Chapter 1: Introduction
Willy Loman’s life is a simulacrum! Whenever Willy fails to cope with the changed situation, he takes shelter in his world of illusion. He creates ‘hyper reality’ to escape from reality. Willy’s son Biff and Happy adopt Willy’s habit of denying or manipulating reality i. e., of creating the ‘hyper reality’ and practice it all of their lives, much to their detriment. It is only at the end of the play that Biff admits he has been a “phony” (Miller 106) too, just like Willy. Linda is the only character that recognizes the Loman family lives in denial; however, she goes along with Willy’s fantasies in order to preserve his fragile mental state. This paper critically reads Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman to understand the importance of customized reality in the life of a common man in America who is a mismatch of capitalist society and this paper also explores how the unrealistic and unattainable dream and also American myth of success is responsible for the downfall of an American family and how their optimism becomes fatal. It also examines how the world of illusion breaks down through Loman’s suicide and how it continues through Happy’s character which is really a threat to American consumerism and technocracy. In spite of this, this paper at last presents a hope because of Biffs withdrawal from illusion.
…show more content…
This is certainly a library research where different books, critics, articles and also internet sources help to do it.
The extent of the study: While discussing customized reality in Loman’s family, my focus is only on Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. But here I have applied a theory which is known as Baudrillard’s simulacra to enrich my
Willy's logical inconsistencies brings confusion towards the audience itself toward the start of the play; in any case, they soon turn into a characteristic of himself. Willy's conflicting conduct is the after effect of his powerlessness to acknowledge reality and his propensity to control or re-make the past trying to get away from the present. For instance, Willy can't leave himself to the way that Biff never again regards him on account of Willy's affair with another woman. As opposed to concede that their relationship is irreparable, Willy retreats to a past time when Biff appreciated and regarded him. As the play goes on, Willy disassociates himself more from the present as his issues turn out to be excessively too much, making them impossible to manage.
Death of a Salesman written by Arthur Miller, is about the dysfunctional Lowman family. The family consists of salesman father Willy, homemaker mother Linda, son and sports star Biff, and youngest son and daddy’s boy Happy. It became apparent through the course of the story, that the “Men” of the story were actually boys. By analyzing the males of this story the reasons for their immaturities become clear.
The play Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller is known by many Americans as an epitaph for the American dream. It is about the life of Willy Loman, an aging and failing salesman, chasing after his ambitions to become the most popular and successful individual in his field of work. Surprisingly, the story set behind the curtains also mirrors the lives of many modern Americans today. The play, performed in the 1940s, dealt with how people’s expectations for perfection were insubstantial and impractical, and how these expectations bred dissatisfaction and doubt. Unfortunately, this mentality still persists in the current American society.
In his seminal work, Death of A Salesman, Arthur Miller portrays wretched conditions inflicting the lives of lower class people amid class-struggle in 1940s America. Miller sets the story during the great financial depression in the US , in between times after World War I and around World War II, though his characters hardly speak about the trauma of two World Wars. Miller earns an enormous success by putting an ordinary salesman as the protagonist in his play instead of putting a man of social nobility. In the play, Miller depicts his central character, Willy Loman as a destitute salesman struggling to rise up the social ladder in a capitalist society, who remains deluded by a 'dream of success ' and takes on a relentless pursuit of happiness that eventually brings his tragic demise. Though some critics speak in favor of the popular account of the cause of his death being his excessive obsession with so called the American dream and the 'capitalist oppression ' ; however, many still refuse to ascribe the cause of his death to capitalist oppression, which I will use synonymously with American dream here.
“The man who makes an appearance in the business world, the man who creates personal interest, is the man who gets ahead” (33). In Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller uses foil characters to elucidate Willy’s flaws that ultimately prevent him and his family from succeeding. The contrast between Charley and Willy and Bernard and Biff serves to highlight how Willy’s obsession with achieving his version of the American Dream impacts both his life and his children’s. His poor values are passed on to his children producing even more failures. ¬¬¬¬Both Charley and Willy work as salesmen, however Charley represents what Willy desired to become – successful.
In history, there have been an innumerable amount of plays written, but none so flawlessly encapsulate the realities of achieving the American dream than Death of a Salesman and A Raisin in the Sun by Arthur Miller and Lorraine Hansberry respectively. Although the two plays are very different, the characters and the issues they face, at its core, parallel each other because they both deal with the failure of dreams. Both set in the 1940s, Death of a Salesman deals with a white family’s unrealized dreams while in Brooklyn, New York, whereas A Raisin in the Sun concerns the turmoil of an African American family living in the southside of Chicago about agreeing on the same dream. As Terrence Smith and Mike Miller wrote, “The purpose of drama is not to define thought but to provoke it,” essentially stating that drama is not merely meant to entertain and instruct the viewer what to think, but to pose as a form of expression to inspire people to reevaluate rigid opinions and make society examine itself in a mirror.
