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Who was Willy Loman? br /
Willy Loman was a man of greatness but didn\'t exactly know who he was. Above all Willy Loman was a dreamer.
From a reader\'s view, Willy was a very foolish man who turned his back onto reality and lived out his dream.
There are two crucial aspects, which we have to analyse.
Firstly, we must analyse the seemingly wretched character of Willy Loman, to understand how he came to these dreams.
Secondly, to make an accurate assessment of Willy\'s dreams, we have to conceive the idea of Willy\'s dream, the American dream.
In Death of a Salesman, Willy is presented as being a man who moves towards success, but misses it and then tries to achieve something which he can\'t reach.
At first, he is presented as two different people.
The first impression is that he is an angry man who blames the world for his faults.
Willy is an insecure man who cheats his loving wife, lies to his sons, and teaches them that cheating and stealing is a way of life.
But most of all, he would do anything to accomplish his unachievable dreams, including committing suicide in order to show his sons that he is a man.
However, the other view of Willy is that he is an exhausted and tired man. He is mostly suffering some mental problems and has just been fired from a job which he has worked his whole life for, a job which he treasures and loves. Even he sacrifices his life to enable his sons a better one because he loves his sons, especially Biff. And finally by his existential anxiety he started loosing control of his life
So which view of Willy is correct?
Unfortunately both of them are correct.
Willy is a tired man. Deep inside he knows that his better days have passed but instead of looking towards the future, he still looks back and regrets. One notable example is how Willy has \'flashbacks\' of a better life year ago. Here, he is the proud father of two young striving boys and the loving husband of a caring wife. Later we got to know that Willy has had an affair with a mistress, who loves the stockings that Willy gives her, not Willy himself. It is this type of behaviour and happening that we see that Willy can never achieve a perfect future because he does not have a perfect beginning.
He has lost all his friends, his respect, his dignity but he has retained his pride, his pride which leads to his downfall since. Willy cannot admit that he has failed and needs to start again.
Also Willy's name is a suggestion to his life because in Loman just the "w" is missing to make the plot perfect. Willy never got up from his life as little unsuccessful salesman and as a father who failed in each manner. Above all, he never got up from his social status and familiar problems.
à So who was Willy Loman?
Willy Loman was a proud lonely man who couldn't see what was happening around him. He was a salesman with a dream, the American Dream, the only dream you can have to become successful. This dream is not unreachable as shown in the case of Charley and his son Bernard; both are very successfully people who are liked but not well liked. Willy is of the opinion that nobody, except Charley, understands him. Willy is not a man to be angry at because he lied to his sons or had an affair, but he is more of a man to be pitied because he has been blinded by his own dream, a dream which killed him even to the very end. Willy\'s suicide convinces Happy to finish Willy\'s dream. Only Biff comes to realize what a fake his father was and sees that he must abandon Willy\'s dream and set off to accomplish his own one.
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