Willy Loman

Having high hopes on ourselves often wears us down and puts ourselves in a state of depression when we aren’t able to fulfil our own expectations. “Death of a Salesman”, by Arthur Miller is a play that I would focus on psychological criticism because of the problems the main character, Willy Loman, faces and how he is blinded by it all. All of the characters in the play seems to have self-doubt and do not really know what they are searching for. The main cause of Willy’s problem is his desire to achieve the American Dream that his brother, his idol, has achieve. The fact that he is a failure in life compared to his brother has a big toll on him and it greatly affects him. This causes him to have illusions and he even starts talking to the …show more content…
His stubborn denial of these feelings, coupled with his misguided effort to measure his self-worth by the expression of love he thinks he can purchase in his family, only serves to aggravate his condition.”(Centola) Willy tries his best to fulfil his idea of the American dream and even implant the dreams on his son Biff. However, Biff fails to fulfil his father’s dream when he failed his math test. Biff goes to the hotel in Boston where his father was staying in hopes that his father could talk to his teacher but lost faith in his father when he sees him with another woman. This is also an example of Willy seeking pleasure principle through having an affair. He also avoids the questions asked by his son by changing the subject. Biff ends up refusing to carry out any of Willy plans for him. He gave up graduating from high school and attending college, and he became a drifter. Before Biff had found out about the affair Willy had always told Biff about the American Dream but all was lost when Biff thinks of him as a phony and does not believe in anything his father says. Willy however still does not recognize that it was his own responsibility for what had happened to his family. He represses his awareness of his role in Biff’s difficulties by telling himself that Biff failing the math course is the source of his son’s problem. This incident seems to tell the readers or audience that Willy is trying to repressed the real issue: his failure as a father in general. As Biff finally admits when he confronts his father, he states that Willy had raised his expectations of success in the lines “And I never got anywhere because you blew me so full of hot air I could never stand taking orders from anybody! That’s whose fault it is.” (131, Miller) When instant success did not come his way, he ‘’stole” himself