Death of a Salesman

Death of a Salesman Essay Whenever a person does something to harm themselves, people believe that it is their friends and families fault for not seeing that they need help and helping them, but this is not always the case. In Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, Willy Lowman loses his mind and eventually kills himself but this cannot be blamed on his lack of support. Willy was raised to believe and act a certain way and from there it is hard to break that mindset since it was installed so young. Willy also was not open with his problems and always lied his way through life. In the end Biff ultimately did break the cycle and tried to help him but Willy only took it as a personal insult. Willy was raised as a salesman’s son and saw how his father acted and what he did. By seeing how his father knew all these different people, Willy believed that to be successful you need to be liked by everyone and know everyone. He also believed that you needed to act like a “real man” and always one up everyone to look superior. This is shown when Ben doubts Willy’s hardness for living in the city and Willy tries to oversell how wild city life is. “…It’s Brooklyn but we hunt too. Oh, sure, there’s snakes and rabbits and-that’s why I moved out here” (Miller, 50). It was the unintentional pressure from his family which psychologically ruined Willy from the start. He would’ve needed help right when he was taught to think that way so by the time he was married and had kids there was almost no way to reverse the damage that had been done. Willy always tried to hide any problems or troubles that he was having from everyone so that he would not appear weak. He would tell everyone about how successful he was and how much everyone liked him when really he was barely getting by off of borrowed money and he had no real friends except for his neighbour. Even with Linda knowing that they were behind he would get mad and tell her that they were fine and that he’ll sell tons of product