Term Paper on "Death of a Salesman Arthur Miller Believed"

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[EXCERPT] . . . .

Death of a Salesman

Arthur Miller believed that while tragedies can be written about people of great influence, such as kings, that any human being can be the center of a tragedy because all human beings are flawed. In his play Death of a Salesman, Miller demonstrates that "the heart and spirit of the average man" ("Tragedy and the Common Man" by Arthur Miller" can be the source for theatrical tragedy.

Miller emphasizes that his play will be about an average person by the way he names the central character "Willy Loman," which is pronounced "low man." Willy Loman is a traveling salesman with two grown sons and a loyal wife. In the first act, Willy reveals that a common man can feel despair as he talks with his wife, Linda, after coming in from an unsuccessful sales trip:

WILLY: Figure it out. Work a lifetime to pay off a house. You finally own it, and there's nobody to live in it.

LINDA: Well, dear, life is a casting off. It's always that way.

WILLY: No, no, some people - some people accomplish something

From these lines we already have a hint about Willy's tragic flaw: he has lived a simple life, raised a family, bought and paid for a home, but he doesn't' feel he has "accomplished something." Willy is a salesman, a job in which he might have risen to the top of his trade and made a lot of money, and lived the part of the American dream that says that wealth and status are what is important about a person.

Later in the scene, Willy shows more emphasis on superficial appearances as the way a man should define himself as a success: he sees it as important to be po

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pular. He comments that the boys' Uncle Charley is liked, but not well-liked. Willy is so blinded by superficial traits that in a flashback he tells Biff it's OK if he isn't a hard-working student and barely manages to graduate from high school because he's a football star, and popular, and has been offered three different athletic scholarships for college. A classmate of Biff's, Bernard, tries to get him to study, since he has to take important tests the next week, and Biff blows Bernard's concerns off. Willy says about Bernard:

WILLY: That's just what I mean. Bernard can get the best marks in school, y'understand, but when he gets out in the business world, y'understand, you are going to be five times ahead of him. That's why I thank Almighty God you're both built like Adonises. Because the man who makes an appearance in the business world, the man who creates personal interest, is the man who gets ahead. Be liked and you will never want. You take me, for instance. I never have to wait in line to see a buyer. "Willy Loman is here!" That's all they have to know, and I go right through... Knocked 'em cold in Providence, slaughtered 'em in Boston.

Willy's tragic flaw is that he is so busy trying to force himself to be something he is not that it blinds him to his good qualities. Willy is liked. He is not the most popular person in the world but he has a good, loyal friend in Charley, and a wife who loves him. His older son, Happy, is doing well in business and could afford to cover his father's expenses so Willy could retire. But to Willy, a person has to be extremely popular and do very well financially, or he is a failure. By Willy's standards he has to see himself as a failure. Charley offers him a job, but Willy insults him, telling him that a man who handle tools is not a man.

Linda sees the real humanity in her husband, and tells her sons:

LINDA:... I don't say he's a great man. Willy Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper. He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. He's not to be allowed to fall into his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a… READ MORE

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Quoted Instructions for "Death of a Salesman Arthur Miller Believed" Assignment:

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"Tragedy requires a ...balance between what is possible and what is impossible. And it is curious, although edifying, that the plays we revere, century after century, are tragedies. In them, and in them alone, lies the belief ---optimistic, if you will --- in the perfectibility of man. It is time, I think, that we who are without kings took up this bright thread of our history and followed it to the only place it can possibly lead in our time -- the heart and ***** of the average man." (from "Tragedy and the Common Man" by Arthur Miller). Is this view that Miller proposes in his essay reinforced and emexplified by the play "Death of a Salesman". If so, why. If not, why not. Please be sure to cite a minimum of three individual events/incidents/conversations that support your answer from the play. Please complete as quickly as possible. If we could have a three to five hour turnaround, I would pay an extra premium. Thanks.

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