时间：2022-09-06 05:08:28
“I regard the theater as a serious business，one that makes or should make man more human，which is to say，less alone.” A great playwright of social philosophy，Arthur Miller advocates that the common man，and none of rank，is the tragic hero of modern times. His plays have always revealed before the public eyes the tragedy of the average American life，the psychology of the ordinary people，and their conflicts with the morality of society.
Death of a Salesman，one of Miller's best plays，is just a typical representative of these plays. In it Miller writes about the greatest dream of the American person，to be successful and to be well liked. Because it captured the hearts and souls of many post-World War II Americans，the play made an immediate stir in the theatrical circles of the United States as soon as it was put on the stage in 1949. It was just the great success of this play that made him win the Pulitzer Prize in the same year. Nowadays Death of a Salesman is still regarded as one of American best plays and continues to be read and performed throughout the world.
In this play Miller paints a picture of a new era，the business era. He openly portrays the business world as mean and ruthless. His impressive and unforgettable character，Willy Loman，accurately represents many of the people who face hardships in the name of business. Willy's failure as father，husband，and breadwinner also proves the falsehood of the American dream.
In fact Death of a salesman is one big story of missed dreams and unrealized hopes in terms of money and the materialistic pursuit of wealth in a capitalist system. It has several themes that run throughout the play，but the most obvious one is the idea of reality versus illusion or success versus failure which is the source of all conflicts in the play. Willy believes wholeheartedly in what he considers the promise of the American Dream -that a “well liked” and “personally attractive” man in business will indubitably and deservedly acquire the material comforts offered by modern American life. So for years，Willy has believed that both he and his boys (particularly Biff) will one day be great successes. Though he is a disrespected salesman，he calls himself the ‘New England man.“ Though Biff has done nothing with his life by the age of thirty-four，Willy tells others and tries to make himself believe that his son is doing ”big things“ out west. Unfortunately，he is mistaken. In reality，he and sons are not，and cannot，be successful. He loses his job and one of his sons becomes a thief and the other a ”fake”，a braggart. Willy's brother，Ben，continually appears in the troubled man's mind，offering hints on how to make it in the world of business. Willy feels that he must live up to the standard that Ben has set，but this is found to be impossible by the end of the play. Just because of this reality versus illusion problem which eventually brings about Willy's downfall. In the end，Willy believes that a man can be “worth more dead than alive.”
How is a sad version of the American dream like this to be told vividly? How can the most salient theme-the conflict between reality and illusion be reflected successfully? And how can it leave an indelible impression on the readers? Arthur Miller proves himself to be a writer of no small talent by setting the most indispensable element of a play-character in patterns of contrast to deepen the theme. That means he uses his main characters to contrast the difference between success and failure in this moving and powerful play.
Now let us glance at the list of the main characters in Death of a Salesman.
Willy Loman the protagonist i.e. the salesman of the title
Linda Loman Willy's wife and the boys' mother
Biff Loman the grown-up son of Willy and Linda Loman
Happy Loman the younger brother of Biff
Charley Willy's neighbor and only friend
Bernard Charley's son and a childhood friend of Biff
Ben Willy's rich，older brother
First of all，a prominent contrast is developed between Willy and Charley.
Willy Loman is an aging door-to-door salesman living in Brooklyn. He is lost in false hopes and illusions. He is obsessed with the American dream of financial prosperity as epitomized through his exceptionally successful big brother Ben. But the reality is harsh. The sales firm he works for no longer pays him salary. Working on straight commission，Willy cannot bring home enough money to pay his bills. After thirty-four years with the firm，they have spent his energy and discarded him. His two sons，Biff and Happy，are also failures，but Willy doesn't want to believe this. He wants his sons，especially Biff，to succeed where he has not. He believes his boys are great and cannot understand why they are not successful. As he has grown older，he has trouble distinguishing between the past and present-between illusion and reality and is often lost in flashbacks. He grows increasingly insane，eventually ending his life in suicide. So many critics believe that Willy is the tragic hero of this play，who represents the continual failures in a capitalist system.
In contrast，Charley，Willy's next door neighbor and only friend，stands for different beliefs and exemplifies the success that Willy never could achieve. Charley owns his own sales firm and is a quite successful businessman. He is respected and admired. He and Willy do not get along very well，but they are friends nonetheless. Charley is always being the voice of reason but Willy is too stubborn to listen to him. For instance，Charley warned Willy not to let his kids steal from a nearby construction site and that the night watchman would eventually catch them. Willy said，“I got a couple of fearless characters，” and Charley said，“The jails are full of fearless characters.” Charley is also the voice of reality in the play，trying to set Willy straight on the facts of Willy's situation，but Willy refuses to listen. For instance，when the salesman is fired，he feels humiliated and more desperate than ever. He goes straight to his friend Charley to borrow money. Charley offers him a job. But Willy can't bring himself to work for Charley because this would be admitting failure. “Here's the 500 dollars，Willy，” says Charley，to which Willy is quick to respond： “You know I am good for it，Charley.” Some critic once stated，“Willy's refusal，from the standpoint of dramatic significance，seems less a product of his insanity than of his lifelong feeling of competition with Charley. Acceptance would have been tantamount to admitting that Charley's philosophy had proved to be the right one，and Willy simply isn't big enough a man to make such an admission.” In other words，you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. Charley tries to lead Willy to the fountain of knowledge but Willy refuses to take in this precious liquid. From above analyses we can see that Charley is just Willey's opposite in many ways in the play. He symbolizes the reality that Willy never acknowledges.
In addition，Willy is also contrasted with Ben in the play.
