![]() While his father and brother are unable to accept the miserable reality of their respective lives, Biff acknowledges his failure and eventually manages to confront it. Unlike Willy and Happy, Biff wants to tell the truth, not the “wanted truth”. Biff Loman tries to tell his father that he is nothing, and that he also has to stop to believe it. But after years of failure Biff on day realize that he is nothing. Therefore Biff also starts to believe it. His father always talks about how big he is and so on. All his life he is been told by his father that he is going to be big and wealthy. Despite this failure, Willy makes the most extreme sacrifice in this attempt to leave an inheritance that will allow Biff to fulfil the American Dream. Willy’s failure to recognize the anguished love offered to him by his family is crucial to the climax of his torturous day, and the play presents thus incapacity as the real tragedy. Willy Loman is a proud man, but not a very wealthy man. That’s a fact in his life that he never wants to realise. If you take a quick look at Willy’s last name, Loman, you can also see that it’s almost like Willy “Low Man”. ![]() But Biff is now almost 35 years old, and hasn’t accomplished anything yet. Trough his entire life he thinks his son Biff, will become a big salesman. Willy is not a successful salesman, nor a successful father. He is married with a woman called Linda, and they have 2 sons, Biff and Happy. Willy has big problems dividing imagination and reality. He has some serious problems in his life. Willy Loman is the main character, and he is a salesman. The house is small and not very good looking house. The house is covered by large houses, “sky scrapers”. The story starts in a little house in an American city. Whereas Willy feels that Biff has betrayed him, Biff feels that Willy, a “phony little fake,” has betrayed him with his unending stream of ego-stroking lies. Willy assumes that Biff’s betrayal stems from Biff’s discovery of Willy’s affair with The Woman-a betrayal of Linda’s love. Willy, after all, is a salesman, and Biff’s ego-crushing rebuff ultimately reflects Willy’s inability to sell him on the American Dream-the product in which Willy himself believes most faithfully. When Biff walks out on Willy’s ambitions for him, Willy takes this rejection as a personal affront (he associates it with “insult” and “spite”). Willy believes that he has every right to expect Biff to fulfill the promise inherent in him. Willy’s primary obsession throughout the play is what he considers to be Biff’s betrayal of his ambitions for him. But unfortunately, Willy never understands this, and so goes to his grave never truly realizing where he went wrong. Charley and Bernard, who have success but not personality, prove to Willy that his notion is incorrect. Indeed, substance, not personality or being well liked, is what wins the day. The idea that “personality wins the day” is one such flaw in Willy’s logic. Thus, Willy is unable to cope with the changing times and the unfeeling business machine that is New York. ![]() Willy confronts Howard, his boss (and Miller indicates free market society), when he charges, “You can’t eat the orange and throw the peel away-a man is not a piece of fruit.” Here, Willy feels that Howard has gone back on his father’s word by forgetting him in his golden years, throwing away the peel after eating the orange, so to speak. Though Willy spends all of his adult life working for a sales company, this company releases the salesman when he proves to be unprofitable. Throughout his play, Miller seems to criticize this ideal as little more than a capitalist’s paradigm. One of Miller’s secondary themes is the idea of the American Dream. He is the only member of the family to finally escape from the poisonous grasp of illusion. Only Biff ever realizes who he is (“a dime a dozen”) and what his potential really is. Willy feels that he must live up to the standard that Ben has set, but this is found to be impossible by the end of the play. Willy’s brother, Ben, continually appears in the troubled man’s mind, offering hints on how to make it in the world of business. Though he’s a disrespected salesman, he calls himself the “New England man.” Though Biff has done nothing with his life by the age of thirty-four, Willy tells others and tries to make himself believe that his son is doing big things” out west. ![]() For years, Willy has believed that both he and his boys (particularly Biff) will one day be great successes. Though Linda, Biff and Happy are all unable to separate reality from illusion to some degree, Willy is the main character who suffers from this ailment. The most obvious theme is the idea of reality versus illusion. Death of A Salesman has several themes that run throughout the play.
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