Essay Topic about Death of a Salesman

“Death of a Salesman” by Arthur Miller is a classic American play.

It was written in 1949. The main theme of the play is the American Dream and the striving for success and wealth while disregarding principle. This was the play that set Miller on the map. It received the Pulitzer Price for Drama in that same year and also won the Tony Award and New York Drama Critic’s Circle Award for Best Play. Miller was born in New York City on October 17, 1915. His career as a playwright started when he attended the Univeristy of Michigan.

A number of his works won prizes.In his senior year, the Federal Theatre Project staged one of his plays. The success of “Death of a Salesman” turned him into a national sensation. His other plays are “The Crucible” and “Broken Glass.

” “Death of a Salesman” is a look on the conflict that occurs in a family while it addresses the conflict of the members among themselves. At the same time, it discusses the national values in the United States. Miller sets the play at a town that embraces capitalist materialsim which obscures the moral vision and personal truths of Americans.The inspiration for the play is Miller’s real-life conflict with his uncle, Manny, who is a salesman.

By touching the pysche of his uncle and manifesting it in Willy, Miller was able to touch his audience. The play revolves around Willy Loman. He is a saleman in his 60s who is on the verge of losing his understanding of reality. Willy uses his charm and social skills to make new friends. He is a traveling salesman who is well-liked for his unparalleled skills. He has two sons, Biff and Happy, who are popular in the neighborhood.

Linda is often seen smiling by their neighbors. The conflict of the play begins when Willy regards his son Biff as a failure. Willy had worked his entire adult life. He is at a phase of his life where he must retire and enjoy his hard work especially that he has been having a hard time driving.

Unfortunately, Willy thought wrong. He realized that his customers couldn’t remember him, therefore his belief that he was well-liked was shattered. It turns out he was only useful to the company as a traveling salesman. Willy confronts his boss, Howard Wagner, and was fired.

Willy turns to his next-door neighbor Charley for a loan, despite his contempt and jealousy that his only friend is more successful than he. Charley offers the un-employed Willy a job. It does not involve traveling. Willy is too proud to accept the job.

Willy’s expectations on his sons have a negative effect. Biff, the eldest, is 34 and unable to settle down. Happy, the youngest, lies in order to appear as if he were the perfect son. It is ironic that Charley, who Willy often tells his sons as not liked, is a successful businesmman by trade. Not only that, Bernard, his son is a lawyer.In the middle of the play, the audience finds out why Biff lost his faith on his father and the sanctity of marriage.

It was because he walked in on his father and discovered the latter had an affair during one of his business trips. Willy carries the guilt even after the affair ended because he often asks Linda to discard the stockings she mends. The reason for this is Willy once gave The Woman a pair of stockings. During Willy’s downward spiral, he is haunted by his dead brother Ben. Ben struck a fortune in Africa when he was alive.

He offered Willy a position in the gem trade in Alaska.Willy turned this down and regretted it since then. Ben represents the man Willy wants to be. He idolizes his brother. In some scenes, he asks for Ben’s advice on how to be the father of his children.

Willy thinks that if he is well-liked by his customers and those around him, he is a step closer to the American Dream. The American Dream is the perfect life. This is an idea that he clings into and is not willing to give up. When they were in high school, Biff and Happy were handsome and Willy believed that this was enough for them to be liked.He convinced his sons that opportunities would fall into their laps because of this.

Plans changed. Life, as much as Willy hoped it to be, was not generous. Neither Biff nor Happy are able to get employment that was respectable for them. Willy sees that he and his sons fail to achieve the American Dream. He begins to question whether his dream is valid. Happy convinces his brother Biff to try the get-rich-schemes.

On the verge of doing so, Biff remembers the mistakes of his father. He decides to prevent Willy from investing in a dream that is so unrealistic ever again.The climax of the play is the confrontation between Willy and Biff. Willy accuses Biff that he throws his life away simply to hurt him. It was after the argument did Willy realize that Biff cares for him.

He does what he can to regain financial stability by choosing the right opportunities. Willy contemplates to take his own life. In that way, he can show Biff that he is well-loved and popular when he was alive. If he made the death look like it were an accident, the life insurance policy would allow Biff to invest in his own business. This is Willy’s final attempt to leave a legacy for his family.

The neighborhood wakes up after hearing Willy’s car smashing. Again, Willy’s plan fails. The life insurance policy is not honored if the death was a suicide. The Loman family only found themselves in a worse position after this. In Willy’s funeral, only Biff, Happy, Linda, Charley and Bernard pay their respects.

This only shows the audience that Willy was again wrong in what he told his children. Nobody liked him. Charley’s eulogy described Willy as someone who didn’t know what he really wanted in life. He relied heavily on his dreams and we couldn’t blame him for doing so.

The play is told from Willy’s point of view. It is not linear. It has flashbacks of Willy’s life. There are characters onstage that only Willy can see. When the flashback ends, the focus moves on Linda, Biff and Happy. The imagined conversations with Ben show the different states of Willy’s in.

This lets him compare the other characters. The lighting of the play also shows whether they are sympathetic or villainous toward Willy. Carefully analyzing the characters, the audience realizes that Willy fails to achieve his goal. Therefore, that makes him a tragic hero.

His suicide was supposed to be the resolution for his problems. Instead, it only concretizes his failure. His last name “Loman” sounds like “Low man. ” He was driven by his own “Will. ” He is “will-y” and this quality perversed his thoughts. He conceived reality that was different from others.

He deceived himself and ignored the realizations presented to him by his dead brother. Nonetheless, he makes up for his shortcomings by attempting to sacrifice himself in order for Biff to have a step closer to his American Dream. (Bloom, 42) Throughout the play, Biff is in search of the truth of his capabilities.He is the exact opposite of his father and his brother because he can accept the reality that he faces. Willy and Happy delude themselves.

Willy sees him as a failure while Biff sees Willy as unfaithful. Both of them harbor ill feelings toward one another and their fears are connected to what the other one was not able to materialize – Biff’s financial stability and Willy’s fidelity. Happy, on the other hand, embodies Willy’s worst side. The audience has a hard time sympathizing with him because of this very reason. He has often lived in the shadow of his brother, just as Willy lived in Ben’s.

He does not have the capacity or self-knowledge to stop deluding himself. He is duped and would forever be on the hunt to satisfy his sex drive. The main symbol that is important throughout the play is The American Dream, simply because all the characters strive toward it. Willy thinks that anyone can achieve The American Dream, as long as he is liked and attractive. His fixation on this superficiality proves to be false.

He was abandoned by both his father and his brother so he wanted his sons to be stable with the help of The American Dream.The end of the play gives the reader the liberty on how to interpret Willy’s death. They can agree with Charley’s eulogy and conclude that Willy was a nomad who chased a dream to no avail or view it in Biff’s eyes that his father’s death was not in vain. Despite his mistakes, Willy tried to make up for these by coming up with a way to get a life insurance policy to help Biff financially. The plan might have failed but it was the thought that counts. In a family persective, Willy’s sacrifice can also be described as the closest he could get to The American Dream.

(Bentley, 41)