Importance of Requiem essays

Importance of Requiem essays How important is the requiem to the play in content and mood? A requiem is a special ceremony to honour the souls of the dead. In the requiem we see Linda, Biff, Happy and Charley paying their last respect to Willy, who had died earlier on. In many ways, the play has a great significant, as it gives us the opportunity to assess the validity of what Willy said about his funeral and to an extent see the aftermath of his life. Willy believed that his funeral would be as the funeral of Dave Singleman, which was, "Hundreds of salesmen and buyers were at his funeral," which is the way Willy expects his own funeral to be, as he said, earlier in the play, "But the funeral-Ben, the funeral will be massive." In contrary to what Willy believed his funeral wasn't "massive," there were only four people who attended it, Biff, Happy, Linda and Charley, there wasn't any "strange license plates." The belief that he was respected, liked and known becomes clearly unfounded. In some ways the simple funeral can act as a justification to Willy's life, which is based on his dreams of "making it big," was simply just a phony dream and imagination. His philosophy of life of being "well liked," respected and successful, seemed to be unjustified by the absence of people who "respect" him. It also gives a sense that the dream that Willy believed in so deeply, the American dream, doesn't apply top everyone, and that most of the people are just ordinary. Willy, who believes in the greatness of the America dream, never realised that he was just ordinary, despite Biff saying, earlier on, "Will you take that phony dream, and burn it before something happens?" Willy, however remained to live in his dream world, and took Biffs love as a justification of Willy committing suicide. Biff also knew that Willy had the wrong dreams, as he says, "He had the wrong dreams. All, all wrong" Willy also never realised that what is important in life i...