In the movies, I hate it when people yell at each other and fight all the time. I hate those scenes. Quite frankly, that's what makes up most of the acts in Death of a Salesman, and worse, it contains people who fight all the time and yet couldn't understand each other. It's like fighting with a crazy person. Willie Loman isn't right in the head (I guess it's safe to assume that)—he has unrealistic expectations of his sons, especially the eldest, Biff. He raised Biff as if he could walk in through any office in the city and would be granted CEO. And so when Biff was truly launched into the real world (after failing math, god help him), he had the same egoistical, unrealistically high opinions of himself that he never held down a job and thus never succeeded in life as his father taught him he would. He became spiteful because of this.
All the fighting is indeed tedious. It's like all this racket inside my head, all these misunderstandings that could easily be solved only if people wou
ld just stop yelling and jumping to conclusions and start getting off their high horses. But the reason I gave this four stars is because of the heart-tugging symbolisms. The stockings got me. The stockings! And Linda's speech at the very end, oh my God, touched me in various places of my often-cold heart. It wasn't just the story of a salesman who's down on his luck, it's about what being a wife of one is like, too. She's the ideal mother and wife, someone who sticks through thick and thin and husband's lunacy. I feel abundantly sorry for her. This is for Linda.
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