Biff is instantly provoked and he goes to the defense of Willy thus: ‘Miss Forsythe, you have just seen a prince walk by. His concern for his father and the fondness he displays towards him are eloquently brought to light when his younger brother’s girlfriend Miss Forsythe attacks Willy as not being worthy to call himself their father. ![]() Although Biff, the elder son of Willy on whom the father has pinned all his hopes and who could not ‘find himself for the last fourteen years for a proper settlement in life, did quarrel with his father often by attacking him mercilessly for having doted on him, he has pathetically clung to his father’s essential goodness. He is looking for his selfhood, for his immortal soul, so to speak, and people who don’t know the intensity of that quest, think he is odd, but a lot of salesmen, in a line of work where ingenuity and individualism are acquired by the nature of the work, have a very intimate understanding of his problems’ (Arthur Miller). The truth is that Death of a Salesman is a play about a man who is seeking for a kind of ecstasy in life which the machine civilization deprives people of. It is a story of a common man, who slides to the pathetic state of committing suicide, with the wreck of each days’ wishes, wishes he cherished as being realizable! It is this failure of a man to realize his fond wishes that form the foundation of this play as being evocative of pity and pathos, Miller himself remarked about this play thus: ‘I set out not to write a tragedy, but to show the truth as I saw it. Judging by the definition of Aristotle that the action in a tragedy must be serious, magnificent and noble, Miller’s play Death of a Salesman dwarfs into insignificance as it does not deal with an accomplished man or a man of noble lineage. ![]() Aristotle’s definition and Miller’s play.
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