Character Analysis of Willy Loman

Character Analysis of Willy Loman

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Introduction

The plot of the play “Death of a Salesman” centers around the last two days of the life of Willy Loman, an average man. Willy was losing his mind since the start of the play, but his suicide at the conclusion takes him by surprise. Within these two days, Miller allows his character’s failing memory to impact the tone of the play as he travels between remembrance and reality, allowing the audience to understand Willy’s viewpoints on his relationships.

Analysis

“Willy Loman is not your typical tragic hero; he is lower-middle-class and not particularly bright.” He lives in an amoral, capitalistic huge business environment, rather than one with strong moral values”. Because of the confusion generated by the disparity between Willy’s perception of the world and the actual world, he is unable to build any type of meaningful relationship with his family members, and they are unable to assist him during this time of difficulty. A close examination of Willy’s use of symbolism, sarcasm, and imagery reveals his very confused, desperate, and sensitive character.

As the play begins, Willy tells his wife that his mind can not seem to focus on what’s essential anymore, forcing him to rely more and more on the symbols he’s developed as indicators of success. Willy sees a solid bond between father and son as a sign of domestic success. However, because his perspective is almost exclusively focused on business operations, he appears to feel that this connection should evolve spontaneously as Biff acknowledges and respects Willy’s final sacrifice for him, rather than as a consequence of any effort Willy has put into it.

Business success is a significant indicator of Willy’s successful life, possibly even more vital than success as a father. Willy’s inability to provide his wife with a safe house, insurance, and to pay off the refrigerator creates a situation in which there is only one potential winning solution. Willy believes that the only way to ‘buy’ his boys’ affection and guarantee he has supplied for his wife is through money achievement. As previously stated, Willy considers these qualities of the family to be the genuine indicators of success and are entirely dependent on money. Willy can relax into his role as family patriarch only once he has gained the mother’s comfortable backing and the sons’ admiration. Anything less is unacceptably inadequate. Willy’s desperation is initially demonstrated by his poor income, which is revealed to be nearly nothing because he works on commission and has not sold anything in a long time. However, he gets sacked from his employment during the first business meeting of the play and subsequently declines a position offered to him by Charley. Charley illustrates at this moment that not all worth can be assessed in terms of financial well-being. Even though he may give Willy a job with the casual comment “You want a job?”, he can not figure out how Willy found a way to put up the roof in the living room. Willy’s ability to use tools is valued by Charley, and it is a talent that Willy appreciates as well since Willy is ready to dismiss Charley because he cannot. Willy, on the other hand, is ready to disregard this expertise in the face of monetary achievement, as illustrated by his brother Ben.

Willy finds himself groping for a foundation in his family based on facts but with no clue how to get there when he is eventually brought to the conclusion that his deteriorating memory means he can no longer work. Willy wants nothing more than to escape the imagined world he is constructed, and he rejects every attempt Biff makes to entice him out by pressing the reality (Yasinski, 2001). Willy’s frantic maneuvering of the before-stated conversation with Biff over Biff’s meeting with Oliver is one example of how he avoids the truth in the present. This type of incident occurs towards the end of the scene as well, with Biff refusing to back down to keep the family peace. He dismisses Happy’s assertions that he is ‘practically’ the assistant buyer at work, even though he is merely the second assistant to assistant to the buyer.

The majority of what the rest of the world knows about Willy is based on a picture he holds of himself. Willy continues to project an image to his family and business partners that are aimed to make him appear more important and respected, even though he knows better. As previously said, even though Willy is shown to have had a very strong connection with his boys, seeing them clean the vehicle, chatting about football, and being able to bring home a present for them that is totally in keeping with what they desire, he feels insecure in their appreciation of him. Willy embellishes his position at work to make himself appear more important than he is, rather than simply accepting that he is a traveling salesman and loving the various places he gets to explore. He gets carried away by his visions, like when he begins planting seeds in his yard after the play, even though the buildings now block off too much sunlight for anything to grow: “The grass does not grow anymore, you can not raise a carrot in the back yard” (Yasinski, 2001).

Conclusion

Willy had no choice but to do what he did within the constraints of his personality and understanding throughout the play. His unwavering confidence in the American ideal, in which a parent lived by particular ideals to provide for his family’s fundamental necessities, was intimately linked to his perceptions of his position within the family unit itself. An analysis of the collection of symbols by which Willy assesses his life reveals this point of view. According to this viewpoint, the only way to achieve familial prosperity was to first achieve corporate success. Willy was forced to admit he had not attained familial success after finding he had not earned commercial success.

The irony of his nature is that he could have achieved familial success if he would only give up his symbols and looked at the truth. The fact was that he was not a financial success, but that just added to his familial success since it did not matter to the people who loved him. Willy was finally able to see that his son loved him the entire time, regardless of whether he had attained some magical tangible quantity of dollars, by removing the obstacle of commercial success through his gift of insurance money. Willy can die in peace if he realizes this simple reality.

References

Yasinski, N. A. (2001). Arthur Miller’s Death of a salesman. Research & Education Association.