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The play/novel I have chosen is Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller. The main reason why I would teach this book is because of the plot. The protagonist is Willy Loman, he is a near retirement travelling salesman and has been for thirty years. He is an insecure and mercurial man who has little evolved in his lifetime with both his personality and career. Most readers would acquiesce with me by having a strong antipathy with the character Willy Loman.
One reason why I would teach this book to a class is the significance between each character in this book.
For example Charley, Willy’s neighbor and only friend. Charley knows Willy well and seems to understand what drives him better than any of the other characters except perhaps for Linda, Willy's wife. Moving on from Charley is his son Bernard, He is a classmate and friend of Willy’s two sons, Biff and Happy. He is compassionate and helpful just like his father; Always worrying about Biff and his grades.
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“ She followed all my directions. It was really easy to contact her and respond very fast as well. ”
Bernard becomes a successful lawyer out of high school and is better than any of the Lomans. Moving onto Biff, one of the two sons of Willy’s. He doesn’t know what will make him happy, but he is the only one who recognizes that what the Lomans desire is unrealistic and that they’re an unsuccessful family.
Next up is Happy, the youngest son and the second son of Willy Loman. He lives in the inflated shadow of his older brother Biff.
He sleeps with the wives of his coworkers just so that he can feel better about himself. Linda, Willy’s wife. She is an enabler and fuels anger by his anger by the way she talks to him sometimes. She is submissive to Willy because this takes place in an era where men are in charge and women are supposed to obey what the man says or dictates. Ben, Willy’s older brother who recently died and only appears in Willy’s flashbacks. He is the opposite of Willy, he traveled to Africa at the age of 19 and made a fortune in diamonds by the age of 21. Ben only wins by cheating because in Africa, there are no courts or regulations, that’s why he always stated something about “the jungle.” We’d have to assume he had to fight dirty for his success in Africa, Ben was able to exploit and take advantage of people to become a success story.
The second reason is the symbols throughout the book. For example, Biff and the Fountain Pen, and these are not like any normal pens, these are found in executive offices which represents Biff’s pursuit of unattainable success. This is due to the fact that being a business will not make him happy because he enjoys meaningful work and being out in nature. Another symbol is Willy and his Car. The car represents Willy’s escapist nature, Willy spends most of his time on the road which symbolizes the freedom he feels when he is away and he is able to escape the conflicts that he has with his family. The last symbol is Ben and the Diamonds, Ben was able to attain his wealth through his endeavors in the jungle and thus represents money, much like diamonds do. Diamonds are also in the rough when they are first found which parallels how Ben was a diamond in the rough because he took a risk by leaving New York and became a beautifully carved diamond by attaining success through his risks of leaving the city.
For my last reason I would teach this book is the play tells you how it's going to end from the very beginning. Nowadays people are not used to it these days, Miller didn't write like that. You can see/read what's coming, Willy Loman's death by suicide, defeated, old and sad from the first line of the play. Willy enters his house, his wife wakes up fearfully, and he calls up to her, 'It's all right. I came back.' At the end, he won't. Arthur Miller doesn't have time to show you a lifetime of lies and secrets in the Loman family, so he relies on innuendo, references and flashbacks. This helps us understand how ordinary this family is and the conflicts that they have. The language of this play is the contrast between what is truthfully said straight out, and what is alluded to but never explicitly stated. For the Lomans, the facts of Willy's attempt to commit suicide can be discussed freely, but Biff and Willy never really discuss the life-changing incident that the play revolves around, for example when Biff found out about Willy’s adultery.
All in all, everyone should teach this book, maybe soon I can teach this to my younger brother when he gets older. There’s everything that a teacher or just an average person would love to teach, from symbols, to the ups and downs from every character in the book. The fact that Arthur Miller wrote this play in a way that no other author or playwright has written anything like this before. It seems Willy’s elysian was to be at the top of business and for Biff to be a professional football player.
Character Analysis Of Willy Loman In The Death Of a Salesman. (2024, Feb 08). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/character-analysis-of-willy-loman-in-the-death-of-a-salesman-essay
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