A Character Analysis of Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman - Term Paper Example

A character analysis of Willy Loman in "Death of a Salesman Introduction: Willy Lowman is the central character of Arthur Miller’s family drama, “Death of a Salesman.” The drama is set in the socio-economic circumstance of post-Depression era of the US. It carries many shades of middle class American life; the strife to make both ends meet, the conflicts at home, psychological trauma, peer pressure, career crisis amongst others. The drama also tries to emphasize the mortality of human being, the onrush of life that heeds little for our small but bloated egos. Man is naturally a very small being, howsoever, grand his illusions, of the self may be. Character Sketch of Willy Lowman Through the technique of ‘time travel’ when the Wily often slips into reveries of his past, the playwright has tried to portray the character of Wily over the years that saw him mature from a carefree adolescent to a man straddled with responsibilities. Reveries of the past only have hallucinatory effects his personality. They give him a momentary respite. But the realities of life are far truer to be given a slip through daydreaming. As soon as the reverie is over, Willy finds himself caught in whirlpool of life. Through the thoughtfully implanted visions of Willy, the writer finds it easy to explain the impermanence of life and circumstance. Fatigue has set on our career salesman, Willy. Willy is a man of responsibilities but the times makes him hard to bear the financial constraints, rising expenditures and stagnant income. His wife Linda is a woman of limited wisdom who concerns herself with material concerns of the family. She is, but not an important aid to her husband. He suffers from a peculiar psychological deficiency marked by his journeys into the past to find solace in the good old times. He often indulges in self-talk that further reveal his mental ailment. Two children of the couple, Biff and Happy are people with average abilities. Like any enthusiastic father, Willy had put high hopes on Biff. Perhaps in Biff, he sees a potential of achievement, his unrealised self. However, his hopes are dashed as Biff fails to find a foothold in the uphill task He often changes jobs and is a total ‘career failure’. This is intolerable for Willy, who had and creates a villain out of him, who has spied on his imagined extra-marital affair. All these circumstances finally trigger Wily to embrace death. As is the case with an ordinary mortal, Willy’s funeral is again a lonely affair. In the drama, Arthur Miller succeeds in conveying the importance of wealth in the material world. The playwright, in fact, successfully captures contemporary rate race of life and the inevitable doom of individuality in its unstoppable onrush. Willy finds security in his job as a salesman in New England. He prefers the ‘comfort zone’ of his New England job rather than move to a more prosperous New York. It is only after he is fired that he decides to look for a job elsewhere. But it seems that decision-came late, as he had already lost the battle. Pessimism had conquered him. The Death of a Salesman not just portrays the moral and physical death of Willy Lowman but also makes a terse commentary on the social system that had reduced the individuality of the human to merely being a cog in the wheel. If a salesman is fired, he is replaced by an equally good, if not a better worker. The hard reality of maintaining his life and family proved too much for Willy Lowman. He tries to put up a brave front at home. His professional life is wilfully concealed and his problems as a salesman only find a small reflection in his conversations with his neighbour or his family members. Willy Lowman is unable to relish the pleasures of the family, in its structures, values and support system. Willy doesn’t share his travails with his wife and children, lest he is considered a weakling and dubbed a failure. He wears the mask of a strong personality in the family. The drama contains some monologues, where Willy converses with his uncle Ben. In today’s society, the Ben’s prompts can be likened to the sermonising of ‘self-help gurus’ who ask the mortal modern man to arise, to awake and to fight. But the words of advice from such people are lost even before they enter into the cognitive abilities to man, and impact the behaviour positively. Rousseau said: “Man was born free and in everywhere in chains”. We see Willy chained all over; in the chains of society, of family and of career. He is unable to cast off the chains and ultimately dies chained. The Death of Salesman is a tragedy laced in the cruel raiment of modern life. It is quite unlike the Greek tragedy where the chief protagonist is a super human capacity. Willy Lowman, is too human to enact a miracle. He is a man of average abilities, and to take relief from the harshness of the world outside he often embarks on fantastic journeys; the reveries about past, the day dreaming of a today. He loses all hope when his sons too miserably fail to stand on their feet, a distant cry of expected stardom. The glamour and prosperity of business world attracts Willy and his family, especially his son, Biff. But the requirements of business are too hard to allow them an entry. On having lost the job, Wily has to borrow from his friend and neighbour Charley. This further demeans him