My Experience of a Traveling Salesman in the Wagner Company - Essay Example

Willy Loman Willy Loman is a traveling salesman who has worked for the Wagner Company for thirty-four years. He is now sixty-one years old and has been taken off salary and put back on straight commission, and he is unable to earn enough money to pay the bills. Willy takes money every month from Charley, the Lomans neighbor, to meet his expenses. In direct contradiction to this, Willy is too proud to accept a regular job from him. Willy never really does anything to improve his situation; he just escapes into the past, to happier times when problems were limited. He is an ordinary man misled by society’s emphasis on material success as being the only true success. He puts no stock in the moral values of honesty and hard work and thus lays the groundwork for his own failure. The major causes of Willy’s death were his own illusions, wrong values and the shattering of his false dreams. Illusions Willy is at the bottom of the social ladder in a capitalistic world. although he loves physical work like gardening and building things he refuses to become a carpenter believing that such work is lowly and being a salesman is better paying and more praiseworthy. When Biff suggests that the Lomans should be “mixing cement on some open plain, or ... be a carpenter,” Willy replies that, “your grandfather was better than a carpenter.” This clearly shows that Willys illusion of greatness got in the way of his happiness. He is unhappy because the work he enjoys doing is beneath him and he is no good at the work he does (sales). To cover his false ideals Willy develops the belief that if a person is popular and attractive, then all doors will automatically be opened for him. When he was young, he had met Dave Singleman a salesman who according to Willy was highly successful. Singleman was so popular that he was able to make a living merely by staying in his hotel room and calling buyers. When Singleman died, buyers and salesmen from all over the country came to his funeral. Willy has made Singleman his ideal and wishes to become as popular and successful as him. He creates an illusion of success for himself and these illusions replace reality in Willys mind. He tells lies about how well liked he is in all of his towns, and how vital he is to New England. In one of his flashbacks he tells his sons “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 trough.” This is a clear indication of Willy’s belief in his own lies, and his inability to accept the truth. As the play progresses, Willy is increasingly possessed by illusions and hallucinations (of Ben), so frequently that it almost seems like he has gone completely insane or at least having a nervous breakdown. His hallucination of Ben is one of the major causes of his death. Wrong Values Willy believes that being popular at any cost is the mantra for success “Be liked and you will never want.” This is what Willy tells his sons over and over again, but his beliefs are shot down by the success of Charley and Bernard who are neither popular nor attractive. When Bernard reports young Biffs stealing Willy does not reprimand him but instead praises him for his “initiative”. His lack of values and ethics, actually steer Biff toward an ultimate jail term for petty theft and Happy toward the shameful habit of taking bribes. By lessening the importance of good grades and harping upon Uncle Bens rapid rise to fortune, he constructs in both boys a dislike for the regular hard work. He keeps repeating that Ben made his fortune in very little time, in flashbacks Ben says “when I was seventeen I walked into the jungle, and when I was twenty-one I walked out. And by God I was rich.” These views make the way for Biff’s failing school and becoming a drifter but Willy does not understand the harm he is doing to his family. Although Willy is willing to borrow money from Charley to cover his household expenses, he is too full of false pride to accept a job. This demonstrates another of his twisted values as he is not ashamed to take Charley’s dole yet he is ashamed to work for him. His personal failure and self deceit alongside his wrong value system lead to his eventual suicide as he cannot see any sin in taking his life. Shattered Dreams Willy Loman dreamt of being the greatest salesman ever. All he wanted was fame, popularity and monetary success. Willy was determined to make money and be successful, but at the age of sixty-one, he realized that these dreams would never come true. His dreams of his sons’ success were also shattered, as both Biff and happy were failures. After being fired Willy is acutely aware of his worthlessness and believes that he has nothing to live for he tells Charley that “After all the highways, and the trains, and the appointments, and the years, you end up worth more dead than alive.” He becomes manic depressive and hallucinates that Ben is telling him that by committing suicide he will be providing his family with a financial windfall.(Willy has life insurance of $20,000) Willy fastens onto this tempting idea, relieved to be able to prove his financial worth. He believed that through his death he could give his family the monetary success he could not provide in life. Conclusion Willy Loman is hardly the first to overemphasize athletic prowess and popularity at the expense of studies and hard work. He is convinced that there are no limits and that everyone can succeed as long as one works hard enough. This belief is shared and encouraged by American society, but the problem is that not everyone can be a great success. In truth Willy was an ordinary guy living an ordinary life and this should have been enough, but his ambition and dreams got in the way of his happiness. His phobia of becoming rich, and his lack of values led to his eventual insanity. He never saw or accepted the love and understanding his family had for him and believed that money was all that he could give to them. Right till the very end his only aim was to provide financial success to his family, so he committed suicide to provide them with $20,000. . Read More