The Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Reaction Paper- Fiction: Drama
Sherryl Cascella
September 1, 2014
ENG/125
Judy Williams

The Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Reaction Paper- Fiction: Drama
The Death of a Salesman tells the story of Willy Loman’s last day. The entire story addresses Willy’s inability to change or accept responsibility for the mistakes he made. He is unable to acknowledge that he is an average man in America living an average life. Even with the love and support from friends and loved ones, he still feels an immense amount of regret about decisions he made in the past and spends a large amount of time retreating into the past and reliving moments where he felt successful. The three themes within the play are denial, contradiction, and the desire to live the “American Dream” by being liked and successful.
Denial is portrayed in many of the characters. Willy is in denial about the amount of success he has achieved as a salesman. He is unable to accept the fact that he is nothing but a mediocre salesman and even has to take out a loan from his friend in order to pay his bills. Later in the story Happy begins to display some of the very same characteristics that Willy does. He is seen to exaggerate his job position in order to appear more successful than he is, leading to a fight with Biff. Willy makes several statements about how “easy” it is to live the American Dream and even makes the statement “Certain men just don’t get started till later in life. Like Thomas Edison, I think. Or B.F. Goodrich. One of them was deaf (Act 1)” when discussing why Biff has not been able to figure out his life.
The entire play is riddled with contradiction from the very beginning. Willy is extremely unstable and Linda seems to go along with Willy’s fantasies in order to spare him the mental anguish he is already struggling to maintain. In the beginning Willy is talking about Biff to Linda and exclaims how Biff is a “lazy bum,” but two lines later he says "And such a hard worker. There's one thing about Biff — he's not lazy." This can be very confusing and leaves the audience wondering why Willy is so inconsistent. As the story continues Willy proves to be an inconsistent and contradicting person, leaving it very difficult to determine which statements are in fact correct. This is the result of Willy being unable to accept the truth and instead manipulating reality to make him feel better about his past and present situation.
Early on in the play it is known that Willy is unable to differentiate the difference between past and presence. At one point he is sitting down at the table playing cards with Charley talking about his struggles and how he just wants to be successful. As he is talking to Charley his brother, Ben, appears and he begins to have a flashback conversation with both Ben and Charley about a job offer. Charley gets very frustrated with the confusing conversation and Willy accuses Charley of cheating and he ends up leaving.
The entire play focuses on the conflict between Willy’s tainted relationships with Biff. Biff caught Willy having an affair on Linda with a woman in a motel room. This is the action that caused Willy’s falling out with Biff several years prior. Before Biff caught Willy cheating on Linda, Biff adored his father. He believed everything he said and just wanted to make him proud. At one point in the play Biff even told his father that he was going to throw a touchdown just for him during a big football game. Everything changed after he caught him cheating. Willy is unable to understand the choices Biff made and criticizes him several times during the play. “How can he find himself on a farm? Is that a life? A farmhand? In the beginning, when he was young, I thought, well, a young man, it’s good for him to tramp around, take a lot of different jobs. But it’s more than ten years now and he has yet to make thirty-five dollars a week! (Act 1).”
The story reaches its climax when Willy finally decides to end his life. This proves many things to the Loman family and sheds light on many fears that Willy had exclaimed earlier in the play. The need to be well liked and well known was very important to Willy and not many people came to his funeral. Just as he was unable to acknowledge that he was just an average man, he was not as well liked, as he believed he was either.
Biff is the only character that wants something more than the rest of the Loman family and acknowledges the denial and lies that everyone portrays. He does not seek the American dream that everyone else seeks and he proves that seeking money and success is not everything. He wants to be seen and loved for whom he is without all the pressures that society places on everyone to be successful. Just as Willy is unable to understand or even love his son, America as a whole is unable to understand those who value simple pleasures in life.
I imagined this play being very dramatic and I believe that Miller used Willy’s inconsistent personality to paint a picture of an unstable, unhappy man who just wanted to be successful. It is easy to imagine someone who would fit that mold, because so many of us want so desperately to be liked, to be successful, to have money, and be happy. I believe that the story proves that sometimes success is not the answer and by focusing so much on that desire to be successful that you lose sight of the things that are really important. I know that there have been times that I turned down employment, even though I would be making more money, because I know that money is not the answer to all of the problems my family and I face. Sometimes the time spent is far more important.
I spent a majority of my time reading this play relating to Willy. He was a kind man and wanted exactly what so many people desire here in America. He proves that it can be so difficult to achieve the American Dream and the emotional impact it can leave on someone if they are unable to achieve it.

References:
Miller, A. (2013). “Death of a Salesman.” Barnet, S., Burto, W., & Cain, W. E. (Ed.). Literature for composition: An introduction to literature. (10th ed. pp. 1044-1107). Boston, MA: Longman.