AP English Literature and Composition
10/10/20
1.10 Practice Essay One
In many stories, before a character can move forward with their life, they often have to
reconcile past events in their life. This may be through reconciling personal events or events with
others from their past. This is seen in a couple of different characters in Death of a Salesman, but
the one character that I would like to focus on is the main character, Willy. Willy’s entire life is
centered around the struggle to become successful and to bring his family into a better life.
Throughout the play, Willy is reminded of where this dream came from, which was his brother,
Ben, who became wildly rich and successful mining diamonds in Africa. Willy reconciles with
this idea constantly throughout the play, and it almost seems that he is never truly able to move
on. Whether it be through flashbacks or his own personal denial of where he is in life, Willy
seemingly struggles to accept that the past is just that – in the past.
There are several instances of Willy confronting his past throughout the play. Considering
the central idea of the play is about him attempting to live out past ambitions to bring he and his
family a better life, this is no surprise. One example of Willy attempting to reconcile this comes
in the first act. Willy is talking with Linda and Bernard, and shortly after Happy enters the scene,
Willy begins to fawn over the opportunities he has passed up, exclaiming “Why didn’t I go to
Alaska with my brother Ben that time! Ben! That man was a genius, that man was success
incarnate! What a mistake! He begged me to go.” Willy had a great opportunity to make it big, as
his brother, Ben, wanted him to go with him to Alaska. Willy believes that, had he went to
Alaska, he would have struck it unimaginably rich, as he states that Ben “was a man [that]
started with the clothes on his back and ended up with diamond mines!” The question can be
asked as to if Willy would have actually found success in Alaska just because of his brother’s
past success, but this is a man who once had a very optimistic outlook on life even after decades
of failure, so his hindsight may be skewed a bit.