Comparison Of Truth In Death Of A Salesman And Oedipus Rex

Superior Essays
Everyone has to face the truth at one point or another. Anyone can run from the truth, anyone can hide, but the truth always catches up. Arthur Miller and Sophocles portray their anti-heroes trying to dodge the truth in their pieces: Death of a Salesman and Oedipus Rex. Both Oedipus and Willy run and hide from the truth, both have to face it eventually, and both could have done something other than run to prevent their downfall from happening. Point is, no one can hide from the truth for forever. In Oedipus Rex, Sophocles portrays Oedipus as running away from his prophecy. The prophecy from Apollo “foretold a dreadful, calamitous future” that Oedipus would “lie with [his] mother and beget children men’s eyes would not bear the sight of - and …show more content…
In Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller describes Willy Loman as a salesman and a father whose only goal in life was to have a little bit of success. Well, Willy really wanted the whole nine yards. Being a salesman in the 1940’s meant life of prosperity and success and that is precisely what Willy was. Willy was a salesman; however, Willy wasn’t quite as successful as he hoped to be. He was constantly having to borrow “fifty dollars” (Miller 74) a week and pretending it was his pay. Then on top of the debt, the repairs, and his oldest son fighting with him, Willy loses his job because his boss thinks Willy needs a “good long rest” (Miller 63) as he put it. The truth, at this point, was right on Willy’s heels and he was having a hard time believing all that was happening. After Willy had his mobile concurrence, he went to see Charley to yet again, ask for more money. As a result of being asked for more money than usual, Charley offers Willy a job (74); however, Willy refuses, saying he doesn’t want the job because he is a salesman. When the truth really catches up with Willy is during his argument with Biff. Biff lays everything out on the table, wanting to find solutions to fix them; but Willy has such a difficult time accepting the fact that these problems are real and that everyone seems to know about them. The struggle of the truth coming down on him is what had sent Willy over the edge. He tried to hide …show more content…
Most of us would like to just brush it under the rug and act like our problems don’t exist, but they’re still there. Oedipus and Willy Loman have so graciously shown their audience that no one really escapes the truth. Of course, they had avoided their problems for a while, for years to be more exact. Though, they could never quite escape the truth. The truth had always caught up to them in one way or another, and only if they had faced the truth head on they may have been able to fix the problem before everything had come crashing down on

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Oedipus Rex greatly supports the proverb “Ignorance is bliss”, whereas The Book of Job contradicts it, rather sticking with the catch phrase “The truth shall set you free.” On the surface,…

    • 1095 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    He is Linda’s husband and the father of Biff and Happy. He has made poor decisions throughout his life, and is now paying for them as a sixty three year old man who is not yet retired and does not have enough money to pay his bills. Willy suffers from flashbacks during great times of stress and anxiety. These flashbacks…

    • 1638 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Willy spends so much time trying to rekindle his popularity and grooming his sons to be like him that he doesn’t realize he is making himself and his family miserable. When Willy’s son Biff is sick of Willy’s attempts to get him into sales, he finally tells him he is tired of him trying to force him into a profession he has no desire of being…

    • 732 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    On page 50, after the argument between Biff and Willy, Willy professes,”Because you got a greatness in you, Biff, remember that. You got all kinds of greatness….” This quote essentially shows how much Willy believes in Biff despite the numerous amounts of faults that he committed. Although Willy is not satisfied with both of his sons, it is obvious that Willy pushes Biff more than Happy. Logically speaking, the more you push somebody, the more you care about that person as you would want the best out of that person.…

    • 626 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Willy Loman Failure

    • 720 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Willy becomes jealous of Charlie’s achievements, maybe because Willy never obtained the American Dream he desperately chased his whole life. Charlie appears to be a caring neighbor for Willy, even paying for Willy’s bills when he can no longer pay for his own. Willy refuses to show Charlie any respect despite his kindness towards Willy, until in the last parts of the play when he comes to the realization that Charlie might be his own real friend left. Charlie also acts as the character of commonsense and reason, even proposing a reasonable solution to Willy’s financial…

    • 720 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Fate and Destiny in Oedipus Rex and Death of a Salesman Fate and destiny are very prominent themes within the Aristotelian world of tragedies and have always embraced the “fall of princes” structure in which they were written. Arthur Miller shows, through Death of a Salesman, his belief that anyone, even a man as common as a salesman can be a tragic hero. In Death of a Salesman, we see how flawed Willy’s idealisms really are and how much of a downward spiral his life really is. Through his failure to realize that he is not really living the “American Dream”, we see how much he lies to himself and how his own illusory world affects his fate. In Oedipus Rex, the victim Oedipus himself is the one who causes his own fate similarly to Willy Loman.…

