Preview

The Significance Of The Defining Moment In The Chrysanthemums

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
607 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
The Significance Of The Defining Moment In The Chrysanthemums
In this presentation I will be talking about the defining moments, for one or more of the characters, in the three stories: This Blessed House by Jhumpa Lahiri, The Chrysanthemums by John Steinbeck, and Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller. The defining moment can change the view of the situation, problem, themselves, or about life in general of a character or characters.

I show that the defining moments of This blessed House and Death of a Salesman are quite similar, but the defining moment in The Chrysanthemums is a different one to the other two stories. In both, This Blessed House and Death of a Salesman, the characters experience a change in behavior caused by the acceptance and understanding of another character. While in The Chrysanthemums,
…show more content…
At the beginning of the story, he does not agree with his wife, Twinkle, and her desire to place all the Christian memorabilia they’ve found in their new house in the mantle, where anyone who enters may see it. Subconsciously, Sanjeev sees his wife as nothing more than an object, something he collected and can now put on display.

As the story progresses, Sanjeev begins to understand and accept his wife. He accepts that she is her own human being that can make her own decisions, instead of an object that he can control and bend to his will. He understands that for their marriage to work, they must accept each other the way they are.

In Death of a Salesman, the character of Biff is the one that experiences the change. Biff did not get along with his father after he found out about the affair his father had maintained while in Boston. Ever since then Biff resented his father and reacted harshly towards of him. But after a series of events that take place when his brother, Happy, and he were staying over at their parents’ house, he begins to understand his father is not the bad guy he had painted in his mind, but instead just a human being who struggled and made mistakes. Biff stopped being so hard on his father and instead tried to remedy their

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    He is undoubtedly fond of his wife and loves her in his own way. However, he treats her like a child or a pet and sees her as something fragile to be protected:…

    • 385 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Both Biff and Walter are very delusional people when it comes to their dreams and future aspirations. They both are not realistic with themselves and what they want to do with their…

    • 786 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Unlike Willy and Happy, Biff feels compelled to seek the truth about himself. While his father and brother are unable to accept the miserable…

    • 538 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Who Is Biff Loman Flawed

    • 451 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Biff Loman displays only a small measure of his youthful confidence, enthusiasm, and affection. More often, he appears troubled, frustrated, and sad. The name ‘Biff’ gives an appearance of a tough man, but in the play ‘Death of a Salesman’, Biff is a flawed character who is the opposite of the appearance his name gives. Although he is a flawed character, he manages to succeed at one thing that Willy was not able to, which is acknowledging his failures, rather than dreaming of something he is not able to achieve.…

    • 451 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    While Biff (Willy’s eldest son) was growing up, he did everything he could to be like his father - he idolised and respected him always. However, as much as his son Biff tried to be like his father, he is, in actuality quite the different to him. Biff’s overall nature is an opposition of what a normal model for the American dream is; he has understood that it is just a myth and a pointless dream- and has acknowledged that reality. Biff’s character is stronger than that of his father, just because of that realisation. The acceptance of that reality can be seen on page 18 when he…

    • 109 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    One of the many reasons that I feel a connection with Biff and his relationship with his father, Willy, is in the play there are many moments when Willy contradicts himself. At the beginning of Act I, Willy is back home to find out that his sons are back living at home and he is really upset about this at first. Then he mentions, “‘...work a lifetime to pay off a house. You finally own it, and there's nobody to live in it’” (15). Later, he starts a fight with his wife Linda, saying that Biff is a lazy bum. Linda is fighting against Willy, saying that Biff is just trying to find himself and that Willy should not criticize him so much and Willy ends up changing his mind very easily and agreeing with Linda that Biff is not lazy, but even hardworking (16). Willy says many times in the play that…

    • 1311 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Willie tries to force his beliefs onto Biff, and Biff, in response, leaves his house. Biffs personality changes because he is out in the real world doing what he loves, no listening to his father who is often yelling about to be a better person. Biff realizes his own dream and follows it against his father’s hopes. Biff becomes a more independent individual because of Willies unintentional push out of the nest. Biff also shown no remorse after his father’s suicide. “Biff: He had the wrong dreams, All wrong. Happy: Don’t say that! Biff: He never knew who he was”(Act II). This quote comes after Willies suicide. Biff blames Willie and believes that his occupation, a sales man, drove him to suicide to provide money. Biff thinks that Willie would have been happier working a labor job, a dream of his own. Biff and Huck were both shaped by their fathers to become slightly more calloused to the…

