Death of a Salesman is the story of Willy Loman and his obsession with personal attractiveness, financial success and popularity as the most important traits in life, and the ones most likely to lead to his vision of what success is. As it becomes more and more clear to him that he is not a big success, that he is no longer handsome, and that he is not particularly popular,

He can't let go of the idea that popularity and wealth are what are most important in a man. In the second act, Willy receives a terrible blow. He explains to his boss, Howard, how he met a salesman when he was about 19, and admired the man's skills, and decided that sales was the very best job a man could have. But he tells Howard he's tired, and he

Death of a Salesman: Tragedy in Prose Tragedy, can easily lure us into talking nonsense." Eric Bentley In Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, we are introduced to Willy Loman, who believes wholeheartedly in what he considers the promise of the American Dream -- that a "well liked" and "personally attractive" man in business will unquestionably acquire the material comforts offered by modern American life. Willy's obsession with the superficial qualities of attractiveness

In conclusion, Death of a Salesman tells the tragic tale of Willy Loman's life. We do feel pity for this man as we watch him fail and we do understand that he makes tragic mistakes throughout his life that have brought him to this point. Many critics want to make allowances for the play because it represents the world in which we live. In doing so, they seem to forget

That tragedies reflect life is one of Aristotle's requirements and this requires that dramas drift from the tales of great kings and princes. Arthur Miller writes, "Insistence upon the rank of the tragic hero, or the so-called nobility of his character, is really but a clinging to the outward form of tragedy" (Miller qtd. In Wilson 132) and "I believe that the common man is as apt a subject

Death of a Salesman In all of twentieth-century American drama, it is Arthur Miller's 1949 masterwork Death of a Salesman that has been lauded as the best American play. The play deals with important aspects of American life, discovering and exploring the idea of the American dream. Since its first appearance in New York in 1949 to its numerous worldwide performances since, Death of a Salesman has spoken to the apprehensions