death of a salesman thesis statement american dream

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Death of a Salesman

Arthur miller.

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Theme Analysis

The American Dream that anyone can achieve financial success and material comfort lies at the heart of Death of a Salesman . Various secondary characters achieve the Dream in different ways: Ben goes off into the wilderness of Alaska and Africa and lucks into wealth by discovering a diamond mine; Howard Wagner inherits his Dream through his father's company; while Bernard , who seemed a studious bore as a child, becomes a successful lawyer through hard work. Willy Loman 's version of the Dream, which has been influenced by his brother Ben's success, is that any man who is manly, good looking, charismatic, and well-liked deserves success and will naturally achieve it.

Over the course of his lifetime, Willy and his sons fall short of the impossible standards of this dream. But the real tragedy of the play is not that Willy fails to achieve the financial success promised in his American dream, but rather that he buys into the dream so thoroughly that he ignores the tangible things around him, such as the love of his family, while pursuing the success he hopes will bring his family security. By sacrificing himself at the end of the play in order to get his family the money from his life insurance policy, Willy literally kills himself for money. In the process, he demonstrates that the American dream, while a powerful vehicle of aspiration, can also turn a human being into a product or commodity whose sole value is his financial worth.

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Death of a Salesman

By arthur miller, death of a salesman death of a salesman and the american dream.

Death of a Salesman is considered by many to be the quintessential modern literary work on the American dream, a term created by James Truslow Adams in his 1931 book, The Epic of America. This is somewhat ironic, given that it is such a dark and frustrated play. The idea of the American dream is as old as America itself: the country has often been seen as an empty frontier to be explored and conquered. Unlike the Old World, the New World had no social hierarchies, so a man could be whatever he wanted, rather than merely having the option of doing what his father did.

The American Dream is closely tied up with the literary works of another author, Horatio Alger. This author grew famous through his allegorical tales which were always based on the rags-to-riches model. He illustrated how through hard work and determination, penniless boys could make a lot of money and gain respect in America. The most famous of his books is the Ragged Dick series (1867). Many historical figures in America were considered Alger figures and compared to his model, notably including Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller.

But the Horatio Alger model of the American dream is not what's represented in Death of a Salesman. Rather than being a direct representation of the concept, or even a direct critique of it, Salesman challenges the effects of the American dream. This myth exists in our society - how does the prevalence of this myth change the way in which we live our lives?

Miller had an uncertain relationship with the idea of the American dream. On one hand, Bernard 's success is a demonstration of the idea in its purist and most optimistic form. Through his own hard work and academic success, Bernard has become a well-respected lawyer. It is ironic, however, that the character most obviously connected to the American dream, who boasts that he entered the jungle at age seventeen and came out at twenty-one a rich man, actually created this success in Africa, rather than America. There is the possibility that Ben created his own success through brute force rather than ingenuity. The other doubt cast on the American dream in Death of a Salesman is that the Loman men, despite their charm and good intentions, have not managed to succeed at all. Miller demonstrates that the American dream leaves those who need a bit more community support, who cannot advocate for themselves as strongly, in the dust.

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Death of a Salesman Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Death of a Salesman is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Significant of the tittle in 600 words.

I think the title refers to both the death of Willy the salesmen and the death of his dreams. Willy's dreams of success turn to disillusionment when he cannot compete in the capitalist world. An extended metaphor might also involve Capitalism and...

death of a salesman

Charley visits because he is worried about Willy.He knows Willy is a proud man and he wants to help him, though Willy isn't really willing to take his help.

Please submit your questions one at a time.

How have biff and happy responded to their father’s condition

Biff denies responsibility for his father's condition, but he is forced to acknowledge that he is linked to his father's guilt and irrational actions. I think happy is just stressed about it.

Study Guide for Death of a Salesman

Death of a Salesman study guide contains a biography of Arthur Miller, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

About Death of a Salesman
Death of a Salesman Summary
Character List

Essays for Death of a Salesman

Death of a Salesman essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of the play Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller.

