Death of a Salesman, the Man had Died Twice before Suicide

Willy Loman is a very complex character in Miller’s Death of Salesman, who consider loosing his pride was similiar to death.

The first scene has already been filled by complexity of Willy. Alone in the dark,he drove a car heading home, and when he got there he seemed to be tired and irritated easily.

Along the exposition stage to the climax the self-picture of him was a complicated one.

Sometimes he laughed and seemed to be happy, but for most of the time he was exasperated easily by his wife, sons, friends or neighbor. It seems like he lived in his own world.

He needed everybody but when they tried to enter his bubble he rejected them.

Willy found happiness and peaceful feeling when he talked to Ben. It was possible since Ben was an imaginative figure in Willy’s mind.

In the case of talking to Ben, Willy fantasized and developed his own world of peaceful and whenever he was in distress Ben showed up.

Willy’s Pride

As an old man who had passed 60 years old, the character of Willy had been developed through experience and life phases long before the play started.

However, he experienced series of conflicts and sometimes resulted as indications of certain changing.

Some may say that the change was a development. However, it is more because of his witnessing lost of his own-prides. For most of his lifetime, Willy considered himself as a successful and devoted salesman, and had a self confidence of being a good husband and father.

He kept on trying to defend his prides because he thought they are innate and had helped him to become a man he was. He rejected a reality of failure.

The facts showed that during the last part of his lifetime he lost the two of them.

The Fall of A Strong Man

The reality threatened Willy’s prides. It led him to lost all he had ever believed in and been proud of since he was young.

Howard faired him because he did not fit the requirements of modern sales. Although Howard felt sorry for him but Willy was just did not match.

Longtime devotion to the job, close interpersonal relationship with Howard and his father, hardworking minutes to years, thousands of miles of driving to sell the products were gone in a day.

Willy’s pride took him away from reality of being faired, to a defending position. He could not accept that he was just an ordinary person, who could become unemployed.

To protect himself, he kept the secret from his family and pretended that everything worked well.

The more he did it, the deeper he trapped in his fantasy. He even rejected Charley’s offering him a job, although he accepted Charley’s aid.

His objection to the decision which varies from soft to hard emotional pleas indicated his first lost.

Biff, who refused to pretend as Happy and his Mother did, chose to leave the family.

As a son of Willy, Biff suffered much because his father never let him to choose his own path. Willy kept on pushing him to become such a man Willy wanted him to be.

Besides, Biff’s respect for Willy had been broken when he found that his father committed adultery.

In the last acts, Willy realized his failure to be a role model to the son, and his wife. He tried to be honest and told the whole facts before Biff and Happy.

Being an honest person was not hard enough for him. However, the honesty brought him to realization that he was a failure to the family.

Biff’s moving away and their emotional separation were real. Willy saw what had happened as if he looked at the mirror, and found that he had no pride of being a father and husband anymore.

Reality was too Hard to Bear

The decision of Biff shocked Willy suddenly, and the father had to face reality. At this point, Willy weakened. He lost his hope and pride.

As usual, Willy ran to Ben, which means he tried to hide from reality, because in real life he had no pride left.

He was a failure and too bad he just realized it now. Since Ben was imaginative, it was Willy himself who used Ben as a way to prepare and encourage himself to commit suicide.

Having no pride means he had no other reason to live. The next days were going to be similar to being death.

Loosing the job ended his life as a salesman, and being separated from his son, who was his last hope of the brighter future, ended his struggle to be a family man. The failure was a dead-end.

In Arthur Miller’s hand, Willy Loman had died twice before committing suicide.