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Arthur Miller was born in New York City in 1915. Around the age of 23 he graduated from the University of Michigan, the place where he began to write plays. Several of his writings include All My Sons, The Crucible, Misfits, After The Fall and Broken Glass. The most outstanding modern tragedy, Death Of a Salesman, helped make Arthur Miller on of the most successful American playwrights of the 1940 s and 1950 s. In Death Of a Salesman, Miller writes about social and political pressures and their effects on human values and morality (Hill and Trudeau, 109). Willy Loman is a tragic figure because of his lack of values, favoritism, and lack of communication, which brought about severe consequences for himself and his family.
To Willy Loman the word value had no meaning to him. The word value means worth, importance, to hold in respect and admiration of. Willy s sense of honesty is badly distorted, and his recognition of the values of integrity, truth, and responsibility is very slight (Trudeau, 315) It did not matter to him if you cheat or steal, as long as you get what you need. Throughout the play Willy steals or cheats in order to satisfy his wants. One example is when Willy tells his sons, Biff and Happy to go over to where they re building the apartment houses and steal some sand.
This is so Willy and his sons can rebuild the entire front stoop. A week before this, Biff stole a bunch of lumber from the same apartment house. Willy s manipulating appearances, presents Biff s childhood as zeal and initiative; in one breath he both boasts to Charley about the value of the lumber Biff has brought home and then indignantly denies that Biff is stealing (Hill and Trudeau, 114). In this example Willy is teaching his sons that breaking the law is okay when in reality it is not all right. Charley even warns Willy that if they steal anymore from that building the watchman ll put the cops on them! (Miller). It is obvious that Willy does not care if his sons get arrested because he keeps encouraging them to steal materials from the apartment house.
Another example where Willy s lack of values deceives not only himself but his family as well is when he goes to Boston on a business trip and cheats on his wife with a strange women. While Willy is in Boston, Biff comes to visit him to tell Willy that he failed math and instead, he catches Willy with a strange woman. Willy tries to tell Biff that he did it only because he was lonely. He loves Linda and has been unfaithful to her only because of his acute, aching loneliness when on the road (Weales, 208). Biff does not believe him. At that moment and from then on Biff s respect for his father changed.
You fake! You phony little fake! You fake! (Miller). This is all Biff says to his father as the tears keep rolling down his face. More than ruining his sons so that one has become a women chaser and the other a thief, his standards have turned the boys against their father (Weales, 208). After catching his father in his lie, Biff moved out west away from his father.
Out west, Biff stole himself out of every good job since high school (Miller). The reason why Biff stole himself out of every good job since high school was Willy never taught his sons what values were. He taught them that stealing or cheating was all right as long as you got what you were going for. In a family, favoritism can lead to serious problems, not only affecting the children, but the parents as well. Favoritism is undue partiality. Willy Loman is a tragic figure because he showed undue partiality toward his younger son Happy and favored his oldest son Biff.
Happy suffers accordingly, a great moral decline (Weales, 242). He takes a back seat to his older brother Biff s abilities and qualities. Happy, constantly being ignored by his father is always trying to get Willy s attention. He is always saying to his dad I m loosing weight pop, you notice pop? (Miller) or I m getting married pop, I just wanted to tell you (Miller). His father does not notice, congratulate or encourage Happy to keep up the good work. By saying these phrases, Happy is trying to achieve some sort of recognition but is continuously being overshadowed by his older brother Biff.
Being overshadowed by Biff his whole life makes Happy reject his father towards the end of the play. For example, during the restaurant scene Happy says to two of the girls he picked up, No that s not my father. He s just a guy (Miller). Happy has functioned so long as the rejected son that it is no surprise he now rejects his own father. Biff is seriously engaged upon the quest for self-identity and serves as a foil to his father (Gunton, 371). For Biff, Willy has great hopes and dreams.
Biff is the star football player, planning to attend the University of Virginia after graduation and popular with all the neighborhood kids. Biff showed great promise of being a great leader and of being an excellent football player. This makes Willy look upon Biff as having all the personal attractiveness necessary for a successful career as a salesman. He thought that since Biff is the star football player and popular with the neighborhood kids he must be well liked and would be a success in life.
Biff followed all of Willy s dreams and did not develop any of his own. When Willy told Biff that personal attractiveness is more important than to excel scholastically, Biff believed him. Willy s dreams for Biff were put to an end when Biff fails math and will not graduate. Biff goes to Boston to tell his father the bad news and asks him to go talk to the teacher about giving Biff the four extra points. Biff feels Willy can influence the math teacher because if the math teach saw the kind of man you are, and you just talked to him in your way, I m sure he d come through for me (Miller). But, Willy, never went to talk to the teacher because Biff catches his father hiding a strange women in the bathroom.
Biff realizes that his father so called values and dreams he has put upon Biff his whole life are false. Willy wanted his son Biff, to succeed where he has failed, thus ruining Biff s life with impossible aspirations (Gunton, 376). Biff s dream of going to the University of Virginia came to an end and he stole himself out of every job since high school (Miller). This is because Willy blew Biff so full of hot air he could never stand taking orders from anybody.
If Willy favored his sons equally, taught them to excel in school and not personal attractiveness, the Loman family would have been much happier and Willy Loman s life might have been saved. Instead, Willy Loman feels neglected, Biff Loman only sees Willy as a fake and Willy Loman s life came to a tragic ending. Lack of communication can lead to the deterioration of the family structure. This is another reason why Willy Loman is a tragic figure in Death Of A Salesman. Willy Loman fails to communicate with his family members and friends, which brought severe consequences to the entire family. Death Of A Salesman is concerned with a failure of communication (Weales, 419).
An example of where Willy fails to communicate is when he kicks Biff out of the house. It is an unusual situation in which a mother does not know why a father has thrown out their son (Trudeau, 316). Linda does not know the reason why Biff moved out west because Willy never told her about the incident in the Boston hotel room. Willy s failure to tell Linda leads to severe consequences fourteen years later when Biff is home for a visit.
Biff, Happy and Willy are talking about future plans. The planning ends when Willy scolds Linda for interesting his excitement for the boy s plans. He says to Linda stop interrupting! Will you Stop! (Miller). Biff rises to his mothers defense by saying to Willy don t yell at her pop, will ya? (Miller). Willy angered, in return says What re you, takin over this house? (Miller).
This makes Biff angry. Willy leaves feeling remorse about the incident he had with his son. The cause of the hatred between them is made unmistakably evident (Trudeau, 316). Willy and Biff should have gone back to New York and talked everything over and told Linda and Happy the truth. The family could have gone to counseling and tried to work everything out. This way Biff s hatred towards his father would not been building up inside him for the past fourteen years and maybe his relationship with his father could have been saved.
Willy Loman is a character whose wrong choices lead to a tragic ending. He is a tragic figure because of his dysfunctional conduct of lack of values, favoritism, and lack of communication. Willy allowed his sons to cheat and steal; he favored his older son Biff and did not communicate to his family. All this dysfunctional conduct throughout his life made Willy realize the he had the wrong American dream and he failed to find out who he really was. This made Willy commit suicide.
He died for those dreams. He also died for what he lived for, his sons and illusions.
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Research essay sample on Death Of A Salesman Lack Of Communication