Shattered Dream - The Delusion of Willy Loman
Perceptions of Self Worth and Prominence: Spaces and Settings in Death of a Salesman
Sales and Dreams
Musical Motifs
Death of A Salesman: Shifting of the American Dream

Lesson Plan for Death of a Salesman

About the Author
Study Objectives
Introduction to Death of a Salesman
Relationship to Other Books
Notes to the Teacher

Wikipedia Entries for Death of a Salesman

Introduction

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Death of a Salesman: Arthur Miller and the Collapse of the American Dream

Explore Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman as an ideological critique of the American dream capitalism.

D eath of a Salesman is a well-known play written in 1949 by Arthur Miller. The play is a mosaic of dreams, confrontations, arguments, and memories which all play out during the last 24 hours in the life of a salesman called Willy Loman. Willy, his wife Linda, and his sons Happy and Biff form a perpetuating cycle of denial and contradictions which culminate in Willy’s eventual death by suicide. None of the characters are particularly unique and neither are the things that happen in the play. The play is, however, a serious critique of ideology, unachievable expectations, and the myths which keep us all going.

Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller

On the first enactment of the play Death of Salesman by Arthur Miller , people at the theatre allegedly started crying and they simply couldn’t stop. This phenomenon wasn’t an isolated incident. In the later showings of the play, decades later, people would have the same reaction. What is it about this play that provokes such a strong reaction from people? After all, the play doesn’t belong to the tragedy genre. In fact, the story itself is quite mundane, far from spectacular.

Willy Loman, a marginally successful salesman is concerned about what his son Biff will make of himself. He thinks that Biff is not doing enough to climb up the ladder of the American dream. Happy, Willy’s other son, is happy being a mediocre salesman. Willy’s mental health slowly deteriorates throughout the play, to the point where he eventually takes his own life in a hotel room. The strained family relations slowly break down and cause heated arguments. Willy hopes that his suicide will consequently leave some money for his family through his insurance. On the day of his death, Willy asks for a job from his former employer, Howard. Howard refuses and in a fit of rage, Willy destroys the office. The family gets together after Willy’s death and laments about the life he lived. This is the storyline of the play. So, it isn’t particularly shocking or new. To understand why the audience would have such a reaction, we need to dig a little deeper into what the play says about society and about our own world, more than 70 years later.

The Tragedy of The Ordinary Man

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On the surface, Willy’s life doesn’t seem all that bad. He’s married with two sons and owns a house and a car. This life seems almost unreachable to younger generations today. However, problems and contradictions start emerging when you start digging a little deeper. Willy portrays himself as a very successful salesman but in reality, he is a mediocre one. This is revealed to us at the start of the play. Talking to his wife Linda, he, at first, starts saying how good his last business trip was. As the conversation keeps going, Linda forces him to admit that the trip was only somewhat successful. This seems to be the theme throughout the play. People conceal their failures in order to meet the heavy societal expectations of the American dream .

In reality, Willy struggles to make car payments, eventually loses his job, and kills himself when he can’t find a new one, all in the hopes of leaving money back for his family through his insurance. Growing up, Willy and Happy believed in their dad and what he symbolizes. Their relationship is ultimately broken after they start understanding what kind of man he really was. It is revealed that, 15 years prior to the events in the play, Willy had an affair. This leads Biff to re-examine everything he thought he knew about his dad, so he questions his success and his persona.

Identity Crisis and the Death of the American Dream

The American dream is an idea that has haunted people for centuries. When the continent was first discovered, many people came here in the hopes of building a brand-new life. They were looking for gold, literally and figuratively. About 100 years ago, the American dream meant something very different from what it means today. It was a slogan of equality and societal prosperity. It wasn’t until the 1940s and 1950s that the phrase was repurposed to mean something completely different.

