StudentShare
Contact Us
Sign In / Sign Up for FREE
Search
Go to advanced search...
Free

Desire in Death of a Salesman - Essay Example

Cite this document
Summary
When Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman was written and produced in 1949, America was in the midst of profound and powerful tensions and contradictions. On the one hand, the nation had just won a major world war, bringing with an unprecedented sense of confidence, prosperity, and security. …
Download full paper File format: .doc, available for editing
GRAB THE BEST PAPER91.3% of users find it useful

Extract of sample "Desire in Death of a Salesman"

Desire in Death of a Salesman When Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman was written and produced in 1949, America was in the midst of profound and powerful tensions and contradictions. On the one hand, the nation had just won a major world war, bringing with an unprecedented sense of confidence, prosperity, and security. On the other hand, the Cold War with the Soviet Union was just beginning, and the nation was rife with anxiety about Communism, bitter racial conflict, and a huge economic disparity between the rich and poor. Artists and writers like Arthur Miller, dissatisfied with the status quo, were influenced by existential philosophy and Freudian psychology, both of which took off in popularity during the post-WWII years. Death of a Salesman is a scathing criticism of the American Dream, which stated that success was equated with the collection of material goods and social acceptance. Miller, like many post-modern writers, was captivated by the psychology of Sigmund Freud, which defined human existence through the human consciousness. The Death of a Salesman has been heavily influenced by psychoanalysis as described by Freud. Salesman was analyzed by psychoanalysts almost immediately after its debut on Broadway in 1949. According to Susan Haedicke, literary scholars have always been fascinated with the psychological processes of the Lomans and have analyzed the play in purely psychoanalytical terms. As a matter of fact, many of Miller’s plays tend to lend themselves well to Freudian analysis. Willy Loman’s flashbacks, for example, are a type of dreams and full of Freudian potential. They have been discussed at length and are the cause of Willy’s friends and family’s concern for his sanity throughout the play. BIFF: Why does Dad mock me all the time? HAPPY: He’s not mocking you, he... BIFF: Everything I say there’s a twist of mockery on his face. I can’t get near him. HAPPY: He just wants you to make good, that’s all. I wanted to talk to you about Dad for a long time, Biff. Something’s—happening to him. He—talks to himself. BIFF: I noticed that this morning. But he always mumbled. HAPPY: And you know something? Most of the time he’s talking to you. BIFF: What’s he say about me? HAPPY: I can’t make it out. BIFF: What’s he say about me? HAPPY: I think the fact that you’re not settled, that you’re still kind of up in the air... BIFF: There’s one or two other things depressing him, Happy. (1.131-140) Another aspect of Miller’s play that lends itself to Freudian analysis is the theme of desire. Freud has much to say about desire, and not just sexual desire. Death of a Salesman is full of characters longing for something. Willy Loman, for example, desperately wants the American Dream, and his son Biff desperately wants his father’s love and approval. For Freud, one’s desires express themselves in one’s dreams; Miller uses the motif of Willy’s flashbacks, which are really hallucinations that only he and the audience can see, to present Willy’s dreams, and by extension, his desires. According to Freud, “Desire is the subject’s yearning for a fundamentally lost object” (“Subject’s Desire”). There is nothing as lost as the American Dream for Willy, and for Biff, his father’s love. For Freud, any search for an object is an attempt to “refine” the object of one’s desire. All the characters in Salesman, especially Willy and Biff, spend their time attempting to do this. Being a tragedy, they both fail—Willy because the American Dream is an unattainable goal, at least for him, and Biff because his father’s love and acceptance depends upon Biff’s success and for, like Willy, accepting the Dream. Miller’s point is that the American Dream is impossible to obtain, making the Lomans as a family, as well as individuals, tragic figures. No wonder Willy descended into madness and resorted to hallucinations and eventually, to suicide. Fortunately for Biff, however, he was able to escape the unattainable by rejecting his father’s dreams, BIFF: No! Nobody’s hanging himself, Willy! I ran down eleven flights with a pen in my hand today. And suddenly I stopped, you hear me? And in the middle of that office building, do you hear this? I stopped in the middle of that building, and I saw—the sky. I saw the things that I love in this world. The work and the food and time to sit and smoke. And I looked at the pen and said to myself, what the hell am I grabbing this for? Why am I trying to become what I don’t want to be? What am I doing in an office, making a contemptuous, begging fool of myself, when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am! Why can’t I say that, Willy? (2.882) Biff’s brother Happy, however, does not have as much insight as Biff and vows to follow in his father’s footsteps. Biff is forced, perhaps fortunately for him, to end his quest for Willy’s love and acceptance when his father kills himself. Biff is then saved from the pointlessness of pursuing the Dream and is saved from madness. It is fitting that Willy’s desires express themselves in his hallucinations. For Freud, dreams are images of our desires. As Gale’s dictionary of psychoanalysis states, “Thus for Freud desire is satisfied just once, and any subsequent manifestation of desire is only an impulse that aims to reestablish, sometimes to the point of (psychotic) hallucination, the image of an irretrievably lost object.” Freud calls this “nothing but a substitute for a hallucinatory wish.” This is very definition of madness, exactly what Willy has been driven to by his tragic pursuit of the American Dream. Biff has seemed to escape his father’s tragic end by giving up the Dream. For Arthur Miller, sanity can only return to the Lomans, and by extension, to the American people, by giving up on the unattainable American Dream. In that way, Miller tapped into the psyche of an entire culture, and through his presentation of the Lomans and their tragic desires, demonstrated the insanity of much of American culture and values. Works Cited Haekicke, Susan. “Arthur Miller: A Bibliographic Essay.” The Cambridge Companion to Arthur Miller. Ed. Christopher Bigsby. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 273-294. Print. Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman. 1949. Print. “Subjects Desire.” International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis. The Gale Group, Inc, 2005. Web. Read More
Cite this document
  • APA
  • MLA
  • CHICAGO
(“Desire in Death of a Salesman Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words”, n.d.)
Retrieved from https://studentshare.org/english/1424934-desire-in-death-of-a-salesman
(Desire in Death of a Salesman Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 Words)
https://studentshare.org/english/1424934-desire-in-death-of-a-salesman.
“Desire in Death of a Salesman Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 Words”, n.d. https://studentshare.org/english/1424934-desire-in-death-of-a-salesman.
  • Cited: 0 times

