Essay About Last Day Of His Life And Final Demise Of Willy Loman

American History X
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The Powerful Conclusion of Death of a Salesman
The play “Death of a Salesman” shows the final demise of Willy Loman, a
sixty-year-old salesman in the America of the 1940s, who has deluded
himself all his life about being a big success in the business world. It
also portrays his wife Linda, who “plays along” nicely with his lies and
tells him what he wants to hear, out of compassion. The book describes the
last day of his life, but there are frequent “flashbacks” in which Willy
relives key events of the past, often confusing them with what is
happening in the present. His two sons, Biff and Happy, who are in their
30s, have become failures like himself. Both of them have gone from
idolizing their father in their youth to despising him in the present.
On the last few pages of the play, Willy finally decides to take his own
life ([1] and [2]). Not only out of desperation because he just lost his
job, with which he was hardly earning enough to pay ordinary expenses at
the end. He does it primarily because he thinks that the life insurance
payout [3] will allow Biff to come to something [4], so that at least one
of the Lomans will fulfill his unrealistic dream of great wealth and
success. But even here in one of his last moments, while having a
conversation with a ghost from the past, he continues to lie to himself by
saying that his funeral will be a big event [2], and that there will be
guests from all over his former working territory in attendance. Yet as was
to be expected, this is not what happens, none of the people he sold to
come. Although perhaps this wrong foretelling could be attributed to
senility, rather than his typical self-deception [5]. Maybe he has
forgotten that the “old buyers” have already died of old age. His imagined
dialogue partner tells him that Biff will consider the impending act one of
cowardice. This obviously indicates that he himself also thinks that its
very probable that Biff will hate him even more for doing it, as the
presence of “Ben”, a man whom he greatly admires for being a successful
businessman, is a product of his own mind. But he ignores this knowledge
which he carries in himself, and goes on with his plan.
After this scene, Biff, who has decided to totally sever the ties with his
parents, has an “abprupt conversation” (p.99) with Willy. Linda and Biff
are in attendance. He doesn want to leave with another fight, he wants
to make peace with his father [6] and tell him goodbye in a friendly
manner. He has realized, that all his life, he has tried to become
something that he doesn really want to be, and that becoming this
something (a prosperous businessman) was a (for him) unreachable goal
which was only put into his mind by his father (p.105). He doesn want a
desk, but the exact opposite: To work outside, in the open air, with his
hands. But hes willing to forgive [6] Willy for making this grave mistake
while Biff was in his youth. He simply wants to end their relationship in
a dignified way. Willy is very angered by this plan of Biffs [7], because
it means that he is definitely not going to take the 20000 dollars and
make a fortune out of it.
Happy, who has become very much like his father, self-deceiving and never
facing reality, is shocked by what Biff says. He is visibly not used to
hearing the naked truth being spoken in his family. He objects by telling
another lie, “We always told the truth!” (p.104).
This only serves to enrage Biff further, after Willy has already denied
shaking his hand, which would have been a gesture of great symbolic
meaning. For Willy, it would have meant admitting to everybody that he was
wrong, and it would show acceptance of his sons true nature. But Willy
goes on to say that Biff is doing all of this out of spite, and not because
it is what he really wants. Spite, because the teenage Biff had once
caught him cheating on Linda, and that was the turning point from being
admired, to being hated by