|
|
This is only a preview of the paper
Click here to register and get the full text.
Existing members click here to login
|
|
|
The play "Death of a Salesman" shows the last few days of Willy Loman, a sixty-year-old salesman in the 1940's, who has made himself beileve all his life about having such success in the business world. It also portrays his wife Linda, who "plays along" nicely with his lies and tells him what he wants to hear, out of compassion. The play describes the last days of his life, but there are frequent "flashbacks" in which Willy relives key events of the past, often confusing them with what is happening in the present. His two sons, Biff and Happy, who are in their 30's, have become failures like himself. Both of them have gone from wanting to be like their father in their young age to hating him in the present. On the last few pages of the play, Willy finally decides to take his own life ([1] and [2]). Not only out of desperation because he just lost his job, with which he was hardly earning enough to pay ordinary expenses at the end. He does it primarily because he thinks that the life insurance payout [3] will allow Biff to come to something [4], so that at least one of the Lomans will fulfill his unrealistic dream of great wealth and success. But even here in one of his last moments, while having a conversation with a ghost from the past, he continues to lie to himself by saying that his funeral will be a big event [2], and that there will be guests from all over his former working territory in attendance. Yet as was to be expected, this is not what happens, none of the people he sold to come. Although perhaps this wrong foretelling could be attributed to senility, rather than his typical self-deception [5]. Maybe he has forgotten that the "old buyers" have already died of old age.
Approximate Word count = 1208
Approximate Pages = 4.8
(250 words per page double spaced)
|
|
|
|
|
|