The American dream thus became a dream of personal prosperity, a consumerist dream of acquiring wealth, far removed from its original principles. At 63, Willy sees his reality for what it is. He can no longer maintain his own illusion of being successful. It finally dawns upon him that he has never managed to achieve what he wanted to. He never lived up to the American dream. He’s getting old, his body is slowly failing him and his mental health is worsening. He is not able to come to terms with the fact that he will die without ever becoming that special somebody, that he will die a random salesman who achieved nothing exquisite.

This reality might have been easier to swallow if his kids were the ones actually achieving the American dream. However, they stand as a reflection of his own failure to measure up to societal expectations. Throughout his life, Willy tries to push his sons to make something of themselves, to reach the American dream that he couldn’t reach. The American dream, therefore, becomes something unattainable. The drama is an encapsulation of the inability to break through into wealth and the dissonance between societal dreams and reality.

Everything Is Not Possible

Willy’s favorite son Biff, an ex-football star, is expected to do a lot with his life but he never seems to do anything spectacular. He bounces between odd jobs and doesn’t see himself working at an office. Willy constantly patronizes Biff, telling him about the business opportunities he is wasting. He tells him that anything is possible as long as Biff puts his mind to it and works hard to achieve it. Indeed, this message is very familiar to us. It hasn’t changed much. We’re bombarded with success stories of people achieving the impossible and symbols of wealth we should be striving for.

This is a part of the ongoing myth of becoming somebody special. No one wants to be someone who is in any way random. We are constantly told that we need to stand out, climb the ladder and make something out of ourselves. This something isn’t neutral. It is fundamentally tied to the material and economic realities. Obviously, not everyone can become a rich businessman since the slots for this are limited. But, in order for our society to function, we need to keep believing that we can achieve the dream. We need to believe that the impossible is not only possible but an imperative.

Arthur Miller and Repression

One can only imagine the audience watching the play in 1949. The play spoke the truth that was forcefully suppressed, a truth that the viewers couldn’t really articulate. The truth arose from its lethargic repression, it gained form and articulation, and it finally bubbled up and burst into the shores of conscious reflection. Slavoj Žižek, a contemporary philosopher often defines ideology as a shared fantasy . Isn’t the shared fantasy of individual wealth and prosperity the glue that keeps Willy’s society and our society intact?

It is therefore not surprising that the play caused such a strong reaction in people. The piece was even called communist propaganda at the time. In 1951 Columbia Pictures tried to change the title to Career of a salesman to the film version of the play. This was supposed to show the audience that the film they were going to be watching wasn’t actually depicting reality and that the modern salesman was actually full of life, energy, and success. Miller didn’t agree to this, of course, saying that he was being asked to concur that his play was morally meaningless.

The resistance that the play faced was strong. It hit upon something that the mode of ideology at the time needed in order to properly function. People draw their energies from this shared fantasy. A life where you don’t aspire for riches and wealth in some capacity seems almost unimaginable. The pressure that capitalist hegemony puts on family relations is strong enough to break them. Willy lived in this shared fantasy and he plunged into the phantasmic possibilities of capitalism which he never manages to reach. Once the fantasy breaks, so does Willy. He can’t function without this myth. Our lives become overwhelming and our suffering is rendered meaningless without the piece of a shared fantasy and without the voice which tells us that this will all be worth it in the end .

10 Interesting Facts About Arthur Miller

By Klejton Cikaj MSc in Social Philosophy, BA Philosophy Klejton holds an MSc in Social Philosophy from the University of Tirana in Albania. Klejton has a deep interest in all philosophy-related fields, from metaphysics to epistemology, to the philosophy of mind and politics. Klejton is dedicated to making the substance of philosophy accessible to regular readers without diminishing its quality.

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The American Dream in Death of a Salesman

Death of a salesman american dream: essay introduction, willy’s american dream, miller’s characterization of the american dream: death of a salesman, how to realize ‘american dream’, loman family’s hopes and american dream: death of a salesman, death of a salesman american dream: essay conclusion.

One of the main themes in the play Death of a Salesman is the American Dream. The philosophy of the American Dream originated in the early twentieth century when many immigrants came to America in search of economic opportunities and a better life. The protagonist, Willy, thinks that to achieve the American Dream, one needs to be likable and have a good personality. In reality, the keys to success in America are hard work and diligence. Willy, however, cannot see this, thus leading him to fail in his business endeavors.

