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¶ … Willy and Charley
Of all the relationships in Death of a Salesman, the relationship between Willy and his friend and next door neighbor Charley is the most honest one. Unlike Willy's wife and sons, Charley has never idealized Willy. However, he shows kindness to Willy at the end of the play, demanding that Willy's sons pay respect to Willy, despite their father's failed life. "A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory," he says when Biff mourns the fact that his father didn't "know who he was" (Miller 103). Even though Charley is a very different type of person than Willy and is far more practical in his perspective on the world, he is still compassionate to his old friend.
If it were not for Charley, Willy would not be financially solvent. Throughout the play, Charley frequently lends money to Willy to ensure that Willy's family is taken care of, even though Willy cannot bring himself to admit to the fact that he cannot pay bills without Charley's assistance. Willy claims he will pay Charley back but his protests ring hollow. As Willy's job becomes less and less secure and he gets shifted to working solely on commission, Charley offers him a job but Willy rejects the offer. Even after Willy loses his job entirely, he tells his friend, "I can't work for you, that's all, don't ask me why," and although he denies Charley's accusation that he is jealous of him, that seems to be the case (Miller 71).
The most obvious...
Willy's sons are either dishonest, as in the case of Happy, or are simply drifting through life, as is the case with Biff. Charley's son Bernard, in contrast, works hard in school, becomes a lawyer, and actually does something valuable with his life. He does not become a salesman, merely selling his personality and attempting to cash in on being well-liked like Willy, nor does he rely upon his athletic talent like Biff. Bernard eventually argues a case before the Supreme Court, symbolizing the extent to which he has done something meaningful, something which Willy's aimless sons will never do. Willy has a great deal of stubborn pride, even though from the audience's perspective he has little to be proud of.
Despite their differences, over the course of the play, the two older men are shown enjoying many ordinary moments together such as when they play cards. This highlights why Charley has such affection for Willy, despite their vastly different personalities and work ethics. "Couldn't sleep good. I had a heartburn," says Charley, to which Willy responds. "Well, you don't know how to eat ... No, you're ignorant. You gotta know about vitamins and things like that" (Miller 28). However, even this brief bit of humorous dialogue also shows the extent to which Willy frequently makes sweeping statements about subjects he knows nothing about, such as how to prevent…
Exchange at the End of Act Two: THE WOMAN: I just hope there's nobody in the hall. That's all I hope. To Biff: Are you football or baseball? BIFF: Football THE WOMAN: (angry, humiliated) That's me too. G'night. Both Biff and Happy are shown throughout the course of Death of a Salesman to have a very careless attitude in regards to how they treat women. They treat women like conquests, not as human
Throughout the play, Willy longs for the wealth, privilege, and equality the America was alleged to have been built upon until he can no longer deny that the promises of the American dream are just an illusion. While this is without a doubt a scathing critique of capitalism, at the same time, the play seems to be trying to show that nothing is truly real and once you remove
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
Though he hated his father's beliefs and principles, Biff inevitable became the victim of these misguided ideals, and like Willy, eventually became a failure. Biff was not able to achieve his desire to satisfy his father's expectations about him to be economically successful -- that is, to subsist also to his father's 'American dream' kind of life. Biff's resentment to his father resulted to his current state of poverty, with
masterful aspects of Death of a Salesman is the extent to which playwright Arthur Miller leaves it ambiguous regarding Willy Loman's culpability for his own condition. On one hand, he is part of a capitalist system which values people solely upon the extent to which they can demonstrate a profit for their superiors and how well-liked they are by their colleagues. Loman is not well-liked enough, and as soon
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