The Death Of A Salesman Book review | Teen Ink

The Death Of A Salesman Book review

April 6, 2023
By leolu BRONZE, Colorado Spring, Colorado
leolu BRONZE, Colorado Spring, Colorado
4 articles 0 photos 0 comments

​​     The play, Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller starts with a traveling salesman, Willy Loman, who comes home and finds his son, Biff, as returns from looking for his life’s direction by working on ranches all over the West. Willy believes Bliff is not living up to his potential, but his brother, (who goes by“Happy”) is fulfilling his potential, as an assistant buyer for a department store. Willy has been complaining about his lack of sales and with his wife Linda. His sales and commission are so low that he is unable to pay all the bills, and he is full of self-doubt. Linda tries to  comfort him, but Willy always thinks about the  affair he had while in Boston. This play shows how dark,mental illness is about parents' heavy hope on their child  in the middle productive level in society.

   Betrayal is also a theme in this novel. The connection between love and betrayal runs through the play: Biff ends the play by saying that Willy betrayed him, and Willy encourages him to settle for greatness, thus making compromise in the real world extremely difficult. In the whole play, Willy plays a loser, who gets love and care from Linda all day long. Which gradually causes Willy's fragile mind to have a huge gap with the reality of life. I think the author is suggesting that in our real life, there are so many people and families like this, who have a big heart to follow the dream but never imagine the cost and amounts of work they need to pay.


  Willy’s is so distraught and depressed about his failed sales and commission, that he becomes bewildered and begins hallucinating. He periodically hears his mistress laughing. WhenHe approached the laughing sounds, he began another reminiscent day dreaming and talking to his dead brother Ben.

  Linda, who is Willy’s wife, she is being kind to her sons and being patient with her husband all the time, urges Willy to go to his boss, Howard, to ask for a better job, but Howard refuses regardless of Willy’s pleas. Charlie offers Willy a lot of job. However,Willy, out of a tremendous sense of pride, has been refusing the offer.  his own pride. In the show, Willy has been talking to his brother ben, who died, and imagining if ben were still alive. After Willy Lindahl urged to go to his boss Howard to ask for a new job, but Howard refused Willy, kept pleading with Howard. Howard finally cut willy off. Later, Willy meets Charles's son, Bernard, who is very successful as a lawyer. Willy start to compare between Bernard and Bliff, he think Bliff so much worse compared to Bernard, this caused more conflict for Willy and Bliff.


Meantime, Biff and Happy are playing with a bunch of girls at the restaurant which are basically just flirting with them . When Willy walks into the restaurant asking for good news, Biff explains what had happened about him not getting the job, trying not to disappoint his father, because he knows that Willy will be angry about how he did not get the job. Willy tries to pretend it wasn't true that his son failed him again. Back to the long time ago, when Willy still working at Boston and Bliff are in high school. In the hotel, the woman is about to flirt with Willy, but the door knocks and Bliff enters. Woman quickly ducks into the back closet. Bliff tells Willy that he is failing math. But the thing Bliff said caused the woman to laugh about it, then she got off of the closet. Bliff saw that and then rushed into frustration, saying that Willy is a false little cheater. And learned that his father was having an affair at his teenage age.Back in now, Willy had been arguing with Bliff. Bliff started crying and willy stopped arguing. Everyone went to bed except Willy, who continued talking to Ben about Biff and the $20,000 insurance money. Linda soon called Willy, but got no answer. Biff and Happy are listening, too. They heard Willie's car drive away. Then Willy suicide.


Everything in this story happened seventy-two hours before Willy’s death, and I think Willy's personality and emotions are formed between people.  Like when Bliff came home, Willy was in a bad mood. They quarreled all the time. And Willy keeps comparing Bernard to Bliff, which makes Willy himself very grumpy. The point of writing Willy like this is to show how a man can be crushed by nervousness and monotony from work. This refers to how Willy this figure shows that this type of people in society has a lot. They are playing good to their family and life in the beginning, gradually, they lose their patience and hope. So their personality will slowly become irritable and complain about everything.


Now, I am gonna talk about Bliff Loaman. He is the second struggling figure in the whole play, he had a successful time back in high school, which his family and him are very proud of. But the rest of his life is miserable, Bliff does not have the decent job that everyone wishes for, instead, after years of working as a farm hand, he still couldn't measure up to his father's success. He admits his failure, just as Bliff doesn't get angry when Willy compares him to Bernard. Bliff listens quietly. But then he realized that he could still achieve happiness through his own simpler version of the American dream: the good life he had earned through his own sweat and effort. That's something Willy never realized, I can understand him deeply, fight with life by himself, seeing all his brothers happy. He works as an assistant manager at a department store. Happy is duplicant to his family, takes bribes at work, and sleeps with a co-worker's girlfriend. These are bad qualities inherited from Willy.


 Willy’s dream, is to have a successful career and to reach  heights that others before him have not attained. He pursues success to bring a sense of security to his family. The ultimate sacrifice is in his death, so his family can benefit from his life insurance policy 

 

   Overall, Arthur Miller creates effective characters to reveal a clear message about mental illness and the struggles some have surviving in a difficult world.


The author's comments:

This is a book review of The Death Of A Salesman. It will provide readers with an overall general conclusion about the story


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