Willy Loman's Suicide
Death of a Salesman, written by Arthur Miller is a dynamic and intense novel, in which the protagonist faces many challenges. The novel goes into depth about the feelings and thoughts of the protagonist, Willy Loman. He is an elderly man with a wife and two sons in their mid thirties. This book is written during a time when everyone in America seemed to be doing well, but for Willy Loman it was one of the most miserable time period of his life. The author provides many deep and vivid details into the life of Willy. It seems the authors propose throughout the book is to guide the reader to the final scene where Willy commits suicide. Willys job, family, and mental state is what ultimately lead to his suicide.
When Willy was younger, he was an
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Willy often has hallucinations and get lost in his negative and depressing thoughts. Willy has many misperceptions, he believes that in order to succeed you need to be popular. The way Willy approaches life is one that sets him up to fail, and as a result he is unable to face reality. He constantly slips into illusions about his past because it is a way for him to escape reality. Right before Willy commit suicide he hallucinates about talking to Ben, “Ben: Time, William, time! Willy: Oh, Ben I always knew one way or another we were gonna make it, Biff and I! Ben [looking at his watch]: The boat. We’ll be late.[he moves slowly off into the darkness.]”(108). This is a bizarre scene, but it suggest that Willy suffers from some kind of disorder that causes him to have these very strange hallucinations. The fact that this is the final scene before his suicide suggest that his mental state played a major role in his decision to commit suicide.
Death of a salesman tells the story of Willy Loman, a man plagued by failure and false hope. When Willy eventually comes realizes how he has miserably failed at basically every part of his live, it leads to his downfall. Perhaps Death of Salesman is one of the best known pieces of literature because the story of Willy Loman is so integrate and it would be almost impossible for some not to find at least one aspect of his life
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