Today Started out good.
But Ended out bad. And I don't know why. I think tomorrow will be better. I have been trying to write. It's good for me.
What are these dysfunctional families you speak of?
Today in History of the American Family one of my peers gave a presentation on the Dysfunctional family and the "Mirical Drugs" that help them out. The Presentation SUCKED. Sucked a lot of ass infact. It sucked so bad that I felt more informed on the subject before the presentation than I did after it. Don't even get me started on the kid's "Research" paper.
Professor McHale Wants me to enter my essay in a contest. I will post it here for future reference(A.KA. In case I punch my computer and break the hard drive....again). Professor McHale likes my Ideas. He thinks that I need to learn how to organize them better thats all.
Sox Played a bad brand of baseball tonight. I went to the Library to wind out. Today was productive, but Tense.
1
Willy Loman as a Tragic Hero
The Death of A Salesman by Arthur Miller opens with Willy Loman coming home worn out, tired, and unhappy. His son, Biff, has just returned from seven years of wandering around America. Through a series of flashbacks the reader of the play learns more about the personalities and relationships in the Loman family.
Willy Loman is unhappy because he is not as successful as he makes himself out to be. He has tried to live vicariously through his oldest son, Biff, who has been offered a football scholarship to the University of Virginia. When Biff finds Willy cheating on his mother in Boston their relationship is destroyed. Instead of going off to college, Biff leaves home to wander around America.
Between flashbacks, Biff, after returning home from a seven-year absence, goes out searching for a financial opportunity in the form of a loan with which him and Happy will attempt to start their own chain of sporting goods stores. After a failed attempt at receiving the loan, Biff meets Happy and Willy at a restaurant. Shortly after he arrives at the restaurant, Willy has and outburst, which triggers a flashback for Willy about the confrontation that occurred between him and Biff in Boston. After being embarrassed by their father’s outburst, the brothers meet up with two girls and abandon Willy at the restaurant.
When Biff and Happy come home late at night they are chastised by their mother for leaving Willy at the restaurant. Willy comes downstairs and Biff confronts him about the lifestyle and values he had taught him. Biff rejects these values, and Willy sees this as spite. A verbal fight ensues and the argument ends with an emotional scene between Biff and Willy where Biff tells Willy that he loves him. After the argument, everybody except Willy goes to sleep. Willy feels that he has failed in raising Biff and the only way that he can make up for it is to put some money on the table. Since he does not have a job, suicide is his only option. He then leaves the house in his car and crashes it to kill himself.
Death of a Salesman is one of America’s most debated plays. One topic that is often debated is weather or not the play meets the definition of a true tragedy. Critic Richard Foster says that the play is not a tragedy for two reasons. First, he says that the main character has no stature in society, so the audience, therefore, has no emotional investment in the outcome of the play. To put it in his words: “Willy Loman is a childish and stupid human being, and his societal role of salesman is one of only very minor consequence”(82-83).
Foster’s point is very weak. He takes his definition of tragedy from Aristotle’s, which is almost two thousand years old and needs to be updated as Miller has done in his essay “Tragedy and the Common Man”:
I believe that the common man is as apt a subject for tragedy in its highest sense as kings were. On the face of it this ought to be obvious in the light of
modern psychiatry… which apply to everyone in similar emotional situations. (38)
Foster’s definition of tragedy comes from a time where only the affluent were educated, and the divide between the classes was much greater than they are today. The plight of the common man was of no interest to the intellectuals of ancient civilization.
Judging from his comments on Willy Loman it seems as thought Foster has a personal vendetta against his character. The fact that Willy Loman is a family man and not a man of any great social standing makes the audience more sensitive to his dilemma. Anyone can relate to a man who is trying to provide for his family.
Foster’s other point is that fate does not play a part in the outcome of the story. Again, Foster has made a point without seriously considering the historical context of the play or the background the characters. Willy Loman grew up believing in the American dream. The greatest factor in his life is his obsession with financial success. It blinds him to certain aspects of his life and leads him to lie to himself and to his family about his finical success. Willy is fated to futilely pursue his dreams.
