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Death Of a Salesman

Arthur Miller does manage to engage our sympathies with Willy in the first act of the play to a certain extent. He does this in many ways such as using Willy’s speech, his troubled mind, the way other characters treat him and by using themes like the past.
To begin with, Willy Loman seems like a normal, yet exhausted businessman. This is until he starts to contradict himself by saying of Biff that he’s “a lazy bum!� A few seconds later in the scene, his line is “There’s one thing about Biff - he’s not lazy�. This is where we begin to question Willy’s sanity. Arthur Miller uses this dialogue to cleverly hint that Willy’s mind is not entirely stable. This encourages our sympathies because we know he is confused. Another point about the following dialogue in this scene is that Willy’s thoughts appear to be disjointed. He leaps from one topic of converstation to the next with no warning. He doesn’t even appear to acknowledge things......

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Approximate Word Count: 1277
Approximate Pages: 6 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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