Pride In Arthur Miller's Death Of A Salesman

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A Death by Pride Life is an amazing journey. It is a journey full of wonders, experience, emotions, and quite a few hiccups along the way. As an individual it might be interesting to wonder what life would be like without pride. Pride is a tool for the proud. Good or bad, it has quite the interesting result. Author Arthur Miller, a short play-writer of over forty works had quite a few tales and twist that involve the result of pride in the lives of many of his characters. To be direct, pride is the destructive force that led to the demise and death of three of Miller’s main characters in three of his most popular plays. As the words of this essay move forward, it will be made clear that pride led to the ultimate destruction of Joe…show more content…
Willy Lowman, the father of Happy and Biff also died by a form of suicide, death by intentional, car accident. He was described as such, "He is past sixty years of age, dressed quietly" (Miller 161). In regards to his car accident, He did this all by his ultimate design to set an un-desiring son towards the path of the family business, a salesman. Pride by nature can be blinding and deceiving. In the case of Willy Lowman it might be easier to argue that his pride was in the life of his two sons more than the pride in himself. He wanted to have pride in the success of his sons so bad; he was willing to give his life to bless that blinding ambition. Pride is clearly blinding. He could have chose to accept his sons for who they were, or more likely to simply try and patiently conform to being the father, a son so desperately needs. This was not the case. Willy was shockingly, so set on conforming Biff to one dream of his that it hindered him from rationally making decisions. It is interesting to realize that a father’s affirmation and support in life will always be more important than any financial income, but that is the ugly truth about pride. It twists and erodes at rational thinking. It is an emotion and nothing more. Like anger, it must be kept in check. Like any other emotion, decisions should not be made at the peak of that emotion. Unfortunately for Willy, he did just that. In the peak of his emotion a decision was made the forever shook the fictional, family structure of the Lowman family. Sad, but clearly the case of “Death of a

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