Death of a sales man (Book Review Sample)

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Infidelity, parenthood, betrayals, career frustrations, and American dream, the writer combines all these into The Death of a Salesman. Having been written after the shadows of the great depression in the US, the play highlights the failed dreams of a young man whose life plans seems to be crumbling under his own watch. Willy, a salesman whose underperformance in sales is evident, gets fired from his job. His frustration is inflamed by his first born son Biff who seems to be losing the horizon of success that the father had desperately wanted him to hang onto (Miller).
Miller has a penchant of pegging his plays on the upshots in the society. To Miller, the role of an artist is to paint the society, and in painting the society, one chooses the colours that depict the true identity of the society. In other words, Miller admits that if an artist cannot display the occurrents of the society in his work, then he has no business in the theatre. Streams of his works are depictions of the phenomena in the society.
Willy Loman, is he really likeable?
Miller uses Willy as an embodiment of failed dreams. The character plays a major role in the play to highlight on the consequences of our failures to hit our targets. He buries himself in a stream of pseudo optimism yet even he himself knows that he is staring right into the furnace of failed dreams and aspirations. Even though the wife encourages him, it is well known that this is just for consolation. But then one trait constantly comes out of Willy, he paints himself as a likeable character all through the play, an assertion that the audience would quickly dismiss
Willy's boss fires him from the company. He is performing very dismally in the department and Howard Wagner, Willy's boss ends up firing him. The actions of his boss do not really affirm the likeability of the main character. The audience would expect that for a likeable character, the boss would address his frustrations by looking for another option of assisting him instead of firing him. But that notwithstanding, Willy is said to have been intensely frustrated with the prospects of having to work far away. He is depressed over the travels and this is causing him to lose his mental stability, on the wife's counsel, he goes to ask his board to transfer him so that he works in his home town, a request that his boss turns down. Now, for a critical mind, this is not an image of an admirable character (Miller).
Despite his affection for the father, Biff does not really admire his father. He considers him a “normal” man who is as mediocre as himself. For a father, this is very demeaning. Biff catches his father out rightly with a surreptitious woman whom he is having an affair with. Biff's admiration for the father nosedives and this changes how he perceives his dad and most outstandingly, how he perceives life in general. He is distraught after this and changes his goals in life to the chagrin of his father. The likeability of Willy is put into question. He is not anywhere close to being likeable, at least as the writer paints him in the play (Miller).
To be fair to the character, Willy is seated between the anvil of his likeability and the hammer of loathsomeness by the characters and the audience at large. He wears both garments of the virtue of likeability and the opposite. However, it is factual to admit that the likeability in this case is an admiration seen from an audience's point of view, not in his interaction with the fellow character. From bird's eye view, “a third person audience,” it is conclusive to say that Willy sacrifices for Biff so that Biff would make it in life. He ostensibly crashes the car and dies in order to claim insurance to be used by his s...