Sometimes the people we think are helping us the most are actually making our problems worse. This holds true in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. Willy Loman is an extroverted and secretly self-loathing salesman who is struggling with a dysfunctional family and mounting mental illness. His wife, Linda Loman, is the one person he knows will always love him. She makes him feel better by telling him what he wants to hear. This makes Linda an enabler of Willy’s behaviors because she shields him from truth and denies that there is anything wrong with him.
The play begins with Willy coming home early from a business trip. As he enters the house, Linda greets him downstairs. She is clearly worried and asks if he had another accident. She says, …show more content…
Thelen brings up the Loman’s financial situation and how Linda does what she can to save money. He mentions an incident where Willy freaks out when he sees his wife mending a pair of stockings. Willy has a fit because keeping his family stable is extremely important to him and Linda knows that he is not good at it. In his paper Thelen says, “She does not openly blame Willy for their financial situation because she is aware of that it is the most important thing for Willy to provide for his family and to make a good living for them. Her mending is making him angry because it is a sign for his failures in the business world.” (Thelen …show more content…
In Harry Harder’s “Death of a Salesman: An American Classic”, Harder says, “Linda based her life on the underside of Willy’s dream; she was the enabler who protected her husband from the truth about the shallowness of his own life, and as a result, her own life was restricted to whatever Willy’s was, which, of course, was not much.” (Harder 216)
Linda constantly reassures Willy that everything he does is right because that is what he wants to hear. As Harder said, her “Potential as a human being was totally absorbed by her husband’s need for reassurance.”(Harder 216) She constantly lived in fear that her husband would not be happy when she was actually one of the biggest factors in ruining his life. This is again explained in Harder’s book when he said, “She was unable to understand Willy’s despair and was condemned, at the end, to live the rest of her life not knowing what had killed Willy and destroyed her own life.” (Harder 16)
Throughout “Death of a Salesman” Linda Loman gave her husband false hope and lied to him daily that all was well. She lead him on to believe things that were not true and built him up only to be let down in the end. Because of her actions, Linda led Willy straight to his
The play begins with Willy coming home early from a business trip. As he enters the house, Linda greets him downstairs. She is clearly worried and asks if he had another accident. She says, …show more content…
Thelen brings up the Loman’s financial situation and how Linda does what she can to save money. He mentions an incident where Willy freaks out when he sees his wife mending a pair of stockings. Willy has a fit because keeping his family stable is extremely important to him and Linda knows that he is not good at it. In his paper Thelen says, “She does not openly blame Willy for their financial situation because she is aware of that it is the most important thing for Willy to provide for his family and to make a good living for them. Her mending is making him angry because it is a sign for his failures in the business world.” (Thelen …show more content…
In Harry Harder’s “Death of a Salesman: An American Classic”, Harder says, “Linda based her life on the underside of Willy’s dream; she was the enabler who protected her husband from the truth about the shallowness of his own life, and as a result, her own life was restricted to whatever Willy’s was, which, of course, was not much.” (Harder 216)
Linda constantly reassures Willy that everything he does is right because that is what he wants to hear. As Harder said, her “Potential as a human being was totally absorbed by her husband’s need for reassurance.”(Harder 216) She constantly lived in fear that her husband would not be happy when she was actually one of the biggest factors in ruining his life. This is again explained in Harder’s book when he said, “She was unable to understand Willy’s despair and was condemned, at the end, to live the rest of her life not knowing what had killed Willy and destroyed her own life.” (Harder 16)
Throughout “Death of a Salesman” Linda Loman gave her husband false hope and lied to him daily that all was well. She lead him on to believe things that were not true and built him up only to be let down in the end. Because of her actions, Linda led Willy straight to his