Death of a Salesman1 essays

Death of a Salesman1 essays Do we have the ability to control our destiny? The truth is this, one can set their goals and try to attain them and one can dreams their dreams and try to live them but the difference must be known. The character Willy Loman, in the play Death of A Salesman, seems to be a person who is not aware of the difference in reality and dreams. Willys choices throughout his life undeniably lead to his own demise. Willy Loman is a tragic hero. His fear is that he wants to be viewed as a good, decent human being. He wants to believe that hes a well-liked, decent person who doesnt make mistakes. The truth is that he makes mistakes, many that haunt him, and that he is human. Willy does not consider this normal and severely regrets such failures such as raising his children poorly, as he sees it, not doing well in business, though he wishes he were, and cheating on his wife Linda, showing her to be a commodity of which he takes advantage. Linda has a true, pure love for her husband. Linda stands behind him through it all, through his dreams and broken promises, she still believes in him. "The quality in such plays that does shake us... derives from the underlying fear of being displaced, the disaster inherent in being torn away from our chosen image of what and who we are in the world" (Miller, "Tragedy..."). Willys "underlying fear of being displaced" is the real tragedy. He wants to do things right, but the fact is he has many incidences that haunt him. Consistently throughout the play, Willy drifts in and out of a dream. He is constantly haunted by memories of his dead brother Ben who struck it rich the jungle. He also has flashbacks of incidents that haunt him in other areas. For example, the sequence in which Biff catches Willy with a woman other than Linda. This haunts Willy because he sees it as part of why Biff does not love him. "Tragedy then is the consequence of a mans total compulsi...