Death Of A Salesman Guilt Essay

During the course of this semester, we have been introduced to plays that have two characters who have reason to struggle with guilt. In A Doll’s House, we are introduced to
Nora a woman who at the end of the play leaves her children in an attempt to properly discover herself and we wonder how she will deal with the guilt of leaving her family. We also see Willy Loman in the play Death of a Salesman who we are shown has love for his family but has made decisions that have caused him guilt and affected the relationships in his family. Both of these characters feel obvious levels of guilt and these allow them to make certain decisions but we also have characters that seem to feel no guilt at all. Happy Loman the son of Willy sleeps

And with these examples, we can ask the question Is it a good thing to feel guilty? Can feeling guilt help us be more sympathetic? And how does guilt help us in our day-to-day lives? I believe that guilt is an emotion that is important for us to feel in our lives, it helps us feel remorse for things that we know we did wrong or help us make decisions that would help others. It can be said that Nora would have still felt guilty if she stayed with her children because she knew she was not fit enough to raise them in her current state. We can also see that when a character feels too much guilt it causes them to spiral and lose control, we see it in Willy Loman whose guilt transforms into anger which he takes out on his family, especially his son whom he seems to idolize and this eventually leads to his demise. When characters feel guilt we tend to sympathize with them because this shows that the character feels remorse. This shows us the reality of guilt, it is important to feel guilty to

When introduced to how guilt affects Willy Loman it’s when he notices his wife
Linda mending her torn stockings and he immediately becomes angry and tells her to throw them out. This is due to the guilt he feels from cheating on his wife with The Woman whom he gives stockings when they meet. This guilt is even seen more before this interaction where we see Willy telling Linda “I’ll make it all up to you, Linda. I’ll-” (39) Willy does not know how to express his guilt about what he has done properly because he wants to appear as a good husband and father to his children but even as he continues to hide the truth he also does a disservice to his family as he is not properly processing his emotions causing him to lash out at his family. This kind of behavior is also seen in real life when we don’t express our feelings as they happen and we build up our emotions they eventually spill out negatively and can often harm people around us. This is also seen in the relationship with his son Biff, Willy feels guilty concerning Biff, He believes it is his fault that Biff isn’t doing as well as he hoped because he caught him with The Woman in the hotel room. Willy never once acknowledges he made