.
• Willy rejects Biff’s alternative reality of working on a farm in the “big wide open spaces”.
Happy: “we have always told the truth in this house” (He wants to share his father’s illusions and believe in the future of the Loman Brand) (Explain Willy’s illusions and his dreams and goals and why he wants to believe in them)
Living one’s life true to self (due to first-hand experience and the discovery of the affair; his fear of failure and disappointment; knowing that he never lived up to father’s goals/expectations)
Biff says, “We never told the truth for ten minutes in this house”.
Biff says that the things he “loves” most are: “the work and the food and time to sit and smoke.” He wonders, “why am I trying to become what I don’t want to be”.
Biff rejects the American dream of opportunity and wealth (cult of personality) that consumes Willy. He rejects a system where people feel a need to “get ahead of the next fella”. All he wants to do is “be outdoors, with your shirt off”. (16) He enjoys herding cattle in Nebraska, and the Dakotas”. He states there is “nothing more inspiring – or beautiful than the sight of a mare and a new colt” (16).
But Biff is confused because he cannot abide by the Loman brand. Biff feels disappointed that he can only earn a paltry $28 dollars a week, which he knows marks him as a material failure. He cannot be fulfilled or feel satisfied because he has been pumped full of “false pride” and false values. He admits, “I stole myself out of every good job since high school”.
Owing to “false pride” and lies and deceit, Biff resents the three months he spent in jail. He says, “I stole a suit in Kansas City and I was in jail”. Through a great deal of soul-searching, he comes to realise the extent of the father’s treachery.
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