Abandonment And The Loman In Arthur Miller's Death Of A Salesman

Abandonment and the Lomans No one knows the pain of abandonment unless they have experienced it personally.

Abandonment can make someone feel unworthy; like they do not deserve attention or affection. Some children who are abandoned by someone they love or trust tend to have a hard time developing trusting or healthy relationships in their lives. Arthur Miller explores this emotional roller coaster in his play Death of a Salesman. He shows how these feelings can turn into actions. He also demonstrates how those who have not experienced abandonment find these feelings hard to understand. The Lomans are a perfect example of this. In Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, each character feels a sense of abandonment and each fights his or her

Although Linda did not do the actual deed of killing Willy, she did not do much to prevent him from hurting himself either. She knew he was suicidal and even found the rubber pipe full of carbon monoxide that he was using as a suicide tactic, and left it there for him. When Biff asks her why she did not just take it away, Linda says, “I’m — I’m ashamed to. How can I mention it to him? Every day I go down and take away that little rubber pipe. But, when he comes home, I put it back where it was. How can I insult him that way?” (Miller 42). One would think that if a wife found her husband’s suicide tool, she would take it away, no matter if it embarrassed him or not. Linda allowed him to keep on with these tactics as if she did not know about his secret plan of suicide. This only hurts him more than helps him. Her sons felt abandoned by their mother by the way she only seemed to care about Willy. She defended Willy’s behavior, even when it was embarrassing or hurtful to their children. When they try to talk to her about Willy’s strange behavior, she gets angry with them and tells them what ungrateful and lazy men they are. After Biff and Willy have an argument and Biff tells Linda that he will return to visit her and not his father, Linda replies angrily to him. She declares, “He’s the dearest man in the world to me, and I won’t have anyone making him feel

However, there was an instance where an outside character caused them a sense of abandonment. Frank Wagner was Willy’s boss for a time of his life and when Frank passed away, his son Howard inherited the company. Howard was a discourteous man who cared more about his money and his business than he did for the well-being of his employees. Willy was having many internal struggles and the one thing that had always been constant in his life was his job. When Howard began to mention firing Willy, Willy exclaimed, “There were promises made across this desk! You mustn’t tell me you’ve got people to see — I put thirty-four years into this firm, Howard, and now I can’t pay my insurance! You can’t eat the orange and throw the peel away — a man is not a piece of fruit!” (Miller 58). Many years of Willy’s life was spent devoted to this company he worked for and in the end, his young boss wrote him off without any regard for loyalty or respect. David Washington, author of the article “Wrongful Discharge Revisited” describes wrongful discharge as, “a termination of an employee that violates public policy, a contractual agreement or good faith covenant” (pg. 1). Willy’s being let go can be referred to as a “wrongful discharge” and is a term that people can claim happened to them if they were fired unjustly. Howard was a boss who fired his employees when he felt he no longer needed them and just