Linda is the heart of the Loman family in Arthur Miller’s play, Death of a Salesman. She is wise, warm, and sympathetic. She knows her husband’s faults and her son’s characters. For all her frank appraisals, she loves them. She is contrasted with the promiscuous sex symbolized by the Woman and the prostitutes. They operate in the world outside as part of the impersonal forces that corrupt. Happy equates his promiscuity with women to taking manufacturer’s bribes, and Willy’s Boston woman can “put him right through to the buyers.” Linda Loman holds the family together – she keeps the accounts, encourages her husband, tries to protect him from heartbreak. She becomes the personification of Family, that social unity in which the individual has real identity.
The concepts of Father and Mother and so on were received by us unawares before the time we were conscious of…
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…good home manager, she understands and encourages her husband, she keeps her house neat and is a good mother. Linda stays in her place, never questioning out loud her husband’s objectives and doing her part to help him achieve them.
Works Cited
Miller, Arthur. “The Family in Modern Drama” The Theater Essays of Arthur Miller, Da Capo, 1996.
Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman: Text and Criticism. Ed. Gerald Weales. Viking Critical Library. New York: Penguin, 1996.
Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman
Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman
Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman was written after the second World War while the American economy was booming. Society was becoming very materialistic, and the idea that anyone could “make it” in America was popular. These societal beliefs play a large part in Death of a Salesman, a play in which the main character, Willy Loman, spends a lifetime chasing after the American Dream.
Willy was sold on the wrong dream. He was enamored with a myth of American ideals and chose to put aside his real talents in pursuit of a fantasy. In several instances of the play, we see that Willy is a skilled carpenter. He wants to redo the front step just to show off to his brother, and he is constantly fixing things around the house. However, he doesn’t see carpentry as an acceptable occupation. It entails hard work and there isn’t any glory in it. Instead, he chooses to follow the dream of being a successful salesman. The problem is that Willy doesn’t seem to have any of the skills needed to be a salesman. He deludes himself into thinking that he is “vital in New England” but we find out during his meeting with Howard that even during his good years he wasn’t doing as well as he thought he was. He has convinced himself that he averages one hundred and seventy dollars a week in commission, but Howard tells him otherwise. This is a shock to Willy; he’s not used to having reality forced upon him.
Willy sees being a salesman as a worthy profession; he apparently puts a lot of effort into his sales pitches. His ideal fate is the same as Dave Singleman’s; to be so “well-liked” that he can make sales over the phone and to have hundred of people attend his funeral. Willy is blind to the…
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… he tries to tell Happy that Willy didn’t know himself. Unfortunately, Happy is still living in a world of illusions, and he becomes angry with Biff and says “He had a good dream. It’s the only dream you can have – to come out number one man. He fought it out here, and this is where I’m gonna win it for him.” Ironically, Willy killed himself so that Biff could carry out his dreams of success, but Happy is the one who actually believed in Willy’s dream and vows to “win it for him”. As Linda looks over Willy’s grave, she tells us that the house has finally been paid off; that they are finally out of debt. If only Willy had been willing to take a job from Charley, they could have been living an easy life. But, Willy’s illusions of being a good salesman and his pride in false beliefs would not allow him to. Willy has died chasing the illusion of the American Dream.