    • 1514 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Truth is a pressed theme in Oedipus Rex. Whether the character knows the truth about their fate or not, it can often be a struggle to accept. When a character ignores the truth, there is often nowhere for the character to go, developing wise, but when Jocasta and Oedipus finally accept the truth, they are set free from the lies that they have been telling themselves and can move in a new direction in life. In Oedipus Rex, Jocasta denies the truth several times.…

    • 558 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Oedipus Ignorance Analysis

    • 1248 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Ignorance and insight go hand in hand when analyzing themes in, Oedipus the King. Ignorance can occur from a lack of knowledge or information, and it can be caused by a person’s disregard for the truth. Oedipus is both unknowledgeable and oblivious. In opposition to the theme of ignorance, the theme of insight is presented in the play. While some characters are blinded, others know a tremendous amount of information, and this aspect creates conflict between individuals and pins those who know against those who do not.…

    • 1248 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    In addition, to Willy’s self proclaimed lies, he mentions how he does not wait for his buyers, that they call on him to sell them merchandise. ‘“I never have to wait in line to see a buyer. “Willy Loman is here!” That’s all they have to know, and I go right through”(20). With Willy’s arrogant bragging about his…

    • 1941 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Tragic Destiny In Oedipus

    • 1201 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The Tragic Destiny of Oedipus Oedipus the king by Sophocles is a distressing play filled with transgression, grief, and tragedies. The unfortunate incidents that the tragic hero, Oedipus, goes through invoke catharsis in the readers. He has been prophesied a dreadful fortune and feels as though “...no one suffers more than [him]” (Sophocles 27).Foretold destiny cannot be derailed as fate will always interfere and insure that the prophecy is fulfilled. Moreover, every tragic hero has a tragic flaw; rashness and temper are two of the major ones that lead Oedipus to make poor decisions. In addition, many humans use ignorance as a shield to protect themselves from a harsh reality and therefore restrain themselves from the light of true knowledge.…

    • 1201 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Sophocles’ play Oedipus Rex shows how people let their emotions control them to the point where they can no longer think rationally. There are many instances where the characters in the play let their emotions cloud their judgement, which leads to the gods punishing them for their actions. King Laius and Queen Jocasta are told that their infant son is fated to kill its father, and couple with its mother, which causes them to panic. They decide to try to prevent this prophecy by leaving him to die on a mountaintop. A servant feels pity for the baby, and gives him away to another king so that he will not have to die.…

    • 1153 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Fate And Fate In Oedipus

    • 1107 Words
    • 4 Pages

    I. Before his birth, Oedipus was assigned to a miserable life, but his stubborn attempt to fix his destiny led to his life becoming all the worse; his exile was not destined by fate but was a product of his own actions. A. The fact that Oedipus marries his mother and kills his father cannot be blamed on him because his fate was set before he was born. 1. Tiresias tells Oedipus that the prophecy made when he was born has come true and that he will “be detected in his very heart of home: his children’s father and their brother, son and husband to his mother, bed-rival to his father and assassin” (230).…

    • 1107 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Imagine a life where you are guilty of killing your father and marrying your mother. In Oedipus the King, this is the unfortunate reality of the main character, Oedipus. In the tragedy by Sophocles, written around 430 b.c., the question of whether Oedipus is guilty or innocent of these things is presented. However, he is both guilty and innocent. Oedipus is innocent of his behaviors because he isn’t aware that his parents are the victims of his actions, but he is also guilty because he fulfills the prophecy saying he would kill his father and marry his mother and for trying to outsmart the gods and place himself above them.…

    • 749 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Becoming a salesman is not only Willy’s profession, but it is also his passion. Yet he struggled…

    • 1127 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    He struggles to make ends meet and does not have enough money to pay bills. Willy encounters this conflict by relying on other and borrowing money. Willy lies and pretends that it is the money from his commission. Willy’s main internal conflict is with his mind; he has lost a sense of reality, and he realizes that his thoughts are strange. Mr. Loman says “Biff is lost” (1003N), it is ironic that Willy describes his son with the word “lost” when in reality, Willy 's lost in his mind.…

    • 972 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays