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The main conflict in Death of a Salesman deals with the confusion of Willy Lowmans life. This is so because of his inability to face the realities of his life. Willys best delusion is that success is based upon being well liked and having personal attractiveness. Willy builds his entire life around this idea and teaches it to his children. Willys need to feel well liked is so strong that he often makes up lies about his popularity and success.
At times, Willy even believes these lies himself. At one point in the play, Willy tells his family of how well liked he is in all of his towns and how important he is to New England. Later he tells Linda that no one remembers him and that the people laugh at him behind his back. This demonstrates Willys need to feel well liked and causes him to become very paranoid. When his son Biff, for example, is trying to explain why he cannot become successful, Willy believes that Biff is just trying to make him mad. Unfortunately, Willy never realizes that his values are flawed.
As Biff points out at the end of the play, he had the wrong dreams. The main theme in Death of a Salesman is illusion versus reality. Willy has lived his entire life in a world of illusions. These illusions include Willys belief that being well liked is the key to success.
Biff shared Willys illusions of success and greatness, but by the end of the play he has become aware of what is real in life and that his life was a dream. Once Biff fully understands his place in life, he says to Willy, Im a dime a dozen, and so are you. Willy, however, has lived too long in his dreams and cannot understand what Biff is trying to say. Biff is trying to confront the truth about himself, and he finds that he is completely unable to communicate with his father. This is so because for all of those years Willy tried to teach his sons to be like him. The only problem is that his sons are finding out the hard way that you can t lie your way through life and be successful.
In many ways Biff is similar to his father. In the beginning of the play we see that Biff shares many of the same ideas as Willy. He values being well liked and sees little value in being smart or honest. One of Biffs main bad habits is his tendency to steal. Early in the play we learn that he has stolen a football from the school locker. When Willy finds out about this, instead of disciplining Biff, he says that the coach will probably congratulate him on his motivation.
We also learn that Biff once stole a box of basketballs from Bill Oliver. This foreshadows the scene in which Biff steals Bill Oliver's fountain pen after trying to get a loan for his sporting goods business. The most dramatic scene in Biffs life comes when he finds a woman in Willys hotel room. This causes Biff to realize that Willy is a fake. Biffs tragedy is that he has accepted Willys values all his life, and now that he finds out they are false, he has no values of his own to fall back on.
Biff becomes lost and must set out to find his own values. Once Biff begins to find his own beliefs, his opinions about his father change. Instead of viewing his father as a fake, Biff comes to realize that his father had some good qualities, but was simply misguided by imperfect values Happy is the younger of the two Lowman brothers and is often overshadowed by Biff. Being the younger brother, Happy is constantly trying to get attention from Willy. In one of the flashbacks Happy always says, Im losing weight, you notice, Pop? This is an attempt by Happy to be noticed by Willy.
When in the present, Happy tries to get recognition by announcing that he is getting married. In both times, Happy's remarks are looked over and unimportant. So it is no surprise when Happy leaves Willy alone in the restaurant. Another characteristic of Happy is his refusal to recognize reality. When Biff, Happy, and Willy are in the restaurant, Happy tries to prevent Willy from knowing that Biff did not get the loan. While Biff is trying to explain that he never actually worked as a salesman for Oliver.
Happy is continually reassuring Willy that the interview went well. Another example occurs at the end of the play when Happy insists that Willy did not die in vain. He had a good dream. This is what the story is about, The American dream. For some it is a good dream, but for the Loan family it was a nightmare.
It lead to the death of Willy, and it scared his family. After the funeral services Happy tells Biff that he is going to be a salesman and that he wants to pick up where his father left off. Biff strongly disagree and says that his ideas were wrong and that he didnt know who he was. I believe that Biff would have done well after the death of his father because he knows the truth about his life and he knows who he is. Happy needs to stop making his life up, or else he will end up like his father. Either way I don t see the two brothers having a close relationship because their ideas are so different, and they don t have much common ground.
Happy is more like his father, and Biff is a realist. They should both relate to the life of their father as something not to do and remember the best thing he taught them, and that is not to live in a dream world.
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Research essay sample on Death Of A Salesman End Of The Play
