Suicide and Escape in Miller’s and Lewis’ works

Abstract

Arthur Miller (1915- ) is the famous American dramatist who chooses human nature as an important arena. His choice to explore the inner spots of human life stems from his belief that from the human nature emanates the earthly violence and corruption. Thus, the common man occupies the central subject of his works. He focuses on the family conflict to unfold the responsibility of man in the destruction of our world. His strategy comes from his belief that man is a small, but significant part of the society and if he is corrupted, his disease will be spread to wreck the whole identity of the society. Miller has a great belief in man’s goodness, thus he attempts to stir the hidden love in the human heart. He puts a weighing hope on love because of its ethereal ability to rebuild the human ruin. Through his exploring the human motives, he provides a remedy, if there is any, to the source of corruptions. The surprise is that he chooses death or suicide to be the sole solution to correct them. In spite of choosing suicide to be the final end to his heroes, there is a wide difference between a suicide and other.

Death of a Salesman (1949) is Miller’s masterpiece in which he presents his hero, Willy Loman. He is a victim to his devoted philosophy of his life and his two son`s. His illusion is that he and his two sons especially the eldest. Biff, have unique features which allow them to be the greatest. His illusion drags him to commit other mistakes for instance telling a series of lie to nurture his wrong view. His son, Biff, suspects his father’s view. He finds out that they don’t have any unique feature . Willy tries to face and deaden any attempt of Biff’s self realization. Willy escapes from any confrontation with the reality. Biff tells his father that.