Abstract
In Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller depicts Willy Loman’s gradual loss of identity as a thriving salesman who is well known, has many friends, and is idolized by his family. These identity issues stem from his relationship to time, as his present does not match the aspirations he had for his future some fifteen years earlier, which triggers his existential crisis. His continual daydream sequences, in which he returns to the past, are juxtaposed with his present failures, and these incongruities between the past and the present shatter Willy’s image of himself as a success. In this thesis, I explore the manner in which Martin Heidegger’s existential philosophy, as it relates to the temporal nature of existence and the necessity of understanding one’s past and present in order to project oneself into the future, is salient to Willy Loman’s collapse in Death of a Salesman.
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