Death of a salesman
...t it begins to mean more when you realise Willy’s whole life is lived by this rule. Sadly by using this rule Willy is constantly trying to impress people who couldn’t care less about him, although until the end of the play he doesn’t realise this. It’s also obvious from the play that Willy doesn’t like to take big risks to get big rewards, he stayed with the same firm all his working life and when he had the chance to go abroad and become rich he didn’t take the chance and stayed at home instead. He is taking to Ben (his brother) who is telling him to go to Africa to become rich with him. Ben tells Willy that he could “walk out rich”, he didn’t take the chance. “We’ll do it here, Ben! You here me were gonna do it here” Here Willy can go abroad and become mega rich, but he runs the risk of failure, which to Willy is simply unacceptable. Although this is one reason why he does so, another is he doesn’t want his family to have to uproot and move to another continent. Willy’s fatal flaw is the aforementioned need to succeed. Willy has by no way made a success of his life, and has lost hope of succeeding and most of what he does, however at various times throughout the play he asks about seeds. Seed represent something at which Willy can succeed, which of course Willy has to do. Willy is having a flashback about a time he was with his mistress and Biff caught him. Biff is calling him a fake, a phoney, a liar etc. this makes Willy fell as though he has not succeeded at something. When he comes round he asks a man where to get seeds. “By the way – is there a seed store in the neighbourhood?” This seems simple because it is all he wants is to get his seeds so can accomplish something in his lifetime, no matter how insignificant it may seem to you or me. One thing Willy always believed he had succeeded at was being a good father, but when Biff comes to talk to him about Biff’s realization that both him, and his father are failures in their own right, Willy has to face the reality, and with this Willy becomes aggressive and tries to fool himself into thinking Biff is just saying what he is saying through spite for Willy. Biff is telling Willy that they are both failures, and at one point Biff even breaks-down into tears, comes clean and ‘bares his soul’. To which Willy replies “You vengeful, spiteful ...