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Death of a Salesman
Willy Loman is the main character in Arthur Miller's play Death of a Salesman. However, there are other important characters in the story. One of them is Willy's wife, Linda. In fact, Linda is one of the central characters in Death of a Salesman for several reasons. First, Linda is the real head of the household. Willy is too mentally disturbed to handle his life and she helps him to confront the truth about their finances. Linda keeps everyone together. Also, she is more reasonable than Willy or either of her two sons. As the mother of Happy and Biff, Linda is also central in their life. She frequently has to scold them for treating their father poorly. Finally, Linda remains alive at the end of the play, so she is the last person the audience relates to. Linda can be thought of as the center of Death of a Salesman because she is the most reasonable and balanced character in the play, and because of that the audience sees things through her eyes.
As the female head of the household, Linda is able to have some influence on the other people in her family like her husband Willy and her sons Happy and Biff. Unfortunately, none of them listen to her. For instance she tries to tell her sons to be nice to Willy but they argue with him and put him down.
The audience is able to share her frustrations because they can see how Willy is daydreaming instead of living in the present. The audience can't relate to Willy very much because of that, but they can relate to Linda. Linda is a reasonable character, unlike Willy, Happy, or Biff. Also, the audience relates to Linda being unable to influence her two sons. She tries to talk reason into everyone but fails.
The ending of Death of a Salesman is tragic as a result. Willy commits suicide and his funeral is not attended by many people. He died alone and unhappy. The last lines of the play are spoken by Linda when she cries that they are now free. Therefore, the audience hears things from her perspective and she is the character around whom all events revolve.
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Death of a Salesman Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman is about a sad salesman, Willy Loman has spent his entire adult life in sales, with little success, but always believing affirming that a man who is well-liked is always successful. There have been many film and television versions of Miller's play since its first performance in 1949. The 1966 version directed by Alex Segal and starring Lee J. Cobb has