Death of a Salesman - Willy's Ideals

A detailed Summary of Death of a Salesman - Willy's Ideals


"Willy Loman is destroyed by his own ideals"

Willy Loman is a travelling salesman who has worked for the Wagner firm for 34 years. He is now 61 years old and his job has been taken off salary and put on commission. He has a family and he boasts to them that he is "vital in New England," but in fact he isn't vital anywhere. Willy has many strong beliefs that he strives to achieve.

He wants to own his own business and he wants to be "bigger than Uncle Charley" and especially he wants to be a great success and he tries to emulate Dave Singleman. He wishes to die the "Death of a Salesman" and have many buyers and salesmen mourn for him. He also tries to be a good father, and husband.

However Willy's aims in life have been useless as he hasn't really achieved anything. He got fired by Howard, his sons are both failures and they abandoned him in a restaurant toilet. Hi


Although Willy is mostly destroyed by his own ideals there are other things that destroy him as well, like Howard, Happy and Biff. Willy is emotionally destroyed when Howard fires him. Then, both of his sons disown and abandon him in Frank's Chop House. Both Happy and Biff left their father talking to himself in the bathroom while they wanted to have a good night out with the girls. That also destroyed Willy because it showed that his sons didn't really care if he lived or died.

After 34 years of Willy's life, he loses his job. To a normal person under normal circumstances, being retrenched is a time when you feel useless. But for Willy, since everything else is going wrong at the same time, he feels like a useless old man. Willy thought that just because he named his boss, that he would have a secure future with the company but as Charley said "them things don't me

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 587
Approximate Pages = 2 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English

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