Assignment Paper-5

Topic- Willy Loman as a victim of capitalist society

Dabhi Ashvin P

M.A. Part – 1

Roll No -11

Year – 2010-11

Department of English

Submitted to Mr. Jay Mehta

Department of English,

Bhavnagar University.

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v Introduction: - Willy Loman is the protagonist of the play “Death of a salesman” by Arthur Miller. Through Willy’s character Miller has depicted the life of a common man. Willy Loman as his name suggest is the average lower middle class American. He is everyman his life is typical, dull, and innocent. He has two ambitions. He wants to be rich and he wants to be loved by his elder son Biff. The end of the play is partly ironical and partly positive. Willy becomes rich but only when he is dead he dies with the satisfaction that Biff really loves him.

The common theme of Miller’s play is the individual versus society. As a dramatist he concentrated on the single subject-“The struggle…of the individual attempting to gain his rightful position in his society” or in his family which is a part and unit of society. Like Ibsen, Shaw and Galsworthy, Miller also deals with social problems of the modern men but in a different manner.

In Death of a Salesman also the same theme of self-interest appears. Willy Loman, the hero is a salesman who is driven by two examples of success that have a strong hold or his imagination. These are, first that of a brother who ran away and became rich, and secondly of a very successful salesman to whom buyers come without his having to take the slightest trouble. Loman is propelled not by ambition for himself but for his two sons, for whom he wants every good thing. But contrary to his expectation the sons come eventually to despise him. In his conformation with his elder son Biff, Loman sees everything with brilliant clarity. Biff asserts his independence by rejecting all the dreams the father has spun for him and by asserting his right to be a failure. A possibility of making his son care for him opens out before him, and the salesman goes out crying out “That boy-that boy is going to be magnificent” The idea that has just dawned on his mind is that of committing suicide, making Biff come into the twenty thousand dollars of his life insurance. The deluded salesman contemplates Biffs’ reaction to this magnanimous deed of his father. Even Ben, his brother, he thinks will worship him for it. With a sense of triumph he asserts that Biff will thus be able to go on better than his neighbor’s son Bernard. He says, “When the mail comes he’ll be ahead of Bernard again.”

v Willy is a exhausted salesman:-

Willy is a travelling salesman in Wagner’s company. He is past sixty tears of age. He is exhausted. His wife Linda suggests that he should ask for a job in the firm’s office in New York so that he doesn’t have to travel. He tells her that the firm needs him not in New York but in the New England. He feels that he is largely responsible for the large sales of the products in the New England. He feels that he is vital in New England. He claims to know all the important people in his area. He says that he can park his car wherever he likes and the police would protect it. He thinks himself to be a very successful salesman but it is his self adaption. Dave Singleman is his ideal. He always follows his example. In reality he is an utter failure who is not earning properly and he is unable to meet his financial needs as well as he feels loneliness.

v A man of many illusions:-

Willy is a man of many illusions. He thinks that if a man wants to be successful in life, he should not only be liked but well liked. Willy loves material success. He feels that such success can be achieved by personal magnetism and the spirit of enterprise. He speaks highly of himself and of his son Biff. He has innocent faith in the goodness and rightness of other people. He thinks that if you make yourself likable, you can end up with diamonds. Realization comes to him when he is neglected by his boss and rejected by his own sons in the dinner scenes. His second illusion is greater than this first one. He gives importance to personal attractiveness rather than hard work. The results are contrary to this.

v He is a demonic figure in a shabby business suit:-

Willy Loman is a demonic figure in a shabby business suit, a man unable to compromise his dream, who like the tragic comic Spanish Don Quixote who hurled himself foolishly and wonderfully against the world’s wind mills must pursue his conception of himself wherever it will lead him with an intensity that most definitely passes he seeks a kind of ecstasy in life which by it’s very nature is impossible to maintain. Nevertheless, his inherent humanity and his capacity for love and self-sacrifice sympathetically and poignantly qualify this destruction.

v He is a dreamer:-

In his younger days of salesmanship he dreamed: “somebody I’ll have my own business and I’ll never have to leave home anymore.” At that time his son Happy had expressed his hope that time he would have as big a business as uncle charley’s but willy had confidently said: “Bigger than uncle charley, Because charley is not liked. He’s liked, but he is not well lied.”Illusions are real to Willy. He never comes out of the world of dreams, illusions and false beliefs. He boasts to his sons and wife. He tells them that people all round the places he visits know him, but when he dies there comes hardly any mourner to shed tears over his death. One reason of his failure is his misplaced with in the power of personal attractiveness. Second reason is his extra-ordinary concern for the well-being of his sons. He does not allow his children freedom to find out their own values. On the contrary, he wants to bring them up in his own world of illusions and false beliefs. He never let’s them face reality. Thirdly, he is a victim of his society which encourages and develops in its members false values. It is the world of competition that has caused his doom.