as a man. The success of Charley creates a feeling of jealousy in the Lowman family. Why is Charley successful and they are not? This is a question faced not just by Lowman but almost everyone in the world today. The metaphor of driving is used by Miller to accentuate the effect of a monotonous lifestyle of Willy Lowman; of travelling and to and fro from work everyday. He discusses, like every middle class man, the reliability and good aspects of old Chevrolet. Success and prosperity are mirages that keep on distancing themselves from the middle class keeping them in perpetual journey to find the nectar of prosperous life. The metaphor of insurance money is depicted as an institutional support in the era of market insecure world. It helps the family to tide over immediate monetary crisis created by the death of Willy. Out of such psychological compulsions, he imagines a love affair at Boston with a woman who admires him. Even here reality overcomes illusion. At Boston he is at a safe distance from his family, and he can fool around. But travel and transportation means have shrunk the world. He imagines himself to be caught by his son, Biff. Their relations are never the same again. The writer tries to portray the moral dilemma of a man; to eat or not to eat the apple pf extra-marital life. Long distance travel has not endeared him to his family, but like the traders of the past, makes him yearn for temporary ‘escapes’ and thrill of an affair with a woman ‘who can understand him.’ He imagines that he has fallen in the eyes of his son, the villainous Biff. The suicide by Willy Lowman draws curtains on his life; although ‘Lowman’ had died many moral and spiritual deaths before his physical death. He is unable to cope with the struggles of life; of continuously putting pretence of success about himself till the time comes that he is fired by, his company, Wagner. The façade of ‘success created at home’ comes crumbling down and Willy commits suicide. The tragedy of suicide is aggravated by the absence of people at his funeral. Willy’s death reminds us of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s immortal lines: “I chatter, chatter, as I flow/ To join the brimming river, For men may come and men may go, But I go on forever.” There is a refrain of perpetuity of life in the drama. Even before the death of our salesman, the baton of life has already been passed to his sons and Biff and Happy. They are trying to make sense of out of their existence. They are caught in the clutches of a struggle to make sense of life early in their lives. Whereas Biff has inherited the quest of real life from his father, Happy finds solace in the genetic inheritance of day-dreaming. Willy Lowman was a curious combination of the two. Genetics hold validity both upstream and downstream. The Death of a Salesman is quite unlike the death of foot soldier, who by the nature of his job, is entitled to a ceremonial burial amidst blowing of trumpets and gunfire. In the “Death of a Salesman” the extinguishment of life is an emotionless fading away of the man into oblivion to the extent of heartlessness. This exposes the near bankrupt and vulgar face of the society toward the living and the dead. The play reveals the individual’s trauma suffered by a man an increasingly complex world of men, machines, materials and money. Though almost sixty years have passed since the death of a salesman was written, nevertheless Willy Lowman’s character has withstood the test of times. He is as true today, as he was, when the drama was written. Conclusion: The Death of Salesman is the common man’s story. Anyone can identify with the numerous characters of the play. The character of Willy Lowman is identifiable with the head of a family in modern times, who wages a lonely battle for bread and butter. The character of Willy Lowman is that of a simple living being with all the inherent weaknesses and strengths including a few psycho-pathological eccentricities. Like the heroes of he past, he imagines big, but finds it hard to grasp and relish even the small successes. Linda is the patient housewife that has ever been and will always be the pivot of life. The children are the seeds of the future. There is a great moral lesson in the character of Willy Lowman. A person should scale him or herself right and shouldn’t nurture grand expectations of the self. A person should find solace in the present rather than in the fictitious realms of ‘time machine’. The present, howsoever prosaic and dull it is, has more relevance to the human life, than the past, or the future. References: Miller Arthur, Death of a Salesman, wwwbookrags.com, “The Book Rags Website” Retrieved Feb 27th, 2008, http://www.bookrags.com/notes/das/ Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract Or Principles of Political Right” Translated by WDH Cole, www.constitution.org, The Constitution Society Website, Retrieved Feb 27th 2008. Tennyson, Lord Afred, The Brook, www.wussu.com, Retrieved Feb 28th 2008, http://www.wussu.com/poems/alttb.htm Wells HG (1895) The Time Machine, William Heinemann, www.online-literature.com, The Literature Network website, Retrieved http://www.online-literature.com/wellshg/timemachine/ Feb 28th 2008. Introduction to Greek Tragedy (n.d), www.depthome.brooklyn.cuny.edu, The Brooklyn College Website, Retrieved Feb 28th, 2008 http://depthome.brooklyn.cuny.edu/classics/dunkle/tragedy/index.htm Read More