The reader can see Willy’s infatuation with the American dream in his fantasies about is brother Ben. In Willie’s flashbacks, he is always asking Ben how he achieved such great success. Ben’s answer is always the same: “When I was seventeen I walked into the jungle, and when I was twenty-one I walked out. And, by God, I was rich!”(Miller 1038). This vague answer is the essence of the American dream. The American dream has never been a clear-cut path, but the general idea is to get rich, quick in a capitalist economy. To Willy, his brother is the American dream personified. These
fantasies about his brother show just how obsessed Willy is with the American dream.
In another one of the flashbacks involving Ben, Willy recalls telling him how rugged Biff is. Ben decides to test this and starts a boxing match with Biff. Ben then trips Biff and pins him down with the tip of his umbrella. Ben then says “Never fight fair with a stranger, boy. You’ll never get out of the jungle that way”(Miller 1036). This is the ugly side of the American dream, the side that Willy does not comprehend and is, therefore, fated to fail.
The Point is made again when Charley talks to Willy about why he was fired from his job:
Willy: That snotnose. Imagine that? I named him. I named him Howard.
Charley: Willy, when’re you gonna realize that them things don’t mean anything? You named him Howard, but you can’t sell that. The
only thing you got in this world is what you can sell. And the funny thing is that you’re a salesman, and you don’t know that.
Willy: I’ve always tried to think otherwise, I guess. I always felt that
if a man was impressive, and well liked, that nothing----
Charley: Why must everybody like you? (Miller 1064)
Willy is most concerned with being well liked by his customers. He thinks that if a salesman is merely well liked, wealth and success will follow. As Charley points out, no direct correlation can be made between being well liked and being a successful businessman. Willy cannot understand this and is thus fated to fail at his dream of wealth and success.
During the confrontation between Willy and Biff, Willy tells Biff that he thinks what Biff is saying is out of spite. At the end of the argument, Willy realizes that Biff Loves him:
Willy: Loves me. (Wonderingly.) Always loved me. Isn’t that a remarkable thing? Ben, he’ll worship me for it!
Ben (with promise): It’s dark there, but full of diamonds.
Willy: Can you imagine that magnificence with twenty thousand dollars in his pocket? (Miller 1088)
Once Willy realizes that Biff loves him, he decides that the only way to make up for all of the mistakes he made in raising Biff is by killing himself so Biff and the family can receive the insurance money. In the end, Willy’s fatherly love drives him to suicide, which makes him a tragic figure.
Even thought Richard Foster uses the classical definition of tragedy put fourth by Aristotle, his definition is outdated. Through consumerism, mass culture, and public education, people of all classes are now able to express themselves publicly and are able to reach a greater audience than has ever been possible. Tragedy in a modern drama cannot be limited to a certain class of individuals. To do so would be snobbery.
As critic Steven Centola puts it:
Willy must ultimately be appreciated for valuing so highly the family and his role as a father. Even though he has misconceptions about this role, his inspiring pursuit of his forever elusive identity as the perfect father makes him a tragic figure.
The story of Willy Loman’s demise includes the two most important aspects of a tragic figure. Because of his personality, which dictates how he deals with his customers, he is fated not to succeed at being a salesman. Fate is the first major ingredient for a tragic figure. The other aspect is the tragic flaw, a virtue gone too far. His fatherly love for Biff is his ultimate undoing. Not only does his tragic flaw allow him to lead his son astray, it gives him a reason to justify killing himself.
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7
Works Cited
Centola, Steven R. “Family Values In Death of a Salesman.” C.L.A. Journal 37.1 (1993): 29-41.
Foster, Richard. “Confusion and Tragedy.” Hurrel. 82-88.
Hurrel, John. Two Modern American Tragedies. New York: Scribners 1961.
Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman. Literature: A Portable Anthology. Ed. Janet Gardener, et al. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2004. 1012-1090.
---,---. “Tragedy and the Common Man.” Hurrel. 38-40.
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