A streetcar name desire and death of a salesman - Essay Example

In the case of Willy, his past has been instrumental in shaping his future. He credits the past as the source of his present day success, and the pasts’ memories are still fresh in him. It is this past that Willy has continually reshaped to create the new person he is today. He credits his success to his human and personality that makes him a self driven individual. In his interpretation, his funeral is that of a successful salesman, an interpretation of his illusion, and his desperate need to escape from the reality that his life was not successful (Miller 188).

In the real sense Willy was a failure as a father as well as a salesman (Miller 62). In his funereal, his wife wondered aloud on the whereabouts of his friends as he seemed to a famous person. His past reshaped his present to be a famous person and an achiever, as these are the things that he hoped for the future. His past was a mere channel of protecting his failures that are vivid in his future life. As seen in the work of Miller, William has been described as a romantic person in an unromantic world, as Christopher Bigsby describes him (33).

This relates to the fact that his lifestyle does not represent the real lifestyle he hoped to achieve. Willy’s life is indeed tragic in his own aspect, but one could actually define his life as a tragedy. His life can be compared to that of an ugly an unromantic person. Willy’s uncertainties actually affect his lifestyle. He represents some forms of uncertainty that led to his misery in the time of his death. Blanche is an ingenious re-creator of the self who was bewildered with the destructive ability of Stanley who did not need to strain much to conceal the aspects that shaped his past life.

The force symbolized by Stanley is one that Blanche explains to be a destructive one (Miller 80-164). It is evident that the fantasy world that shapes an individual’s past indeed protects the reality of life as seen in Blanche life. Work CitedMiller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman. New Delhi: Pearson Education, 2007. Print.