The American Dream is characterized by the materialistic and idealistic values of society. To fulfill the American Dream, one has to live a perfect life as a hardworking and successful citizen. Throughout the novel, Willy strives to fulfill the American Dream but never achieves his goal because he does not understand what is required.

The “American Dream,” in Willy’s eyes, is the accomplishments and attainments of a successful career. Being the dreamer he is, Willy attempts to make his mark as a salesman because “selling [is] the greatest career a man [can] want” (Act 2). Unfortunately for Willy, he falls short of his goal of succeeding in his career as a salesman. Willy blames the superficiality of the business world. This conviction is seen in his thoughts about Bernard:

“Bernard can get the best marks in school, y’understand, but when he gets out in the business world, y’understand, you’re going to be five times ahead of him. That’s why I thank Almighty God you’re both built like agonizes. Because the man, who makes an appearance in the business world, creates personal interest, is the man who gets ahead. Be liked and you will never want” (Act 1).

Willy has ingrained his distorted views in his sons as well. His sons are Biff and Happy. Because of these thoughts and views being fed to his sons, this ultimately condemned them to failure as well. Happy complains, “I mean, I can outbox, outrun, and outlift anybody in that store, and I have to take orders from those common, pretty sons-of-bitches till I can’t stand it anymore” (Act 1). Happy thinks that just because he is stronger than those who give him orders, he should be the one to give the orders. His father taught him that that was the way to success, and it is obviously failing for Happy. The same goes for Biff. Just because he has a dashing smile, good looks, and people like him – that does not mean he will succeed in the business world. He is also lacking hard work, persistence, and work ethic, which makes him a failure. Willy does not see it that way in any case. He is seeing both of his sons from “the clouds.” He looks down on them like they are the successes that he has made out to be in his head. This belief, unfortunately, does not help them in life. The Loman boys are not the only ones Willy views as poisons but also his wife, Linda.

Miller has created Willy’s wife, Linda so that it is difficult to confirm whether she is a positive or destructive force upon him. It is hard to understand why she allows this deception to rise to the level that it does. The love Linda holds for Willy is persistent. She sees herself as his protector. Linda allows Willy to laps into his illusions to feel contentment. However, in her love for her husband, she ironically can also be seen as his destroyer. In her admiration for Willy, Linda also accepts his dream, which turns out fatal. She allows him to kill himself, never letting on that she knows about the attempted suicides. Although Linda was affected by Willy’s illusions of success, Biff was most affected.

The character most harmfully affected by Willy’s pursuit of the “American Dream” is his eldest son Biff. Like his father, they are both impractical. Biff has the consequences of disillusionment to deal with, and Willy the illusions themselves. Still looking for his purpose in life, Biff persists due to Willy. While still in high school, Biff’s future was assured. He was well-liked, but it all came down soon afterward, discovering his father shattered the vision he held of him, “just because he printed University of Virginia on his sneakers doesn’t mean their going to graduate him” (Act 1). Biff, paralyzed by reality, realizes that, in fact, there is more to life than being a well-liked football star. Now after searching, Biff comes to terms with exactly who and what he is:

“… I stopped in the middle of that building and I saw – the sky. I saw the things I love in this world… and I looked at the pen and said to myself, what the hell am I grabbing this for? Why am I trying to become what I don’t want to be…I am not a leader of men… Pop I’m a dime a dozen, and so are you” (Act 2).

