Sympathy for Willy Loman - Death of a Salesman

Death Of a Salesman

Arthur Miller does manage to engage our sympathies with Willy in the first act of the play to a certain extent. He does this in many ways such as using Willy’s speech, his troubled mind, the way other characters treat him and by using themes like the past.

To begin with, Willy Loman seems like a normal, yet exhausted businessman. This is until he starts to contradict himself by saying of Biff that he’s “a lazy bum!” A few seconds later in the scene, his line is “There’s one thing about Biff - he’s not lazy”. This is where we begin to question Willy’s sanity. Arthur Miller uses this dialogue to cleverly hint that Willy’s mind is not entirely stable. This encourages our sympathies because we know he is confused. Another point about the following dialogue in this scene is that Willy’s thoughts appear to be disjointed. He leaps from one topic of converstation to the next with no warning. He doesn’t even appear to acknowledge things that he does either. He asks, “when the hell did I lose my temper?” as if he didn’t at all.

At times, our sympathies can grow to pity, for Willy and for his sons. There is a scene where he is talking about being “liked” and “well-liked”. He boasts to his sons, in their young form, about meeting the Mayor of Providence. He is only trying to impress them but apparently these stories are not true. He gives his sons a false hope of going on a trip to New England. We could sympathise with him on this account, that because he has no real trip for them, he gets them to think that they are going on one. On the other hand this could be seen as giving his children a hope that cannot be fulfilled. Arthur Miller does this to heighten the relationship between Willy and his sons but at the same time it could be seen as cruel lies.

Another account that we can sympathise with Willy on is the matter of Biff. Unfortunately, Willy had very high expectations of him – almost unreasonably high. It was unlikely that Biff would ever fulfil the role that Willy had imagined. Even so, Willy’s disappointment in him could be one of the reasons his mind is so fragile. Arthur Miller uses this relationship to bring Willy to a lower low, to almost fall from a greater high. His disappointments are expressed when he says, “Work a lifetime to pay off a house. You finally own it, and there’s nobody to live in it.” He is constantly worried about family and inheritance, which many people in Miller’s audience could relate to. Willy doesn’t even manage to see the possibity that Biff will fail, he says “with scholarships to three universities they’re gonna flunk him?” With this attitude, it’s slightly easier to comprehend Willy’s disbelief.

Arthur Miller balances our sympathies for Willy with points that may make us feel unsympathetic. For intstance, he says he loves Linda yet he had an affair with a woman named Miss Frances when he was away. Linda obviously loves Willy very much as she is constantly a support for him, helping him talk through distressing times, and extremely concerned about his suicide attempts. Linda is oblivious to the fact of the affair, which shows us that Willy is a rather deceptive character. This again, does not allow us to sympathise with Willy.

Miller’s writing technique helps us feel exasperated for Linda at some points rather than feeling sympathetic for Willy Loman. In the scene where he talks about the population going out of control, she is constantly there to calm him down. This transfers our sympathy to her side so we can see how difficult Willy can be to deal with.

Willy deceives his family about his income. He lies about his sales, we can see this when he tells Linda that he “did five hundred gross in Providence and seven hundred gross in Boston.” She immediately works out how much money he should have but Willy stumbles in his speech, marked by Miller’s use of hyphens. He then admits to making considerably less financial gain in both places he visited, making poor excuses to cover his poor business skills. On one hand this doesn’t cause us to feel sympathy for him, as he is being deceptive and false. On the other hand, we see him as a person who cares for his family, and wants the