CHAPTER NINETEEN What is it We Seek I

CHAPTER NINETEEN What is it We Seek? “I don’t say he’s a great man. Willie Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper. He’s not the finest character that ever lived. But he’s a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. He’s not to be allowed to fall in his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person. ” -Arthur Miller Attention Must be Paid The despair of Willy Loman, the central character in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, is that he devoted his entire adult life to a corporation which, when he had ceased to be useful, fired him. There was no thank you, no pension, no recognition of any sort that his service of a lifetime had any meaning. In his retirement he developed a passion for planting seeds, and watching vegetables grow; seeking, in other words, anything that would be left behind on this earth that could be said to be his contribution. It is Willy’s wife Linda who demands of her sons that “attention must be paid” to a man like Willy Loman. She is the only one in the play who senses that her husband is thinking of committing suicide, and this is more than anything the “terrible thing” that is happening to him. The despair at being a failure in life, the cruel rejection he has received from his employer, his disappointment in his sons – all of these tribulations weigh on Willy Loman enormously and prove to be too much to handle. In the final scene at his funeral service, Willy’s family comes to different conclusions about his life and what it meant to them. Who Cut God's Hair [Sample] – Chapter 19 – What is it We Seek?

Great art should never provide definitive answers to life’s most important questions. Instead, the artist should pose the questions that matter to us most, and then invite the audience to come up with its own answers. Death of a Salesman continues to challenge audiences nearly seventy years after its debut. Was the American dream of wealth and popularity that Willy chased all his adult life a false idol? Was Willy right to place so much hope in his sons, expecting them to be the business success he was not? Of whom was his wife speaking when she said “attention must be paid” to someone who was seemingly abandoned by the world and about to be dumped into his grave “like an old dog? ” Should his employers have paid more attention to him? His family and friends? What did the world owe Willy Loman? Willy is not an especially virtuous character, and many people in the audience turn against him when it is revealed he’s been cheating on his wife Linda. In that respect, the world owes him nothing. While it appears at first that the tragedy of Willy Loman is the way the world has abused him and then forgotten him, the real tragedy of Willy Loman is of his own doing. By the time he is in despair for his life, his attempt at achieving not-death by planting vegetable seeds is futile. There is no one around him who has any interest in tending to his vegetable garden in his absence, just as no one at his funeral service can find the right words that would reflect on anything meaningful he ever did in his life. Nor is it evident that Willy Loman would have fared better in life had he been religious. A book could have just as well been written not about a selfish salesman, but about a religious figure who also lacks any positive meaning in his life. In fact, one was – Elmer Gantry, by Sinclair Lewis, features an evangelical minister who is a complete hypocrite, gambling and lying and chasing after women during the week, and preaching the gospel on Sundays. This is a model of a preacher all too familiar to modern Who Cut God's Hair [Sample] – Chapter 19 – What is it We Seek?