Willy also soon discovers that his life is not the perfect one he has conjured up in his head. Willy realizes that he has lived his life in vain. He has concluded that he has never achieved nor succeeded but remained a shadow of his ambition. This sudden insight urges him into a fantasy, afraid to face the future. It is only through Willy’s failure as a salesman that his innate desire for the outdoors is exposed. At the end of the play, Charley mentions, “… He was a happy man with a batch of cement… so wonderful with his hands… he had the wrong dreams, all wrong” (Act 2). The play emphasizes that the path not taken may have been right. Willy holds this assumption as the inability to see who and what he is, which leads to the tragic ending. (Stanton, 103)

Suicide is the answer Willy comes up with. It is the end of a life spent futilely chasing the “American Dream.” (Ferguson, 94) Willy has been unsuccessful in achieving the success he so desperately craves because his perception of the formula for success is fatally flawed. Willy believes the American dream is only attainable for the popular and attractive few. He does not believe he belongs to this elite group. Unfortunately, Willy never sees the error of his ways. To the very end, he is a firm believer in the ideology that the attractive and well-spoken finish first. This conviction is the very thing that destroys him because he now finds out, in his mind, he is not on top. Death of a Salesman is an outstanding play that challenges the “American Dream.” We can learn from Willy Loman. We all have the urge to attain our own “American Dreams,” but we must live in reality, work hard, and persist in our efforts to attain them. (Scanlan, 233)

In believing that Willy only has his personality and appearance to sell himself, Willy is seen as heroic. Even after he fails as a salesman, Will feels compelled to persist because a salesman’s only way of survival is to dream. After Willy’s death, Charley says of Willy, “he’s a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they stop smiling back, – that’s an earthquake…. A salesman is got to dream boy. It comes with the territory.” (138). Charley knows that a salesman’s job is hard and that after much time and failure, his smile and shoeshine fade. The American Dream is seen as the antagonist in this play because it leads to Willy’s deterioration, insanity, and destruction. (Jacobson, 255)

The death of Willy at the end of the play is caused by the flaws of the American dream, the one that killed Willy is the one that says that some people will work hard all their life and end up with nothing, which happened to Willy. The American Dream sucks people in and does not let them leave. It is a lose-lose situation. Willy made the American Dream his culture, and the American Dream made Willy its victim. All of this is proof that living out this ‘American Dream,’ will never be a reality. It will just be an unobtainable fantasy.

Needless to say, the American Dream fails for many individuals. It is not the American system’s fault; it is due to the pursuers’ lack of hard work and dedication. The American system offers an opportunity to all people to live their American Dream; some might blame the system for their troubles when it is their own fault. (Helterman, 103) There is no quick or easy way through life, as achieving goals involves countless hard work and dedication to reaching dreams. The system is primarily understood by unfortunate people born into complicated lives, and they seem to truly understand how the system works and succeeds through hard work. We can learn from Willy Loman that we all have the urge to attain our own American Dreams, but we must live in reality, work hard, and persist in our efforts to attain them. So, Miller is one of the playwrights who show that the American Dream is just an ideology people can pursue and meet its requirements. It is not a magician that enables those with blind faith to become wealthy and successful.

The American Dream, as an essential theme in the play, also explains all of the male members of the Loman family’s pressure to succeed. All the Loman men desperately strive to succeed in areas that would never make them happy. Willy Loman shows a need for excellence in all aspects of his life. This desperation is shown in his constant over-exaggeration of his and his son’s achievements and skills. Willy is constantly contradicting himself throughout Death of a Salesman. For example, during one of Willy’s frequent flashbacks, he returns home to his eager wife and talks of his “five hundred gross in Providence and seven hundred gross in Boston.” He later contradicts himself when questioned repeatedly about his sales. Ultimately, he admits his actual “two hundred gross on the whole trip.” Willy exaggerates his figures in this part of the play to fulfill his self-given role as a successful salesman. (Lawrence, 548)

The Loman family members’ hopes and dreams are all generally similar. Male members of the Loman family wish to become successful in their jobs and live a comfortable lifestyle. In the present time of Death of a Salesman, Biff and Happy share a dream of going into business together as “The Loman brothers.” They believe they can create a million-dollar business, and their money worries will disappear. Willy dreams of earning two hundred dollars a week, repaying his mortgage, and seeing his sons become successful salesmen. He is again disillusioning himself. Biff is going to try and get some money from Bill Oliver, but already Willy is boating off Biff’s work on a huge deal. At the end of the play, Biff says that Willy “had the wrong dreams. All, all, wrong.” This statement implies that Biff thought his father had chosen a career that was very unsuited to him. It entails that Willy had set his self-expectations too high and would have only been able to be a mediocre salesman his whole life. In the play, Happy, like his father, is also disillusioned by the life they pretended to lead instead of the harsh reality that they exist in. (Shockley, 50)

