Death Of A Salesman And Macbeth Analysis

A man’s greatest and sometimes uncontrollable ambitions can often blind them to the reality of things in which ultimately leads to tragic results. There are various examples throughout the plays, Macbeth, written by William Shakespeare and Death of a Salesman, written by Arthur Miller, where the male protagonists’ ambitions of being well admired and having power can be too much for one man to overcome and eventually leads to both protagonists’ journey towards their self-destruction. These two plays explore the two different lives of Willy Loman, a striving businessman, and Macbeth, a Scottish Nobleman, who struggles with the challenge of achieving their ambitions because of how they are blind to see the reality of things. Macbeth’s and Willy’s ambitions not …show more content…
In Macbeth, this issue is being addressed in the apparitions, “Be bloody, bold and resolute; laugh to scorn the power of man for none of woman born shall harm Macbeth” (Shakespeare IV.i. 79-81) Macbeth believes that he will never be hurt by anyone born of a woman due to the fact that the prophecy comes from the apparition, therefore Macbeth thinks that Macduff cannot hurt him. However, in reality, Macbeth is too full of himself that he is blind to see that Macduff could have been born through c-section and evidently Macduff kills Macbeth. In Death of a Salesman, there are many situations where Willy lacks to overcome his reality blindness. “ The Jungle is dark but full of diamonds, Willy./One must go in to fetch a diamond out“ (Miller 99-100) Willy believes that in order to be a successful salesman, one must simply go in and take the diamonds. However, that is not the case due to the fact that in order to be successful, one most work hard for it and Willy was to blind by his ambitions in order to realize the truth and this contributes to his decisions of killing