Open Prompt Revision

In many works of literature, past events can affect, positively or negatively, the present activities, attitudes, or values of a character. Choose a novel or play in which a character must contend with some aspect of the past, either personal or societal. Then write an essay in which you show how the character's relationship to the past contributes to the meaning of the work as a whole.

                  Some people enjoy looking back at the past and smiling at joyous moments that have come and gone, but others think of the past as distressing and would prefer to forget about it completely. This is a common theme in much of literature. In the case of Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman, the past is a painful subject that seems unavoidable. The past plays such a major role in the lives of the main characters in the form of regrets, that without understanding the past, the play loses much of its meaning.
           Willy is unable to let go of his past and this causes his present, and future life to be ruined. Willy wants to live in the past, which he does in his head through hallucinations and flashbacks. He lives in his head in a time when everything was great and there were no problems or mistakes made. Willy is so caught up in the past that he is unable to think of the present and fix the many problems that are going on the most evident being his ruined relationship with Biff. This creates the central conflict in this play. The conflict between a man and his son about a past mistake that is buried away but never forgotten.
            The most important quote in the play that wraps up all the questions is “What happened in Boston Willy?” (Miller 94). The key to the play is what exactly happened in the Boston. In Boston, Biff ends up walking in on his dad cheating on his mom with another woman. This causes Biff to skip summer school and throw away his future. Biff never forgives his father and throws away his life and all his potential as a result of the grudge that he holds against his father. This causes Willy to spiral into a state of insanity. This memory stays with both characters and remains unavoidable making the characters who they are in the play today. His inability to own up to his mistake causes him to silently grieve and regret his mistake, which leads him into an insane state. Willy cannot get over the past and cannot get over the fact that he ruined his son’s life and its drives him to depression. This not only creates the central conflict, but it also give the play it’s central theme that you cannot live in the past but must live in the present to make up for all past mistakes. Willy is unable to do this and this ultimately takes his life.
    In addition to the adultery that is committed, Willy is filled with regret about past decisions that he could’ve made to make him more successful than he is today. He finds himself in a state of failure, failure with his job, his son, and his life in general. This causes him to look back into the past, more specifically towards an opportunity that he was given by his brother Ben to go to Alaska. He feels as if he has made a mistake by not going and therefore regrets it entirely. This once again adds to the central theme. Although we cannot know for sure if Willy would have ended up in a better situation if he had gone to Alaska, Willy ends up failing because he cannot move on from is regret and work as hard as possible to improve his life in the present.
            Therefore, the past is evident in much of today’s literature and in Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman, the past leads the main characters down a downward spiral that they are not able to recover from until the final death of Willy Loman, the salesman who dwelt on the past and couldn’t deal with the future.