And the buyers I brought, and the cheers when he came out—Loman, Loman, Loman! A star like that, magnificent, can never really fade away! The second act shatters all prospects, revealing the full truth that Willy has long evaded about himself and his family in a series of crushing blows.
Bill Oliver did not remember who he was, kept him waiting for hours, and resentfully Biff has stolen his fountain pen from his desk. Biff now insists that Willy face the truth—that Biff was only a shipping clerk and that Oliver owes him nothing—but Willy refuses to listen, with his need to believe in his son and the future forcing Biff to manufacture a happier version of his meeting and its outcome. Having failed his math class and jeopardized his scholarship, Biff has come to his father for help.
I was lonely, I was terribly lonely. Biff: You fake! You phony little fake! You fake! You were never anything but a hard-working drummer who landed in the ash can like all the rest of them! After Biff departs upstairs the significance of his words and actions are both realized and lost by the chronic dreamer:. Biff—he likes me! Willy: Oh. Staring wildly: He cried!
Cried to me. He is choking with his love, and now cries out his promise: That boy—that boy is going to be magnificent! Willy, then, would be a representative example of a humanity sacrificed on the altar of philistinism and mercantilism.
Nevertheless, Miller strongly believes that the contemporary tragic myth must mirror the shape of transgression and the nature of power in our age. Willy Loman illustrates, in his own limited way, the promise of unlimited possibility:.
No man embarks on the search for truth. For Miller, virtue can be gained at any moment when man is willing to risk commitment. Miller, like the French existentialists, believes in the absolute value of incurring the risk of exposing oneself to danger. Willy starts out on a most courageous kind of Odyssey: the descent into the Self. Willy has to engage his most dangerous enemy, himself, and all his wrong beliefs and fake principles. Oh, if I could kiss him, Ben!
We use cookies on our website. Some of them are essential, while others help us to improve this website and your experience. Accept all. Accept only essential cookies. Individual Privacy Preferences. Cookie Details Privacy Policy. Here you will find an overview of all cookies used. You can give your consent to whole categories or display further information and select certain cookies. Accept all Save. Back Accept only essential cookies. Essential cookies enable basic functions and are necessary for the proper function of the website.
Marketing cookies are used by third-party advertisers or publishers to display personalized ads. Willy has convinced his children that the most important thing in life His influence is limited only to the lives of his wife and sons, while he desires to impact the lives of those outside his family. However, both plays are linked to events dealing with acquisition of money.
The theme of material wealth can often be noticed as the basis for many actions in the two works. Joe Keller commits the terrible act because he fears loosing his business and thus, not being able to provide for his family materially. Willy was unable to let go of his false dreams, resulting in him carrying them to his grave. Ultimately, in Willy living to satisfy a dream, which was not his own, led to, unhappiness to both, him and his family, and in time eventually, his death.
In a society in which there was a severe imbalance in the dynamics of the economy, these selfish individuals viewed this as an opportunity to advance in their financial status. Thus, they acquired fortunes for themselves while purposely overseeing the struggles of the people around them.
Willy Loman continued to want his recognition and his reputation but never forgets about his family. These characteristics describe him as a tragic hero in Death of a Salesman. His grand error of wanting recognition drove him crazy and insane and lead to his tragic death.
His brother was the man he admired the most but throughout the play Ben is revealed as being a mean, nasty man who believe that being rich is the only sign of success even thought he stumbled upon his wealth thought pure luck. For the duration of the entire play the reader is constantly being reminded by Willy th He was striking all the time there was war between him and society.
He was a genial freebooter, living off the enemy, without fear or shame. He fails to gain the minimum sense of security and prosperity in his profession, and he looses the respect and affection of his children for whom he cares so much.
Willy Loman, however, is largely responsible for this failure. Biff is the creature of the father, and this apex of a self-created edifice of the future becomes the instrument whereby Willy is hurtled to his false ideals. The value that Willy and his sons attach to manual work, and its glamorous extension, sport, their belief that it is necessary for a man to keep fit, to be able to handle tools and build things.
Biff and Happy are trapped in a society which prevents them establishing anything to outlast themselves. Willy ruins the lives of his sons as well as his own. In fact he is not selling automobiles, he is selling himself to ensure personal fulfillment, and peace and happiness in the family. And at both the levels he fails as millions do in a competitive commercialized society. It is almost a typical case of the American dream transformed into American illusion.
Willy never tells the boys they need skill or industriousness; indeed, he sedulously encourages them, especially Biff, in cutting corners and relying on personal magnetism to carry the day. One might say he determinedly sells them the bill of goods he has once been sold, infecting the next generation with the vocational pathology whose symptoms bring him down.
0コメント