Death Of A Salesman II

When a man spends all his time working to support his family, he actually ends up neglecting them. Just as Willy has been working decades as a salesman, he has missed decades of his family’s evolution. As the years have passed, Willy Loman has put no effort into his marriage with his wife, Linda. The two avoid talking to one another about important matters and seem as though they have very little to make conversation about anymore. Also, Willy’s relationship with his sons has stayed mostly the same since Biff caught him cheating. The anger between them could have been worked out a long time ago if Willy had been around to discuss it with. Willy believed that by working so hard, he was fighting to achieve the American Dream.

The American Dream has a clear component of building things up from nothing. This is displayed many times throughout the play of Willy’s life. For example, when Willy’s stoop was falling apart when Ben came to visit, Willy wanted to rebuild it with his sons. This is trying to show how, one, Willy wants to recreate the bond that should be tween him and Ben as brothers, and two, he is trying to rebuild his family since he came from a home where he lived with just his mom. Willy had nothing to base his family values on, but found some that worked for him and that was his way of building something from nothing.

A final theme of Death Of A Salesman is that people have always wanted more than what they have because they believe  that their life is never as perfect as they want it to be. Willy has a loving family and good friends, but he stays at a job he hates so that he can try to get more money to improve his family’s life. He does not like to see his wife mending her stockings because it makes him feel like he has not gotten that better life. He tries to pass on his desire to his sons as well because he wants them to find the success in business that he never had.

Death of a Salesman

            In Willy’s memory of a visit from his brother, Ben, he seems very serious about encouraging his sons to be tough and manly. Through the connection he is struggling to make with Ben, it is clear that he wants his sons to have good family values, and to stick together. Willy tries to teach Happy and Biff to be “rugged, well-liked, all around” (34). These are some of the attributes that he needs in order to be successful at his job. He wants his sons to be hard working so that they can be thriving and “coming out of the jungle” young like Ben did. These are important values for Willy to teach them because it will help them to lead happier and fuller lives. However, it is also important that Willy does not put too much emphasis on pursuing one’s career or else Happy or Biff may end up being a workaholic like him.

            Willy’s inconsistencies as he speaks with his wife, Linda, express his differing ideas on what he should be and what he thinks he is. Although he has been working diligently all his life to try and achieve the American dream, Willy is yet unsuccessful. Because of this, part of him believes that he is unlikable and lazy. Willy tends to project his flaws onto others in order to make them more bearable to himself. He says that Biff is lazy, when he really thinks the opposite. He is seeing his own failures in his son. The same goes for the Chevy. Linda reacts to Willy’s contradictions by agreeing with him no matter what he says. She does not point out that he has said two completely opposing opinions. Linda helps Willy by supporting and encouraging him as much as she can. As he already sees so many flaws in himself and he is in such a hopeless positions, were she to bring up each and every one of his mistakes it would only discourage him and cause him to draw inside himself further. Her criticism would not help matters any, but her support keeps Willy feeling like the fight is worth fighting.

Misery

I love to read old, classic books, like The Scarlet Letter or Jane Eyre, but I’ve noticed that so many of them build up such wonderful characters and then have something horrible happen to them or have completely unsatisfying endings. Why was it so popular in old times to kill your protagonist? Sometimes it makes the story that much more meaningful, like in Romeo and Juliet, but other times, like in The Scarlet Letter, it just leaves you feeling like the whole thing was pointless. I’m sure that authors did their best to try and teach a lesson with the conclusion to their story, but when it is weak, it kills the whole novel.

            At the end of The Scarlet Letter, I felt that Hawthorne was just trying to end things as fast as possible. Instead of going through with Hester and Dimmesdale’s escape back to England, he makes them stay and has Dimmesdale’s weakness come back and kill him. It especially made me feel like I was wasting my time when Hester asked Dimmesdale if they could be together in death. He responds:

 “The law we broke! – the sin here so awfully revealed! – let these alone be in thy thoughts! I fear! I fear! It may be, that, when we forgot our God – when we violated our reverence each for the other’s soul – it was thenceforth vain to hope that we could meet hereafter, in everlasting and pure reunion” (252).

I don’t understand why, if someone was dying, they would further crush the heart of the one who loves them by saying that they will never see each other again.

One may say that they are trying to free their lover, but since Hester has loved Dimmesdale for over seven years without even speaking to him, it doesn’t appear that she is going to get over him anytime soon. Telling her that they will never be together in the afterlife is just going to make her more miserable after his death.