Comparison between Santiago & Willy Lowman

Introduction:

Arthur Miller was one of the most shining stars of American Literature. He was more famous for his works especially for plays which have been written by him. He was born on October 17, 1915 at New York City. He started to write plays when he was studying at University of Michigan. Several plays were written by him who also won the prizes and some of his works like

Ø  All my sons

Ø  Death of a Salesman etc.

Death of a Salesman also won Pulitzer Prize. Miller gained eminence as a man who understood the deep essence of the United States. He published The Crucible in 1953, a searing indictment of the anti-Communist hysteria that pervaded 1950s America. He has won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award twice, and his Broken Glass (1993) won the Olivier Award for Best Play of the London season.

The basis for the dramatic conflict in Death of a Salesman lies in Arthur Miller’s conflicted relationship with his uncle, Manny Newman, also a salesman. Newman imagined a continuous competition between his son and Miller. Newman refused to accept failure and demanded the appearance of utmost Confidence in his household. A half century after it was written, Death of a Salesman remains a powerful drama. Its indictment of fundamental American values and the American Dream of material success may seem somewhat tame in today’s age of constant national and individual self-analysis and criticism, but its challenge was quite radical for its time.

Death of a Salesman, Miller’s most famous work, addresses the painful conflicts within one family, but it also tackles larger issues regarding American national values. The play examines the cost of blind faith in the American Dream. Although the war had ostensibly engendered an unprecedented sense of American confidence, prosperity, and security, the United States became increasingly embroiled in a tense cold war with the Soviet Union.

 The propagation of myths of a peaceful, homogenous, and nauseatingly gleeful American golden age was tempered by constant anxiety about Communism, barrier racial conflict, and largely ignored economic and social stratification. Uneasy with this American milieu of denial and discord, a new generation of artists and writers influenced by existentialist philosophy and the hypocritical post war condition took up arms in a battle for self-realization a depression of personal meaning.

Such discontented individuals railed against capitalist success as the basis of social approval, disturbed that so many American families cantered their lives around material possessions like cars, appliances, and especially the just introduced television and other in an attempt to keep up with their equally materialistic neighbours.

The climate of the American art world had likewise long been stuck in its own rut of conformity, confusion, and disorder following the pre-war climax of European Modernism and the wake of assorted -isms associated with modern art and literature. The notions of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung regarding the role of the human subconscious in defining and accepting human existence, coupled with the existentialist concern with the individual’s responsibility for understanding one’s existence on one’s own terms, captivated the imaginations of post war artists and writers. Perhaps the most famous and widely read dramatic work associated with existentialist philosophy is Samuel Becket’s waiting for Godot.

Now let’s discuss about the characters of Willy Lowman in detail before going further

Willy Lowman is the major character of this play and Arthur Miller has given more space as well as more given significance to him. So it can be said that Willy Lowman is the mouth figure of the writer-Arthur Miller.Willy does not achieve the self-realization or self-knowledge typical of the tragic hero. The quasi-resolution that his suicide offers him represents only a partial discovery of the truth. While he achieves a professional understanding of himself and the fundamental nature of the sales profession, Willy fails to realize his personal failure and betrayal of his soul and family through the meticulously constructed artifice of his life.

Willy’s failure to recognize the anguished love offered to him by his family is crucial to the climax of his torturous day, and the play presents this incapacity as the real tragedy. Despite this failure, Willy makes the most extreme sacrifice in his attempt to leave an inheritance that will allow Biff to fulfil the American Dream. Willy does experience a sort of revolution. As he finally comes to understand that the product he sells himself. Through the imaginary advice to Ben, Willy ends up fully believing that his early assertion to Charley that “after all the highways, and the trains, ans appoinmnets, and the years, you end up worth more dead than alive.

Earnest Hemingway was one of the most exceptional writers of the American literature. He was renowned for his novel as he has contributed in the world of literature. His full name was Earnest Miller Hemingway, who was born in Oak Park, Illinois, in 1899. In 1921, Hemingway moved to Paris, where he served as a correspondent for the Toronto Daily Star. In Paris, he fell in with a group of American and English expatriate writers that included F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, and Ford Madox Ford.

In the 1930s, Hemingway lived in Key West, Florida, and later in Cuba, and his years of experience fishing the Gulf Stream and the Caribbean provided an essential background for the vivid descriptions of the fisherman’s craft in The Old Man and the Sea.

Some of his works like

Ø  The Sun also Rises

Ø  The adventures of a young man

Ø  The Garden of Eden

Ø  The Old man and the sea

Because Hemingway was a writer who always relied heavily on autobiographical sources, some critics, not surprisingly, eventually decided that the novella served as a thinly veiled attack upon them. According to this reading, Hemingway was the old master at the end of his career being torn apart by but ultimately triumphing over critics on a feeding frenzy. But this reading ultimately reduces The Old Man and the Sea to life more than an act of literary revenge. The more compelling interpretation asserts that the novella is a parable about life itself; in particular man’s struggle for triumph in a world that seems designed to destroy him.

The huge success of The Old Man and the Sea, published in 1952, was a much-needed vindication. The novella won the 1953 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and it likely cinched the Nobel Prize for Hemingway in 1954, as it was cited for particular recognition by the Nobel Academy. It was the last novel published in his lifetime.

Although the novella helped to regenerate Hemingway’s wilting career, it has since been met by divided critical opinion. While some critics have praised The Old Man and the Sea as a new classic that takes its place among such established American works as William Faulkner’s short story “The Bear” and Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, others have attacked the story as “imitation Hemingway” and find fault with the author’s departure from the uncompromising realism with which he made his name.

