The Man

The two characters that I think showed the most similarity in the different plays were the pawn like character's Willy Loman from Death of a Salesman and Polonius from Hamlet. Willy and Polonius have similar ways of seeing the world and what is important in it. They both believe that how people perceive them in life is more important than actually being a good person and doing the right thing. Both characters are also "yes men" and they take orders from people and suck up to them because they think it will get them ahead in life but it actually ends up leading to their downfalls. Although these two are not totally similar for instance Polonius's flaw of sucking up to the king directly results in Hamlet killing him. And Willy Loman although he is not the perfect person his flaws make us feel bad for him, whereas Polonius's flaws make him seem like a rat.

Willy Loman in the play Death of a Salesman is an aging salesman in a world where the door to door man is being pushed out by the big corporations. We see that he has and always will be a yes man and even though he is a hard worker he never got the job in New York that he really wanted. Although Willy has been working for a long time he still does not have the money to retire and still be able to support his family. Throughout the play more and more of Willy's character is shown and eventually we see him for the flawed character he is instead of this sad, old, hardworking family man. It is revealed that the reason why his son Biff is screwed up is because of the affair that Willy had, which Biff witnessed when he was a young man. Even thought Willy knows that his son hasn't been the same since that moment he still questions why Biff isn't getting on the right track and he acts as if nothing had happened that day that he got caught. Willy is also obsessed with what people think about him, and believes that what people think about him is extremely important. He thinks that having good looks and money is what the world is all about and if you have the looks nothing else really matters. This relatively small character flaw that Willy Loman has ends up leading to his down fall because he believe that he is worth more to him family dead then alive and he ends up killing himself.

The character of Polonius in the play Hamlet if similar to that of Willy Loman in that he cares more about what people think of him then who he is as a person. Almost the entire play leading up to his murder Polonius shows that he is not a good person by any standards. He spends most of the time sucking up to the king and helping him spy on Hamlet. He even uses his own daughter, who is in love with Hamlet, to spy on him and