His delusory fulfillment of his grandiose dreams and the punishment for his hubris come together in his act of suicide. (2) In other terms, it drives him to challenge the gods. For no apparent reason, Willy's psyche blinds him to the madness of his grandiose dreams of omnipotence and compels him to attempt to replace reality with his own concept of it. Miller suggests that the power of the psyche is comparable to the fate represented by the omnipotent and capricious gods of Greek tragedy. To his destruction, he seeks to actualize it. ![]() Willy never experiences the future which is part of normal chronological time because he recognizes only the future which he believes is latent in his paradise. ![]() As a result, Willy moved from the condition of stasis to one created by a confusion of the present and of its fragmented paradise. Before Biff realized Willy's projected future, however, he lost faith in Willy's dreams, left the state of mind or paradise Willy had created, and destroyed its coherence. He believed that Biff, who was already "divine" as a football player, would become more so as a businessman. Expressing his enthusiasm for Biff's divine condition, Willy ironically incorporated the concept of progress, time's movement, into his changeless paradise. ![]() Willy's paradise, which he identifies with the time in which Biff and Happy were growing up in Brooklyn, was also synonymous with his and his sons' exclusive society in which they expressed, reflected, and validated his belief in their virtual divinity. An Eden-like paradise which lies at the center of his neurosis, it is characterized by the paradoxical union of reality and his delusory fulfillment of his grandiose dreams of omnipotence. Much of the play takes place in a psychological construct which Willy creates.
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