How does Miller present Willy as a tragic figure in the extract Carrots quarter-inch apart to suddenly conscious of Biff?

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English Coursework

By Chad Walker

How does Miller present Willy as a tragic figure in the extract ‘Carrots… quarter-inch apart’ to ‘suddenly conscious of Biff’?

Willy is the anti-hero in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. In this extract, Willy is communing with the memory of his phantom brother whilst planting seeds – analogous for leaving behind something that will grow for his family after he is gone. Willy is both the tragic victim and hero of the play as consumerist society plays the role of villain in draining him when he was at his prime and then tossing him aside as he becomes old and senile from the ‘exhaustion’ he was put under from working for both his family and a plummeting economy due to the Wall Street Crash of 1929 that led to the Great Depression of the 1930s. As the entire play is drawn out into two acts, with no intermediate scenes, the audience can fully experience how exhausted and stressed Willy is.

Ben had left America for the Klondike gold rush in Alaska and asked Willy to go with him so that they may become successful – in the eyes of wealth – but he rejected the offer, yet is still greatly influenced in his opinion of ‘success’. The very idea of financial success may have also been aroused by the Panic of 1893 and 1896. Earlier in the play when Linda sees Ben again she says ‘Oh, you’re back?’ as if dauntingly and she knows that the impression he leaves is tainting. Linda tells him ‘You’re doing well enough, Willy!’ but Ben interrupts and says ‘Enough for what, my dear?’ and Willy hangs on his every word but now, in this extract, he is telling him what is right and more informing him in what he is going to do as opposed to seeking advice from him - making him more independent and commanding: ‘don’t answer so quick’.

He also recaptures some sense of dignity as he recognises one of his wrongs: ‘Ben, the woman has suffered.’ This noble statement casts him in a heroic light and the word ‘woman’ implies that it is a universal statement of which Aristotle would claim that ‘the more universal and significant… the better the play will be’. When Biff discovers Willy’s affair he breaks down and Willy says:
        ‘She’s nothing to me, Biff. I was lonely, I was terribly lonely.’

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The repetition of the word ‘lonely’ is used to create pathos, combined with the word ‘terribly’ it emphasises how weak he felt but Biff cannot sympathise with him. He not only betrays his family by having the affair but by giving the woman ‘mama’s stockings!’ The stockings have sentimentality as Linda is seen ‘[mending a pair of her silk stockings]’. This betrayal shows Willy as an antihero as he has corrupted his family and ruined his and Biff’s relationship. He is ‘left on the floor on his knees’ which shows how he has sunk and degraded himself. To Ben, Willy ...

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