    • 1099 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    In this literary analysis piece I will be breaking down the popular play by Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman. Death of a Salesman, is a very riveting story that follows Willy Loman, a retiree-aged working class business man living in New York. Who deals with troublesome denial, and uses the events of the past to deal with his problems of the present, this begins to create more problems for Willy as he becomes unable to separate past events with current events. Along with intense financial strain as an ageing business man in a new era of business. Willy feels pressured to be very financially successful and well liked person by himself, and the people around him like his brother, Ben, and his neighbor, Charley, who has a very successful son who is a lawyer. Willy, along with many people in the real world, suffers…

    • 1599 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    The three stories to be discussed in this essay are “The Bouquet” by Charles W. Chesnutt, “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and “Gimpel the Fool” by Isaac Bashevis Singer. It’s interesting to dissect these pieces of literature to see how they reflect the time period they were written in, by whom they were written, and if the stories they read have any abnormalities outside what is expected.…

    • 1028 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Ribkoff's Fallacies

    • 1432 Words
    • 6 Pages

    This is not accurate because there was no shame or guilt with Biff in the first place and he found himself early in the play in the hotel room in Boston with his father. Biff had high respect for his father, he was his role model and this can be seen especially during the conversation he has with him in the hotel where he asks for help to ask his math teacher to pass him by saying “you gotta talk to him before they close the school. Because if he saw the kind of man you are and you just talked to him in your way, I’m sure he’d come through for me” (Miller, 92). The tragic truth is revealed when Biff finds “the women” in the same room and breaks down crying realizing his father’s affair. He takes back his help and says “never mind” (Miller, 95) and says “I’m not going there [university of Virginia]” (Miller, 95) as he walks away from the hotel room while his father “order” (Miller, 95) him to come back because he longer believes his father’s high stature can help him pass high school. This was moment of realization for biff where his mask built by his father gets broken as it was “fake” (Miller, 95) revealing nothing but him. It was his own self that decided to walk away ignoring his father which proofs his sense of identity. There is no “feelings of shame” involved in this process as none of this situation was Biff’s fault. Therefore Ribkoff’s argument on Biff’s shame and how and when he found himself should be dismissed. Logically his admiration for his father turns bitter resulting in an aggressive emotion of hatred but not…

    • 1432 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Biff Loman is a young man, 34 years of age, who has spent the majority of his adulthood bouncing from one job to the next. For this reason, his father, Willy, has much displeasure in his son’s lack of financial stability, which is a major factor in his own health complications. Although Biff suggest that there are other reasons leading to Willy’s complications, Biff’s brother, Happy, informs him that his father often has conversations with himself that support the claim that Biff is to blame. The relationship between father and son is volatile, yet loving at the same time. Willy has placed high expectations upon…

    • 989 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    As a beginning of this film, a myth is told by the Nyinba people of Nepal: a story of fearsome spirits thought to kill children and the weak. Their crime was adulterous passionate love and it was this that had condemned them to live eternally between life and death. In this film, we learn about and explore marriages in tribal societies. We can clearly identify the differences that challenge both side’s ideas and sensibilities about marriage bonds.…

    • 745 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman“ is a play illustrating the life of a man wanting success but takes his life for his family to be financially stable. At the story’s heart is a tragic depiction of the protagonist, a man who wants to be successful, who wants his kids to be successful, he wants to live the American dream. Miller balances the literary devices of of flashbacks, motifs, conflicts and characterization to perceive the cost of the American Dream.…

    • 448 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Readers see that conventions can be manipulated for specific effects. Both texts Pursuit of Happiness directed by Gabriele Muccino and Death of a salesman written by Arthur Miller effectively implement conventions in effort to gain a response from the audience. Muccino’s drama film Pursuit of happiness is an American biographical film based on the true lift story of Chris Gardner and his nearly one year struggle with homelessness. Gardner is under the constant strain of financial pressure, and his privation to provide for his family, causes the mother of his child to leave. Gardner continues to pursue happiness in achieving the American dream, solely for the security of his son. Miller’s drama play Death of a salesman was written in the 1940’s about a self-absorbed salesman, Willy Loman, whose struggle for success in pursuing the American dream ‘drives’ him to commit a cowardly suicide. Both texts manipulate dialogue and plot in exploring family values and male stereotypes. These conventions are effectively used in achieving a specific response from the audience.…

    • 1043 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    After this event occurs, Biff throws away everything he ever worked for in order to “punish” his father. He allows himself to fail math, to not go to college, and to abandon his family. Biff then goes to the South, where he works as a farmhand and eventually winds up in jail. He does all of this after realizing that all of the values his father had instilled in him were not even being lived out by his father. Everything Biff thought he knew appears to be a lie to him. In Willy’s mind, these values were true and he was simply showing his sons that they were both more than capable of being successful. By squandering his entire future, Biff shows that he is not capable and does not care enough to be a success.…

    • 555 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays

Related Topics