Death Of A Salesman

3 Pages 736 Words

In Death of a Sales Man every character I believe warranted pity from the reader. However, Willy Loman more than any other character was the most tragic character. Willy’s warped sense of reality, his sad meaningless existence, and eventual suicide was what made him the very representation of the contemporary tragic hero.
The first characteristic of the contemporary tragic hero is the very description of Willy. I pitied Willy, and the reason I did this was because of his displacement from society. Willy wasn’t displaced from society because of usual reasons, such as a depressing personality, or individualistic views, but because Willy had no concept of reality. Willy’s morals and ideals that he believed in more than anything else, were completely untrue, and Willy couldn’t deal with that. The fact that the only values he had instilled into his children was something Willy couldn’t take, so rather than confronting that and changing, he instead fell into a fantasy world. A world where all the mattered was that you looked good, and that you were well liked. These ideas are not true at all in society, but rather to succeed you need to work hard, and do well. I pitied Willy because he couldn’t accept reality
The second characteristic is that the tragic hero has a major flaw. Willy’s major flaw again, is inability to see reality. Willy refuses to see reality to the point were should he be confronted with a fact he doesn’t like, he begins to hallucinate about years ago, when his children were young, and he was successful and he could follow his shallow ideals. Now his children are failures, his son Biff has been fired from every job he’s ever had since he failed out of school because he compulsively steals from them. And his son Happy pretends to be popular with women, successful in work, and next in line to be store manager of his job, but these are all lies. Even when confronted with the facts that his sons ar...