This is a woman on a mission: protect Willy’s emotions and dreams. She refuses to see through her husband’s lies. Through the imaginary advice of Ben, Willy ends up fully believing his earlier assertion to Charley that “after all the highways, and the trains, and the appointments, and the years, you end up worth more dead than alive.” Character Analysis and Role of In some respect, Willy does experience a sort of revelation, as he finally comes to understand that the product he sells is himself. rough and hard to the touch.” In the absence of any real degree of self-knowledge or truth, Willy is able to achieve a tangible result. His final act, according to Ben, is “not like an appointment at all” but like a “diamond.
Ben’s final mantra-“The jungle is dark, but full of diamonds”-turns Willy’s suicide into a metaphorical moral struggle, a final skewed ambition to realize his full commercial and material capacity. Despite this failure, Willy makes the most extreme sacrifice in his attempt to leave an inheritance that will allow Biff to fulfill the American Dream. Willy’s failure to recognize the anguished love offered to him by his family is crucial to the climax of his torturous day, and the play presents this incapacity as the realntragedy. Still, many critics, focusing on Willy’s entrenchment in a quagmire of lies, delusions, and self-deceptions, ignore the significant accomplishment He cannot grasp the true personal, emotional, spiritual understanding of himself as a literal “loman” or “low man.” Willy is too driven by his own “willy”-ness or perverse “willfulness” to recognize the slanted reality that his desperate mind has forged.
While he achieves a professional understanding of himself and thenfundamental nature of the sales profession, Willy fails to realize his personal failure and betrayal of his soul and family through the meticulously constructed artifice of his life. The quasi- resolution that his suicide offers him represents only a. Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman Willy Lomanĭespite his desperate searching through his past, Willy does not achieve the self realization or self- knowledge typical of the tragic hero. Roles and Analysis of All Character in Death of a Salesman Character Analysis and Role of