A great fan of baseball, Hemingway liked to talk in the sport’s lingo, and by 1952, he badly “needed a win.” His novel Across the River and into the Trees, published in 1950, was a disaster. It was his first novel in ten years, and he had claimed to friends that it was his best yet. Critics, however, disagreed and called the work the worst thing Hemingway had ever written. Many readers claimed it read like a parody of Hemingway. The control and precision of his earlier prose seemed to be lost beyond recovery.

Because Hemingway was a writer who always relied heavily on autobiographical sources, some critics, not surprisingly, eventually decided that the novella served as a thinly veiled attack upon them. According to this reading, Hemingway was

The old master at the end of his career being torn apart by—but ultimately triumphing over—critics on a feeding frenzy. But this reading ultimately reduces The Old Man and the Sea to little more than an act of literary revenge. The more compelling

Interpretation asserts that the novella is a parable about life itself; in particular man’s struggle for triumph in a world that seems designed to destroy him.

Now let’s elaborate the character of Santiago in “The Old man and the sea”.

Santiago is the major character of the novel “The Old man and the sea”. He plays a vital role in this novel. He is the mouth figure of the writer Earnest Hemingway so through this character the author conveys his ideas and shows the struggle of life by putting the struggle of the Old man as he is referred in the novel as a Santiago. He is old man but yet he fights with the fish and kills him he also remains optimistic as he couldn’t catch any fish for so many days therefore I can say that He possesses also heroic qualities as he dreams of lion and fights with the fish continuously three days and it is very much difficult to fight with uncontrollable thing so He becomes also hero of the boy.

Moreover, Santiago suffers terribly throughout The Old Man and the Sea. In the opening pages of the book, he has gone eighty-four days without catching a fish and has become the laughingstock of his small village. He then endures a long and gruelling struggle with the marlin only to see his trophy catch destroyed by sharks. Yet, the destruction enables the old man to undergo a remarkable transformation, and he rests triumph and renewed life from his seeming defeat. After all, Santiago is an old man whose physical existence is almost over, but the reader is assured that Santiago will persist through Manolin, who, like a disciple, awaits the old man’s teachings and will make use of those lessons long after his teacher has died. Thus, Santiago manages, perhaps, the most miraculous feat of all: he finds a way to prolong his life after death.

Santiago’s pride is what enables him to endure, and it is perhaps endurance that matters the most in Hemingway’s conception of the world, a world in which death and destruction, as part of the natural order of things, are unavoidable. Hemingway seems to believe that there are only two options defeat or endurance and destruction; Santiago clearly chooses the latter. His stoic determination is mystic, nearly Christ like in Proportion. For three days he holds fast to the line that links with the fish, even though it cuts deeply into his palms causes a crippling cramp in his left handmaid also ruins his back. This physical pain allows Santiago to forge a connection with the marlin that goes beyond the literal link; his bodily ashes attest to the fact that he is well matched, that the fish is a worthy oppenet, and that he himself. Because he is able to fight so hard, is a worthy fisherman.

As a Protagonist:

                        In “Death of a Salesman”, Willy Lowman is a major character and though he is a fictional character but the protagonist of the play “Death of a Salesman” which is written by Arthur Miller. Lowman is a 63 years-old travelling salesman from Brooklyn with 34 years of experience with the same company who endures a pay cut and a firing during the play. He has difficulty dealing with his current state and has created a fantasy world to cope with his situation. This does not keep him from multiple suicide attempts.

            While in the novel “The old man and the sea” by Hemingway Santiago possesses very significant role. He is protagonist of this novel so through the character of him Hemingway shows or he rather tries to indicate the struggle of an Old man and human life as an Old man struggles for his life in this novel.

As a tragic figure:

            “Death of a Salesman” is a Will’s play and everything revolves around his character .So during the last 24 hours of his life. All of the characters act in response to Willy Lowman, whether in the present or in Willy’s recollection of the past.Willy’s character, emotions, motivations and destiny are developed through his interactions with others.

             The play begins and ends in the present, and the plot occurs during the last two days of Willy’s life, however, a large portion of the play consists of Willy’s fragmented memories, recollection and recreation of the past, which are spliced in between scenes taking place in the presents. So he is referred here as a tragic figure.

             On the other hand in the novel ‘The Old man and the sea’ the old man or we can say Santiago can be indicated as a tragic figure as up to he remains without catching any fish of so many days but after that he starts to fight as he wants to kill the fish so after that the old man comes back and sleeps but in the novel it is not shown that he dies or not. Therefore he can be considered as a tragic figure. 

Man of struggle:

             Willy is an individual who craves attention and is governed by a desire for success. He constantly refers to older brother Ben, who made a fortune in a diamond mining in Africa, because he represent all the things wily desires for himself and his sons. Willy is forced to work for Howard, the sun of his old boss, who fails to appreciate Willy’s previous sells experience and expertise. Ben on the other hand simplify abounded the city, explore the African and American continents, and went to work for himself as a result after four years in the jungle, Ben was a rich man of the age of the 21, why Willy must struggle to convince Howard to let him work him New York for a reduce salary after working for the company for years.  So here Willy is a man of struggle.

            On the other side in the novel The old man and the sea, Santiago’s struggle has been shown in the other words we can also say that story moves around the character of Santiago and his struggle as he remains without catching a fish up to 84 days and also when he fights with the fish, struggles a lot.  Therefore, struggle is indicated here in this novel.

Conclusion:

            Wily Lowman man is fictional character of the death of the sales man, and Santiago is a major character of Hemingway’s The old man and the sea, Here some aspects resemble with each other in this two characters like Santiago dares a tragic figure and Wily to both have struggle in their life and both are principal character.