v Willy Loman is a low man:-

He is a salesman who sells not goods but his “self.” He gives his life, or sells it in order to justify the waste of it. He is so many things at a time- a father, a husband, a salesman, a member of a society, an item of human psyche, a tragic hero. To use miller’s words “Willy is a baby, Willy is a victim.”He represents the whole mass of American civilization a slogan out of the 1930s, ‘a banner to liberate people’, ‘a criticism of society’. He is an indictment against the machine civilization of America which has deprived man of his real content and peace of mind. He is indeed an average American. As Miller himself has said, “I didn’t write ‘Death of a salesman’ to announce some new American man, or an old American man. Willy Loman is, I think a person who embodies of himself some of the most terrible conflicts running through the streets of America today.” Thus Loman is everyman or any common man.

v Willy also suffer from a sense of inadequacy and inferiority:-

He tries to talks about something he does hot know anything about. In the play, several times he hints at his sense of insecurity, of haunting loneliness, of ravaging emptiness, of the lack of communication, of his inarticulate grouping into the meaning of a purposeful life. He feels that the structure of his life is built on a temporary edifice, and not on solid foundations.

v Misfit in the environment of capitalist society in which he lived:-

One way Willy is quite misfit in the environment in which he lives. He is very much depressed by the harshness of life and surrounding. He always wants to escape in his imagination world. He loves nature and it symbolizes his far off happiness that Willy wants to have. He is frustrated by the building around him. He says: “The grass don’t grow anymore, you can’t raise carrot in the backyard.”

His memories of elm trees, the beautiful melody of flute etc, they are suggestive of his love for nature. The symbolic planting of a garden before his death is also quite symbolic. He loves roadside scenery. He tells Linda that it is very beautiful. The trees are thick and the sun is warm. He is sorry for the jungle of bricks around him. He misses the fresh air of the past. He feels that increase in population is ruining the country. Thus he is depressed by materialistic world around him

v Contradicts himself and often absent minded:-

Willy is often confused. He contradicts himself and becomes absent minded. In the beginning of the play he returns from his journey without completing his work as he was unable to drive his car. He tells Linda about Biff that he is lazy and just after sometimes he describes him as a hard worker. He says that he is not lazy. Though all the windows are open, He absent mindedly asks India to open them.

v A pathetic person:-

Willy is a pathetic person. We feel sorry for him. He talks to Linda with a heart full of pain and Linda can understand him. We can understand his terrible situation when Linda says, “But he is a human being and a terrible thing is happening to him, so attention must be paid to him.”

She says Biff that ‘the man is exhausted’ Willy accepts his short comings to Linda but he is unable to overcome them. We feel sorry for him when he asks Howard to give him job in New York. He is able to reduce his salary from sixty thousand dollars to forty thousand dollars a week. But Howard doesn’t agree. He advices him to take rest. He has very high dreams for Biff. He is very happy when Biff is going to see Bill Oliver for asking for money, but when Biff returns and tells him the realities he is unable to bear it. His frustration always leads him toward the efforts of suicide. He has tried to smash the car many times. His frustration is seen throughout the play.

v A victim of the economic and commercial forces of society:-

Willy tries to achieve success but fails constantly. He is unable to bear his frustration. He feels that has done nothing in his life and it is his duty to do something for his family. He says,

         “I have got to get some seeds right away nothing

           Is planted. I do not have a thing in the ground.”

These sentences are quite symbolical. It is his realization that he couldn’t do anything. The other realization comes to him afterwards. It is Biff that makes him see realities and asks to abandon false dreams and cries. At that time Willy feels,

Willy: Isn’t that remarkable? Biff he likes me!

Linda: He loves you Willy.

Happy: Always did pop.

This is the happiest moment of Willy’s life. He wanted love of his son and he got it. Then he commits suicide to get insurance of twenty thousands dollars for his son’s better future. Thus Willy is an old man who has no security and cannot look forward to an easy and comfortable retired life. All his life, he struggled against back payments and debts. When he died, he had no debt but he was not there to enjoy it.

v Conclusion:-

So Death of a Salesman is not merely a drama of domestic quarrels between a father and his sons, a drama of conflict between capitalist and communism, between self and soul, between psyche and conscience, between religiosity and irreligiosity, between a salesman and a manufacturer, but of a conflict between the individual and society, a conflict between man’s values and his environment. The playwright was trying in “Salesman” to set forth what happens when a man does not have a grip on the forces of life and has no sense of values which will lead him to that kind of a grip. “Death of a Salesman is the most poignant statement of man as he must face himself”. Its basic theme is man’s loss of conscience. Loyalty to family also is its theme. It is an anatomy of failure.