Death of a Salesman Essay -- Arthur Miller Exposes Willy Loman

decease of a Salesman written by Arthur Miller in 1948 attempts to give the audience an unusual glimpse into the mind of a Willy Loman, a mercurial 60-year-old salesman, who through and through his endeavor to be worth something, finds himself struggling to endure the competitive capitalist world in which he is engulfed. Arthur Miller uses various mental representation techniques to gradually strip the protagonist down one layer at a time, each layer revealing another truth about his distorted past. By doing this, Miller succeeds in finally exposing a reasonable justification for Willys current state of mind. These techniques are essential to the coquette, as it is only through this development that Willy can realistically be driven to motives of suicide.The very first section of the first scene, already defines the basis of Willys character for the rest of the play. The typify directions on page 8 identify him as being an exhausted aging man, whose work seems to be wearing him d own. lets his burden down (Miller, 8). Although this makes Willy appear uninteresting, he soon contrasts this characteristic when he shows an optimistic determination towards his own failures. Ill start out in the morning. Maybe Ill feel better in the morning. (Miller, 9) Another aspect of Willy that makes him more interesting to the audience is his already visible complexity of layers I have such thoughts, I have such fantastic thoughts. (Miller, 9) This of course leads the audience on to wondering what exactly is taking place in a mans head to make him say such a thing, evoking a mild fascination in Willys character. Another character that is developed almost immediately within the first two pages of the play is Linda. Again the stage directions on page 8 introdu... ...me period without using artificial memorable speech. This conveyance of realism to the audience is vital for Willys motives to seem plausible, and for Willy to be believed in as a character. On the other hand how ever, Death of a Salesman offers the audience another aspect of the play in which the inner mind of a character is symbolically represented in an expressionistic way on stage. Arthur Miller however succeeds in combining theses ostensibly contradictory techniques, by conveying a sense of realism in the way the protagonists mind is portrayed, creates what sets it aside from anything alike it.Work CitedMiller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman. U.K. Penguin, 2013.Works ConsultedBloom, Harold. Arthur Miller. New York Chelsea, 2008.Griffin, Alice. Understanding Arthur Miller. Columbia University of South Carolina Press, 1996.