Unusually, Death of a Salesman weaves together past and present action. Willy Loman, the protagonist of the play, repeatedly revisits old memories, sometimes even confusing them with the present moment. But these memories are not the sentimental and somewhat melancholy daydreams of a happy man. Instead, they are the dark clues to Willy's current state of mental and emotional ruin. Miller uses extended flashbacks to show both that Willy longs to understand himself and that his efforts to do so are doomed to failure. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Willy revisits the past not in an attempt to sink into happy memories, but in an attempt to analyze himself and understand where his life went wrong. His flashbacks are hardly comforting flights into idealized times gone by. Rather, they are harrowing journeys that get to the heart of his dysfunction. When Willy thinks about old times, he remembers making fun of Biff's theft, barking at Linda about the state of her socks, ignoring Biff's mistreatment of young women, pushing Happy aside, and so away. Each of these memories exposes one of Willy's flaws: his inability to instill strong morals in his children, his guilt over his adultery, his inability to see Biff objectively, and his unequal love respectively. for Biff and Happy. If Willy's dives into the past were purely escapist, he would focus on the happy moments of his life. Instead, he tends to be attracted to moments in which he has behaved in a clearly unpleasant way. This tendency suggests that Willy desires self-knowledge. He wants to understand how he got into the troubles of the present, and he knows that the answers lie in the past. Paradoxically, the very strength of Willy's drive to understand himself thwarts his efforts to gain self-knowledge. In his ineffectual desperation to understand what went wrong, he becomes absorbed in the past. Instead of staying firmly rooted in the present and thinking about how the past applies to the life he lives now, he pulls the memories over his head like a blanket. Miller brings this absorption to life by fully dramatizing Willy's flashbacks. They are not narrated in the first person nor addressed to the public, as befits events that occurred in the past and far away. Rather, they are depicted as fully realized scenes, every bit as vital and urgent as scenes today. By dramatizing Willy's memories, Miller makes them as vivid to us as they are to Willy. Miller suggests that although Willy might benefit from putting a foot in the waters of the past, he begins to lose his grip on sanity when he fully immerses himself in those waters. Willy's efforts at self-analysis are doomed not only because he devotes himself completely to his memories, but also because his passionate emotions are not balanced by cool critical thinking. Willy is constitutionally incapable of analyzing his own behavior, understanding his own character and understanding the mistakes he has made. Over and over, Miller shows how Willy dives into the past, stares blankly at the mistakes he's made, and then makes those same mistakes in the present. He remembers idealizing Ben as a boy; he then describes Ben to his children in exaggerated and enthusiastic terms. He remembers implying that Biff didn't need to work hard to attend a good college; he then becomes angry at the idea that his parenting has anything to do with Biff's failure. Willy has a vague feeling that his past missteps have a.