CHECK THESE SAMPLES OF Desire in Death of a Salesman

A study of Arthur Millers Death of a Salesman as a modern tragedy

in death of a salesman, Miller brings about social and existential questioning through the unlikely motif of commerce.... hellip; Arthur Miller's death of a salesman can be said to have the thematic and structural features of a modern tragedy for reasons other than its tragic denouement.... In the essay “Success, Law, and the Law of Success: Re-evaluating death of a salesman's Treatment of the American Dream,” Galia Benziman writes, “Through the representation of this salesman's emotional collapse, the drama voices the playwright's resentment against the damaging and demeaning power of the American ethos of consumption and private economic success on the individuals who uphold and nourish it”....
5 Pages (1250 words) Research Paper

Thanatos and Eros in The Death of Salesmas Play

The death of a salesman also has some elements of Thanatos, the drive of dying.... The drive of love, Eros is definitely taking stage in the death of a salesman.... The author describes the Thanatos and eros "in death of Salesman".... nbsp; in death of Salesman the betrayal of love is evidenced when Willy betrays the love of Linda as well as the trust of Biff with his affair.... We clearly see the drive of death instinct-Thanatos operating strongly is the death of the salesman....
10 Pages (2500 words) Assignment

Death Of A Salseman

Willy Loman, in Arthur Miller's death of a salesman, is an ordinary man who dreams of being an extraordinary person.... Other times, he takes delight in his ability to use tools and build things, and throughout the play he idolizes his brother's pioneering spirit, but still, he insists that his measure as a man comes from his ability to make others respect him as a salesman.... Willy describes the perfect dream of his salesman's life, saying, "he'd go up to his room, y'understand, put on his green velvet slippers-I'll never forget-and pick up his phone and call the buyers, and without ever leaving his room, at the age of eighty-four, he made his living" (Miller 81)....
3 Pages (750 words) Book Report/Review

Arthur Miller's The Death Of A Salesman

The staging of Arthur Miller's classic play death of a salesman at the Odyssey Theater successfully depicted a haunting and tragic tale of a man who failed to achieve his American Dream.... Director Bob Collins in cooperation with Miss O Productions exquisitely reinvented the eerie and dreamlike movements of the play which they have intricately woven and pieced together to create a powerful melding of the past and the present....
4 Pages (1000 words) Essay

Willy from Death of a Salesman, and Hickey from The Iceman Cometh

Willy Loman, the main character in Arthur Miller's “death of a salesman”, believes in, but never achieves the American Dream of easy success and wealth.... Theodore Hickman (Hickey), the principal character in Eugene O'Neill's “The Iceman Cometh” is a smooth-talking salesman.... Willy Loman is an insecure, self-deluded salesman who desperately believes in the American Dream but never achieves it.... He dreams about being a super salesman like his hero Dave Singleman, a mythic salesman who achieved great fame and popularity....
4 Pages (1000 words) Essay

Tragedy in Hamlet and Death of a Salesman

The author uses Hamlet and death of a salesman to draw parallels between the plays.... The author states that both the plays, Hamlet and death of a salesman, provoke a sense of pity and fear in the viewers and readers, which are very significant for a tragedy according to Aristotle… Hamlet and death of a salesman are both tragedies but both are written in different eras and by different writers.... Hamlet is a classic play while death of a salesman is a Modern one....
15 Pages (3750 words) Essay

A streetcar name desire and death of a salesman

death of a salesman.... In the real sense Willy was a failure as a father as well as a salesman (Miller 62).... hellip; In his interpretation, his funeral is that of a successful salesman, an interpretation of his illusion, and his desperate need to escape from the reality that his life was not successful In the case of Willy, his past has been instrumental in shaping his future.... In his interpretation, his funeral is that of a successful salesman, an interpretation of his illusion, and his desperate need to escape from the reality that his life was not successful (Miller 188)....
1 Pages (250 words) Essay

A Streetcar Name Desire and Death of a Salesman

The author of the paper "A Streetcar Name Desire and death of a salesman" argues in a well-organized manner that as seen in the work of Williams, Christopher Bigsby describes William as a romantic person in an unromantic world (Williams, 2004, p.... The paper "A Streetcar Name Desire and death of a salesman" is a wonderful example of an assignment on literature.... In the real sense, Willy was a failure as a father as well as a salesman (Miller, 2007, p....
1 Pages (250 words) Assignment
sponsored ads
We use cookies to create the best experience for you. Keep on browsing if you are OK with that, or find out how to manage cookies.
Contact Us