Death of a salesman 9
Death of a salesman 9Loving a person too much can often be deceiving. Failing to act upon the truth in order to protect an individual’s pride and emotions can bring about destruction for the American Dream. Lois Gordon’s quote about Linda is a good example of the disillusionment that many people experience when loving someone too much, when he says, “Linda, as the eternal wife and mother, the fixed point of affection both given and received, is, in many ways, the earth mother who embodies the play’s ultimate moral value--love. But in the beautiful, ironic complexity of her creation, she is also Willy’s destroyer.” In Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman Linda continually suffers from Willy’s frustrations. Even so, she manages to be the loving woman who attempts to keep her family happy However, by covering up failures and protecting pride, Linda ironically ends up being the cause of Willy’s destruction.
Throughout the play, Linda suffers a great deal of stress from Willy’s feelings of disappointment. Willy’s impractical dreams have turned into a lifetime of frustrations. Disappointed and worried, Willy sometimes treats Linda cruelly or insensitively, but she understands the pain and fear behind his behavior, and forgives him in those moments. Willy is rude to Linda when he says, (page 65) “Will you let me talk? Don’t take his side all the time, goddammit!” When Biff responds to Willy’s discourteousness by furiously yelling at him, Linda sympathetically says, (page 65)“What’d you have to start that for? You see how sweet he was as soon as you talked hopefully? Come up and say good night to him. Don’t let him go to bed that way.” Even though Willy treats Linda sternly, she cares for him so much that she forgives and excuses his actions. Miller tells us, "she more than loves him, she admires him." A man with as delicate a sense of self-worth as Willy cannot tolerate his wife's discordance with him, so Linda has adjusted herself to ignore her own opinions in favor of her husband. Linda also suffers in the way that her sons do not give enough respect to Willy. She feels that Willy deserves at least the
respect of his sons when she says, (page 56) "Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person." She is a good and understanding mother, but will not tolerate her sons disrespecting her beloved husband. After Linda finds out that Biff and Happy abandon their father in a restaurant for dates with women they've picked up, she loses control of her emotions and attacks both of them by shouting out, (page 124) "There's no stranger you'd do that to! I don’t want you tormenting him anymore. You’re a pair of animals! Not one, not another living soul would have the cruelty to walk out on that man in a restaurant!" Accordingly, Linda...
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