Name : Rosyid Arifin
NIM : A320 080 57
Drama Assignment
Death of a Salesman
By Arthur Miller
1. The title of this story is Death of a Salesman because it concern on three points. First, Willy Loman’s physical death. He is a salesman who dies. That one is clear.enough Second, it’s about the death of his salesman dream, the dream to be financially successful and a father to hotshot sons. And the third, it tells about Willy’s idealized way of dying; he wants a massive funeral with everyone weeping and beating their chests and so forth. The gap between the idea of a typical "salesman’s death" and Willy’s actual death makes this title sadly ironic.2. There are some characters in this story:
The first character is Willy Loman. He is an unconfident, self-deluded traveling salesman. He believes enthusiastically in the American Dream of easy success and wealth, but he never achieves it. Nor do his sons fulfill his hope that they will succeed where he has failed.
The second character is Biff Loman. He is Willy’s elder son aged 34 years old. Biff feels forced to seek the truth of himself.
The third character is Linda Loman. She is Willy’s loyal, loving wife. Linda suffers through Willy’s extravagant dreams and self-delusions. seldom, she seems to be taken in by Willy’s self-deluded hopes for future glory and success, but at other times, she seems far more realistic and less fragile than her husband. She has nurtured the family through all of Willy’s misguided attempts at success, and her emotional strength and perseverance support Willy until his collapse.
The fourth character is Happy Loman. She is Willy’s thirty two years old younger son. Happy has lived in Biff’s shadow all of his life, but he compensates by nurturing his persistent sex drive and professional ambition. Happy represents Willy’s sense of self-importance, ambition, and blind servitude to societal expectations. Although he works as an assistant to an assistant buyer in a department store, Happy presents himself as absolutely important.
The fifth character is Charley. Miller portrays Charley as ambiguously gendered or effeminate, much like Tires as, the mythological seer in Sophocles’ Oedipus plays. Whereas Linda’s logical diagnosis of Willy’s rapid decline is made possible by her emotional sanity, Charley’s prediction of the situation is logical, grounded firmly in practical reasoned analysis.
The other characters are Bernard, he is Charley’s son and an important, successful lawyer; Ben, he is Willy’s wealthy older brother, The Woman, she is Willy’s mistress when Happy and Biff were in high school; Howard Wagner, he is Willy’s boss; Stanley, he is a waiter at Frank’s Chop House; Miss Forsythe and Letta, they are two young women whom Happy and Biff meet at Frank’s Chop House; and the last is Jenny, she is Charley’s secretary.
3. The reader of Death of a Salesman can get moral values if they read this story. Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, there are many lessons and trials one must tolerate, learn from, and then overcome. Some lessons take long to understand and ironically, some people never learn these lessons. Many people go through their whole lives without ever discovering what is truly important to them and their family and what is real happiness. In Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, Willy Loman portrays this very man; one who is lost in his own world, without a clue about life or himself.
4. After read the story, we can conclude that this story include in man vs. society because it tells that any man can have as great a fall and be as great a tragedy as a king or some other famous person. Just because people are common does not mean that their falls are to them less steep. Also one must find oneself to be successful in life.
5. The story started from Willy Loman, an old salesman, have a business trip. After those times, Willy passes a moment of enlightenment and realizes he shouldn’t be driving. Linda sees that her husband is no longer able to do his job as a traveling salesman; Linda suggests that he ask his boss, Howard, to give him a local office job at the New York headquarters. Willy thinks that getting the new job is a sure thing since he wrongly sees himself as a valuable salesman. We begin to learn some family background and hear about Willy and Linda’s grown sons, Biff and Happy. Biff has just returned home from working as a farmhand in the West. Willy thinks Biff could easily be rich and successful, but is wasting his talents and needs to get on track. Willy thinks Biff is being wish-washy to spite him. Later that night, Willy starts having flashbacks and talking to imagined images if they were real people. You guessed it. Something is wrong. He’s angry so loudly that Happy and Biff wake up. The brothers are legitimately worried, as they have never seen their father like this. Biff, feeling as though he should stay close to home and fix his relationship with his dad, decides to talk to a former employer, Bill Oliver, about getting a loan to start a business. In the middle of the night, Willy’s talking to himself so loudly that everyone wakes up. Linda admits to her sons that she and Willy are struggling financially. Worse, Willy has been attempting suicide. She’s worried and takes it out on her boys, accusing Biff of being the cause of Willy’s unhappiness. Now Willy gets in on the family discussion and the situation goes downhill. He and Biff begin to argue, but Happy interjects that Biff plans to see Oliver the following morning. Willy is overjoyed. Everyone goes to sleep believing that tomorrow will fulfill their dreams: Willy expects to get a local job, and Biff expects to get a business loan. The next day, of course, everything goes wrong. Willy feels happy and confident as he meets with his boss, Howard. But rather than give him a transfer to the New York office, Willy ends up fired. Destroyed by the news, he begins to hallucinate and, yes, once again speak with imaginary people as he heads out to meet his sons at a restaurant. Waiting for their dad at the restaurant, Biff explains to Happy that Oliver wouldn’t see him and didn’t have the slightest idea who he was. Distressed, spiteful, and something of a kleptomaniac, Biff stole Oliver’s fountain pen. By now, Biff has realized that he was crazy to think he would ever get a loan, and that he and his family have been lying to themselves for basically their entire lives. When Willy comes into the restaurant demanding good news, Biff struggles to explain what happened without letting his father down. Willy, who can’t handle the disappointment, tries to pretend it isn’t true. He starts drifting into the dreamy past again, reliving the moment when Biff discovered his (Willy’s) affair with a woman in Boston. While their dad is busy being detached from reality, Biff and Happy ditch him for two girls. Biff and Happy return home from their dates to find their mother waiting for them, fuming mad that they left their father at the restaurant. A massive argument erupts. No one wants to listen to Biff, but he manages to get the point across that he can’t live up to his dad’s unrealistic expectations and is basically just a failure. He’s the only one who sees that they’ve been living a lie, and he tells them so. The night’s fight ends with Willy realizing that Biff, although a "failure," seems to really love him. Unfortunately Willy can’t get past the "failure" bit. He thinks the greatest contribution that he himself can make toward his son’s success is to commit suicide. That way, Biff could use the life insurance money to start a business. Within a few minutes, there’s a loud crash. Willy has killed himself. In the final scene, Linda, sobbing, still under the delusion that her husband was a well liked salesman, wonders why no one came to his funeral. Biff continues to see through his family’s lies and wants to be a better man who is honest with himself. Unfortunately, Happy wants to be just like his dad.
