Death of a Salesman
4
Willy, in my opinion, does not have the sympathy that most other tragic heroes possess. He is presented, at least to my eyes, as a man who has become flawed, but whose flaws have completely replaced his good character traits. Whenever he acts in a way which is positive – deciding to let Biff do what he wants, for example – it doesn’t sem that he is acting as wewants to, but rather that he has relapsed into the ways of his former self. He is a man that the audience can pity, but feeling sympathy for him requires the audience to know what has caused him to become the way he is now – something that is not explained during the play. With characters such as Lear ad Oedipus, for example, it is clear what events have driven them to the madness that they display. The tragedy of Willy is evident, but because of our modern unwillingness to reward pure effort, his heroicism is not seen. In a different time – contemporary to the play – it would be far easier to see Willy as heroic due to his hard work and diligence in supporting his sons. He lacks the moral ground that Lear has – his loss of salary is supported by his lack of success at work, and he acts in a consistently reprehensible way, treating his sons and wife without respect. While Lear did bring his circumstances on himself by sending away Cordelia, he is forced far deeper into failure by the people around him. Willy, on the other hand, is supported by those around him to an astonishing degree - Charlie, Biff, Happy, and Linda all do things which hurt them in an attempt to support his needs. His failures are his own fault, stemming from is own innate flaws. However, I find similarity in his situation to that of King Lear, because both find their problems stemming from the decisions of their children. As well, Lear and Willy both are reaching old age, and this contributes to and in some cases embodies the tragedy of their situation. Lear’s bad decisions can be attributed to old age, as can his growing insanity as the play goes on – the mock trial in the storm, for example, shares what I find to be many similarities to Willy Loman’s recollections of his younger days, in that both provide a degree of closure, even if it is only temporary.
5
Willy Loman’s dream is the quintessential American dream. He wishes to be recognized on his merit, and he feels that effortforms a large part of merit. He wishes, as wel, for his sons to make him proud, and he sees this pride as only coming through their achieving what he has failed to achieve. His idealized view of his brother – Going into the jungle, out of the jungle, rich, etc. – is also a part of his dream. He wants to achieve the same as his brother, but because he is already old, he cannot do so – instead, he makes it his dream for his sons to have the same opportunity.
Willy fails to achieve these things because he is not inherently capable of them. His employers do not reward effort, merely success. This is a commentary on the changing of culture that was occuring, with an increased reliance on technology and esoteric ability, rather than pure effort and perseverance. Willy, a relic of a time before the change, does not get rewarded in the way he expects to because of his misperceptions about the nature of success. The reward is no longer something that can be attained in the manner he expected to attain it. And while his wife and children recognize that he needs recognition to survive – explicitly stating that he does – they are incapable of giving him the recognition because he alreadyfeels that he has sufficient recognition from them. The business that he works for, which he wishes for recognition from, is inaccessable to his wife and children, so they cannot convince it to give Willy recognition. This creates a sense of failure in Willy and this leadds him to an innate defeatism, disguised by his pride. Willy knows that he is not succeeding - he recognizes that he no longer has his salary, for example – but he will do whatever it takes to keep up the pretense that he has not lost it – Borrowing money from Charlie each week. The effort of faking his own success, in turn, forces him further and further into stress, which leads him to depression, and his suicide attempts. These make it harder for his family to take care of him, and to give him the recognition he desires. This constant cycle of lack of recognition and acting out is what has led him to failure over the course of his life.
6
Expressionism, when applied to creative endeavours in general, is concerned less with physically accurate depictions of reality than it is with expressing the direct ideas intended to be evoked by the piece of work. In the context of Death of a Salesman, expression canbe seen in the lack of clearly defined boundaries between what is actually happening and what is a recollection of the characters. This technique allows the audience insight into the mental state of Willy, especially, as it shows how he remembers his past. This can be seen as an expressionist method - Even though it is not actually occuring, and is not intended to be seen as if it is actually occuring, it is still shown. This is meant to place the audience in the same mental state as the character, even though the experience of the character is different that that of the audience - Willy Loman may not actually be hallucinating, but through the presentation of hallucinations, the audience is able to understand why he acts as he does.