Term Paper on "Arthur Miller the Tragic Existence in Life"

Term Paper 3 pages (1154 words) Sources: 0

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Arthur Miller

The Tragic Existence in Life and Death of Willy Loman

Definitions of the protagonist, conflict, and dramatic question in Miller's Death of a Salesman

Arthur Miller's play Death of a Salesman has been called the first American tragedy by critics, and is widely regarded as Miller's greatest literary achievement. Written at the intersection of the 1940s and 1950s during the capitalistic postwar rise of materialistic values, Death of a Salesman is a commentary on the tragedy of the lost American Dream. The play is told largely from the perspective of Willy Loman, a career traveling salesman aging into a state of disillusionment as he reminisces about his life and the things which were never achieved during it. His wife, Linda, is a motherly figure, but has never really loved him as a wife. Willy's oldest son, Biff, was a football star in high school, but never managed to find himself in the workforce and winds up moving back home, while his younger brother Happy has a steady job and his own home. In this surrounding, Willy reminisces about his many years working for the Wagner firm, being disloyal to his wife while on the road, and finally being fired from his job. Willy is the major protagonist of the play, who is suffering because of the internal and external conflicts in his life, and he is finally faced with the dramatic questions that broach the nature of the disintegration of his family.

The main protagonist of Death of a Salesman is Willy Loman, a traveling salesman. He represents the common American man and is a symbol for every person who has put faith into the American Dream and been betrayed by it. Willy is a ritual head of his family, though his family may or may not actually respect and love him as the husband and father. Willy is the personification of the values that are held in the utmost importance by the civilized men of the twentieth century, being dedicated to his long-standing employer despite unfair treatment, holding materialistic values to prove success to himself, and wanting good things for his football-hero son. Willy is seeking meaning for the events of his life, trying to interpret a design and pattern to life when it seems the most illogical and the most chaotically paradoxical. Willy experiences his life as a whole, not in a linear and separated form, and the way in which events of his life interact as independent entities is both an expression of his removal from logic as well as a force which disrupts reality as he understands it. Willy's ideals are unattainable, for he wants to please everyone all of the time, he wants to be successful in a way that is not possible for him, and he wants to make an impression on the world in a way that a traveling salesman simply is not destined to do. When Willy realizes that he has failed at reaching the American Dream, and that he is not capable of attaining the material things he thinks are vital to proving his personal worth, he projects his own desires onto his son, and sees Biff as a way to redeem himself despite his failings. Unable to provide for his family in the way he sees fit during life, Willy martyrs himself so that his family can receive life insurance benefits, and his son, as a replacement for himself, can reach the American Dream with… READ MORE

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