Reflection of Death of a Salesman

No doubt about it, Death of a Salesman is both deep and depressing. It is about a fourperson family in 1949 New York in 1949 after the two sons, Biff and Happy, have moved out.
Their mother is called The parents are Linda and their father Willy Loman, who is the
salesman of the title. The focus of the play is on Biff and Willy. It talks about the importance of
hard work and of truth and how the family got both wrong. The family argues and lies a lot, and
in the end, Willy kills himself to give his life insurance to his family.
I did not like the play. It was excellently written, and the narrators were very talented, but
it was too sad for me. The lives of each individual in the family have been so terrible, especially
Willy and Biff, who kept increasing their problems by lying and ignoring the truth. We can see
where many of the problems originated, by reviewing the scenes thatthe portray the past. In
them, we can see that Willy is gone most of the time, but his sons look up to him and enjoy
having him around. In return, Willy does not mind when Biff does not do well in school or steals,
but rather encourages him and says Personality always wins the day1. This continues, and
finally Biff fails math, not allowing him to go to university. He decides to leave home and go work
on a farm. This begins over a decade of bad relations between him and his family. Willy always
believed that personality was more important than hard work, but this shows that nowadays if
you want to get anywhere, you need to work hard.
I found that the end of the play was quite vague. The setting is Willys funeral, and Linda
is very sad. Biff is still insulting Willy, saying that He never knew who he was2, but this time
Happy takes Willys side. He swears to continues in his fathers footsteps and become a
salesman, while Biff maintains that he does not want to be one. There is not much insight to
what will happen, and the play silently fades away. I believe that Arthur Miller ended it like this
for the audience to think about the message and to wonder about which son made the better
choice.

1
2

p. 46
p. 103

Comment [1]: I agree with this conclusion.