Feath of a Salesman

DEATH OF A SALESMAN

Willy Loman, is a traveling salesman that spends his whole lifetime trying to find success based on looks and popularity. For Willy Loman, to be liked was the definitive criterion of life success. Willy realizes that in fact he has lived his life in vain, never achieving nor succeeding but remaining a shadow of his ambition. It is this sudden insight that urges him into a fantasy, afraid to face the future. It is only through Willy’s failure as a salesman that his innate desire for the outdoors is exposed. At the end of the play, Charley mentions, “… He was a happy man with a batch of cement … so wonderful with his hands … he had the wrong dreams, all wrong.”. The character most harmfully affected by Willy’s pursuit of the “Great American Dream” is his eldest son Biff. Similarly, they are both impractical, one by the consequences of disillusionment, the other by illusions themselves. Still looking for his purpose in life, Biff persists, due to ...