Symbolic Representations of Success & Failure in Death of a Salesman - Essay Sample

Introduction

The Death of a Salesman is a drama that illustrates Willy Loman, an aged businessman who was living happily and was already used to acquiring contentment from his two sons. In his scene, Miller makes use of symbols o illustrate a few concepts, including his contradictory personality. Additionally, he employs those symbols to exemplify the themes of success and failure. They include the following:

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• Rubber hose
• Seeds for the garden.
• Flute
• Diamonds
• Stockings

These symbols signify Willy's ultimate, desperate efforts to be fruitful and the failure he cannot run away from.

Seeds for the Garden

The seeds inclusive in the drama of the death of a salesman signify the chance for Willy to demonstrate the value of his toil, mutually as a businessman and as a dad. The children he has taken to school with his standards have developed to dishearten him. Not a bit of his fiscal expectations appears to be genuine. Hence, he is frantic to acquire some perceptible outcome of a lifetime of effort.

Through the act of implanting vegetable seeds, he is endeavouring to commence again. But as Linda retells Willy these words "But not enough sun gets back there. Nothing'll grow anymore." This characterizes the circumstance that entire optimism is absent. The symbol of Willy to cultivate the vegetable seeds during the night supports extra how futile his exertions are becoming. The seeds similarly represent Willy's sense of letdown with Biff. Willy's exertions to develop and inspire Biff into a football profession have vanished away. After his realization that the football vision was unsuccessful, Willy takes Biff's letdown and nonexistence of determination as a replication of his aptitudes as a dad. Willy says these words, "I don't have a thing in the ground!" meaning that has mislaid the whole lot of things he has toiled his entire life for.

The endless wish for Willy to go out and purchase seeds and then cultivate them signifies how Willy blossoms to demonstrate his value. The seeds represent how Willy is demanding to toil his way at the peak in life. Through the implanting of seeds, it signifies how Willy tries to commence a fresh existence.

Diamonds

According to Willy, Diamonds is a depiction of palpable prosperity, authentication of one's toil and the aptitude to pass substantial belongings on to one's offspring. These are dual things that Willy fanatically wishes for. Diamonds are the unearthing that confirmed Ben to be wealth, hence representing Willy's catastrophe as a businessman since substantial achievement is what he could at no time accomplish. After the production, Ben inspires Willy to go in the "jungle" to conclude and salvage this diamond. Ben says this to Willy "You must go into the jungle and fetch a diamond out." In some effort to trade himself for the symbolic diamond of $20,000, Willy tolerates his prior proclamation to Charley that "after all the highways, and the trains, and the appointments, and the years, you end up worth more dead than alive."

The Rubber Hose

The rubber hose in the play provides a typical recap of Willy's suicidal tries. In the play Linda illustrates this after she utters "...it just happened to fall out - was a length of a rubber pipe - just short...and sure enough, on the bottom of the water heater there's a new little nipple of the gas pipe." With the aid of this quote, it turns out to be apparent that Willy is attempting to obligate suicide by gasping the fume through the tubes in his dynasty. Miller is endeavoring to describe the desperation using the "rubber pipe" and the gasping of the vapor. The similarity of these two "deaths" the symbolic death and his exceptional efforts to decease shows Willy's scuffle in offering his household with a requirement as elementary as gas for heat. Miller, in his imagery, is discovering the linkage of the responsibility of not having the aptitudes to pay for simple needs and the distraction that prompts to suicidal tries.

Flute

The flute tune that floats in the piece signifies the solitary weak relation Willy possesses with his Dad and with the ordinary ecosphere. The hoarier Loman produced flutes that made him deceptively acquire the aptitude to establish an appropriate existence by merely roaming from place to place in the nation and vending them.

This antedates Willy's profession as a businessman and also the under applied aptitude for constructing stuff with his hands. This would have served as a more rewarding occupation. The indentation melody is the sound of the path that Willy did not consider.

The responsibility of the flute in Death of a Salesman has nevertheless established a lot of consideration, and reliable elucidations of it have been anticipated. Nonetheless, some of those descriptions have not deliberated the musicological background of the flute entirely and are hence quite partial. Additionally, it has not formerly been renowned, for example, that Miller could have been mindful that the indentation rarely give the impression in art and fiction connotation unrestricted

Stockings

Throughout Willy's business with the Woman, he offers her a bosom present of stockings. Biff's outbursts once he discovers that Wily is on the action of his matter. The uttering of the words "You gave her Mama's stockings!" hits the stockings in Willy's attention as a representation of his disloyalty to Linda. The stockings adopt a figurative heaviness as the sign of infidelity and unfaithfulness.

Additionally, Willy never wants Linda to embroider back the stockings since it recapped him of his unfaithfulness, "Will you stop mending stockings? At least while I'm in the house. It gets me nervous. I can't tell you. Please." He also desires to demonstrate to his household that he got the currency to purchase fresh stockings for Linda. New stockings are significant for mutually Willy's egotism in being monetarily positive. They consequently can offer for his household and Willy to affluence his responsibility about, and overwhelm the reminiscence of his disloyalty of Linda and fundamentally to his entire family.

Work Cited

Lee, Clara. "Death of a Salesman Symbols." Prezi.com, 17 Jan. 2013, https://prezi.com/gcbgqocfygkn/death-of-a-salesman-symbols/.

Robson, Caroline. "Death of a Salesmen - Seed." Prezi.com, 9 July 2013, https://prezi.com/yudnbmtclcj0/death-of-a-salesmen-seed/.