International Journal of Language & Literature

Defensive Self-Identity and Crisis: Misunderstanding Media and Communication in Miller’s Death of a Salesman
Dr Shantanu Siuli

Abstract
This paper aims to demystify Willy‟s compunction of his entire life and how it affects his other relationships with his family members. In Arthur Miller's masterpiece, Death of a Salesman, the main character, Willy Loman, struggles with an existential crisis born of his incorrect notion of media and communication, causing a defensive identity. This paper delves into how Willy's misunderstanding determines his tragic end and more significantly affects our comprehension of human psychology and pressures in society. Willy Loman, an ill-fated salesman, is obsessed with the glamour of success through the media, as represented in the ideal of a self-made man, cultivated in advertisements and mass media. Obsessive chasing of the American Dream, based on materialism and social class, makes him incapable of noticing what is going wrong in his own life or even what constitutes true success. The only focus of Willy's perception of communications is superficial charm and image projection, which misses real human bonding and meaningful dialogue. It brings him further into isolation and makes a circle of self-deception wherein he conjures up a shadow of success to get him away from his inadequacy and failure feelings. Miller's treatment of Willy Loman foregrounds the danger of mistaking representation in media for identity in human life. Tropes about the media with which Willy clings distorted his sense of self and made him an unreliable actor against the real, thereby alienating himself from his family and the social world. Defensively assuming this wrong conception about communication finally goes to kill Willy with its tragic consequence where he fails to reconcile the idea of aspirations that he dreamed in his life with actual reality.This paper will evaluate the nature of infatuation and suffering in Willy Loman‟s life which will help us, paradoxically, to understand our lives of ourselves, our values and our society. Willy cannot connect the circumstances which create a life of disappointment. The representation of his sufferings, pain and agony provides a mixed reply: anger and delight, resentment and sympathy. This paper aims to arouse some therapeutic values, through the careful consideration of Loman‟s character, to the civilized people.

Full Text: PDF      DOI: 10.15640/ijll.v12n1a5