First, because instead of facing head-on - tough and challenging he choose to idealize imaginary dreams as well as rather than adapting to new societal principles, new sales models, and styles; he believed that the traditional sales model was more effective at sales, which it was not, being the reason he was fired from the company he worked for. Secondly, Willy Loman failed to see beyond where his illusions begin and when they end far in the horizon of his mind. Willy Loman’s own definition of the American Dream drove his life and expectations to the ground, Willy Loman’s Dream was faulted since it revolved around the belief that a “man who creates personal interest, is the man who gets ahead” which is not the case anymore in the 1940s and 1950s. Willy imposes his flawed and faulted dream on both of his sons destining Happy Loman to the same fate as his father; it can be especially hard to develop ideas of what the American Dream means for someone if they have heard the same thing from the day they were born. At the end of the day, the American Dream is the plan that an individual has for a happy, fulfilling, and fruitful life.
Willy tries to make himself feel better by lying to himself. Although Willy’s death is unfortunate, if one closely examines his pride, bad temper, and his lies, one can see that these flaws will eventually bring him to his demise. Throughout the play, Willy demonstrates his sense of pride while talking to his family and friends. In this quote one can
While Linda enabled him, Willy could not help himself too keep ruining the good opportunities he had and turning them into some factious reality. At Willy`s funeral Biff comes to the realization that his father had all the wrong dreams and visions of success. Willy`s only dream was the fake “American Dream” that people believe will happen overnight. Willy`s failed attempts and happiness bonded into one and played a part into him creating this false reality and persona that he was the best salesman and that he was well loved by everyone around him.
Often individuals are prevented from achieving satisfaction due to a fundamental flaw in their character. In the case of Willy Loman, this flaw is his excessive pride and ambition. For the majority of his life, Willy has been primarily influenced by his brother Ben’s success. This has caused him to develop a sense of ambition that is both unrestrained and idealistic. Over the course of his lifetime, both Willy and his sons fall short of the impossible standards of this dream.
In “Death of a Salesman” & “The Tragedy of Macbeth” by Arthur Miller, the character Willy Loman on the modern america, in the 1940’s as cars and appliances ar be made willy is constantly to maintain the best in family as he slowly starts to lose his mind in the world it’s clear that willy only cares about one thing is that it’s keeping up with the people around him. In the book Death of a Salesman Willy hallucinates about his brother and about his family in the past when they were doing so good with money. Willy Loman has a hard time between reality and illusion, so does lady macbeth’s husband.
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller portrays the last 24 hours of the life of a common man, Willy Loman, as he reflects on the failures of his life. Loman’s success as a salesman has passed now that his old loyal boss, Howard, has died, and he now works as an unsuccessful traveling salesman, scraping by on commision from Howard’s son. Loman goes to the neighbor, Charley, often borrowing money for household payments, but refuses to take a job-offer from him. Willy Loman’s spouse is Linda and they have two boys, Happy and his older brother Biff, who are now middle aged men who live back at home and are trying to find where they belong in life. Bernard is a childhood friend of the Loman boys, and is Charley’s son.
Arthur Miller was born in nineteen fifteen and won various prices while he was studying at the university of Michigan until nineteen forty-seven. The major bounce of his career was when he composed his most famous play, Death of a Salesman, in nineteen forty-nine, that was described as the first great American tragedy. He was considered as the author that understood and transmitted to the population the essence of the United States. Indeed, his tragedy, in the tradition of Sophocles’ Oedipus Cycle, tackles the painful conflicts within a business-focused family trying to pursue the American dream and looking for success. The conflicts inside the Loman family could be transposed to larger concerns such as the integrity American national values, the faith in the American dream, and the notions of loyalty and abandonment.
In 1949, society’s high value of material success brought on financial anxieties and insecurities for many families. It is these societal pressures that influence the characters and work ethics of the Loman family. Willy’s character is very similar to the one-dimensional Commedia dell’arte
Although realism is not limited to anyone century or group of writers, it is most often associated with literary movement in nineteenth century France, specifically with the French novelists Flaubert and Balzac. Realism has been chiefly concerned with the common places of everyday life among the middle and lower classes, where character is a product of social factor. The term ‘Realism’ is widely accepted according to need and time. Realism in literature and the visual art used to describe a variety of approach in which accurate depiction of reality is the aim.