Ben is Willy's dead older brother who appears to Willy during his flashbacks and times of trouble. He has become extremely successful in life compared to his brother，Willy. He left home at seventeen to find their father in Alaska，but ended up in Africa，where he found diamond mines and came out of the jungle at twenty-one as an incredibly rich man. Ben is the example of the true entrepreneur in every sense，“Never fight fair with a stranger” is Ben's wisdom and his faith. He once gave Willy the chance to become his partners，but Willy refused and instead chose the life that he currently lives. In the play，Ben is the driving force behind Willy's idea of success. Willy feels that，like his brother who has become rich with diamond mines in Africa，he must establish himself as a rich and powerful businessman in New England. So in many ways，Ben is the symbol of the standard of success that proves too hard for Willy and his sons to match.
Another pair of contrasting type is developed between Biff and Bernard.
Biff is the thirty-four years old son of Willy and Linda Loman. He was star football player in high school，with scholarships to two major universities，but he did not attend college after failing his high school math course. He was going to make the credit up during the summer but caught Willy being unfaithful to Linda. This shock changed Biff's view of his father and everything that Biff believed in. Biff then became a drifter and was lost for fifteen years. He went from job to job，never finding any lasting happiness or success. He was even jail for stealing a suit once. This displeases Willy，who after never finding success himself，places the burden of success on the shoulders of Biff. Willy wants dearly for Biff to become a business success，though Biff has an internal struggle between pleasing his father and doing what he feels is right. Biff wants to be outside on a cattle ranch，while Willy wants him behind a corporate desk. Despite his failures and anger towards his father，Biff still has great concern for what his father thinks of him. So he promises to try business and decides to apply for a job in New York. But his visit to get the loan results in nothing but stealing a fountain pen. Eventually，Willy is so disappointed at his and Biff's failures that he commits suicide. At the end of the play，Biff finally realizes the illusions that his father lived on： “What a ridiculous lie (his) whole life has been.” He sees that his father has immersed himself in nothing but illusions. Biff also sees that he is destined to no greatness. So he no longer has to struggle to understand what he wants to do with his life.
Bernard is Charley's only son and a childhood friend of Biff. In many ways，Willy sees Bernard as the competition to Biff (as he sees Charley as his own competition). Bernard is a physically unattractive，spectacles-wearing lad who is without the gregarious personality of either of the Loman sons. So Willy always calls him the anemic Bernard. When Bernard and Biff were in the same school，Bernard's chief claim to fame rested upon the fact that he was the boy who furnished Biff，the school hero，with the right answers at exam time. In exchange for this privilege，Biff let Bernard carried his shoulder pads into the locker room at game time and，in other small ways，basked in the glory which was all the glory Bernard could aspire to，since，as Biff explained to his father： “Bernard is not well liked.” It is this reason that makes Willy believe that Bernard will never be a true success in the business world. Though he may be not well liked，Bernard is intelligent，industrious and rooted in reality. Through persistent application of his native intelligence，Bernard grows up to be an eminent lawyer who，the day Biff and Willy are finally forced to face the unpleasant facts of their lives，embarks for Washington to plead a case before the Supreme Court. From the above contrast between Biff's failure and Bernard's success，we can see that Miller gives us an obvious example of how one can succeed in this country. Bernard is，in fact，living proof of the system's effectiveness，an affirmation of the proposition that persistent application of one's talents，small though they may be，pays off. And this，after all，is the substance of the American Dream.
Besides Bernard，Biff is also contrasted with his younger brother，Happy.
Happy is Biff's younger brother who lives in an apartment in New York，and during the play is staying at his parents' house to visit. He is of low moral character，constantly with another woman，trying to find his way in life，even though he is confident he is on the right track. He，less favored by nature and his father，has escaped the closeness with his father that destroys Biff in social terms. Thus worshipping his father from afar，Happy has never fully come to realize that phony part of his father and his father's dreams. Moreover，he has more fully than Biff accepted his father's dreams. He does have longing to be outdoors and to get away from the crippling fifty-weeks-of-work-a-year routine. He tries to become a similar sales career like his father in the city. Although Biff and Happy are the two blind mice who follow in their father's fallacy of life，they are different. After their father dies，Biff sees the truth and realizes who he is and what he stands for. But Happy still cannot see reality. He tries to carry on his father's unrealistic notions of success. So like his father，he is destined to live a fruitless life trying for something that will not happen.
Now to sum up all of these character contrasting types，we can see that the essential contrast in Death of a Salesman is in fact the contrast between the Lomans and the Charleys. Miller mainly uses the two families to contrast the different between success and failure in this American system. All of the members except Ben in the Lomans' family live in illusions： Willy is the dreamiest member whose imagination is much larger than his sales ability；Linda stands by her husband even in his absence of realism；both Biff and Happy are lost in their father's fallacy of life. So the Lomans are always regarded as the representatives of failure within the system. They are all an example of what life is like if you continually live in a dream world and never train yourself for anything. While on the other hand，Charley and his son Bernard live in reality. They are able to achieve greatness and to make the system work for them. So they can enjoy better success in life compared to the Lomans.
In conclusion，character contrast is one of the most important writing devices in Death of a Salesman. It plays a key role in deepening the basic theme of the play： when a modern man is under a pressure from his society and its ethics and tries to extricate himself from the physical and spiritual quandary into which he has fallen，he finds that the world is harsh，all his endeavors are in vain and he can release himself only in death，often in the form of suicide.
Bibliography
[1] Chang Yaoxin. A Survey of American Literature. Tianjing： Nankai Univ. Press，1990
[2] Miller，Arthur. Death of a Salesman. Great Britain： the Cresset Press，1949
[3] Zhai Shizhao. Selected Readings in American Literature. Kaifeng： Henan Univ. Press，1994
Received dafe：2007-11-09