Dreams are important in the play as they seem to be Willy Loman’s world. His life has become so unbearable for him. Miller is trying to say that a society that solely bases itself on hopes and ambitions beyond the reach of the vast majority of its members is using them. He is trying to say that the American Dream is a way of getting the lower members of society to work hard their entire life, striving for a dream that is promised to them but always seems to be just out of their reach. Miller says that the dream can eventually take over lives and destroy the grasp of reality that those who have envisaged the dream once had.

Arthur Miller: Death of a Salesman: “The Norton introduction to literature Ed J Paul Hunter Alison Booth, Kelly Mays. 8th Ed New York: Norton, 2002.

Ferguson, Alfred R. “The Tragedy of the American Dream in Death of a Salesman.” Thought 53 (1998): 81-98.

Helterman, Jeffrey. Dictionary of Literary Biography: Twentieth-Century American Dramatists Part 2: K-Z. Ed. John Mac Nicholas, Volume 7. Detroit: Gale Research Co., 1991. 86-111

Jacobson, Irving. “Family Dreams in Death of a Salesman.” American Literature 47 (1995): 247-58.

Lawrence, Stephen A. “The Right Dream in Miller’s Death of a Salesman.” College English 25 (2001): 547-49.

Scanlan, Tom. “Reactions I: Family and Society in Arthur Miller.” Family, Drama, and American Dreams. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998, pp. 126-35.

Shockley John S. “Death of a Salesman and American Leadership: Life Imitates Art.” Journal of American Culture 17 (Summer 1994): 49-56.

Stanton Kay. “Women and the American Dream of Death of a Salesman.” In Feminist Rereadings of Modern American Drama. Ed. June Schlueter. Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1989. p103.

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'Death of a Salesman' Themes and Symbols

The shortcomings of the American dream and family relationships

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The main themes and symbols of Death of a Salesman include family relationships and, at large, the shortcomings of the American dream and all of its consequences, namely the financial well-being that can afford people certain luxuries.

The American Dream

The American dream, which assumes that anyone can achieve financial success and material comfort, lies at the heart of Death of a Salesman . We learn that various secondary characters attain this ideal: Ben goes off into the wilderness of Alaska and Africa and, as luck has it, discovers a diamond mine; Howard Wagner inherits his dream through his father's company; the nerdier Bernard, mocked by Willy for his attitude, becomes a successful lawyer through hard work.

Willy Loman has a simplistic view of the American dream. He thinks that any man who is manly, good looking, charismatic, and well-liked is both deserving of success and will naturally achieve it. The life trajectory of his brother Ben influenced him in that regard. Those standards, however, are impossible, and, over the course of his lifetime, Willy and his sons fall short of it. Willy buys into his distorted philosophy so thoroughly that he neglects what is actually good in his life, such as the love of his family, in order to pursue an ideal of success that—he hopes—will bring his family security. Willy's arc demonstrates how the American dream and its aspirational nature, which might be quite commendable per se, turns individuals into commodities that are only measured by their financial worth. In fact, even his demise at the end of the play is tied to the American dream: he ends his life so that he can, at least, give his family the money of his life insurance policy.

Family Relationships

Family relationships are what makes Death of a Salesman a universal play. In fact, when the play was produced in China in 1983, the actors had no trouble understanding the themes of the play—the relationship between a father and his sons or between husband and wife, or two brothers of different dispositions, were very intelligible to Chinese audiences and performers.

The central conflict of the play concerns Willy and his elder son Biff, who showed great promise as a young athlete and ladies' man while in high school. His adulthood, however was marked by thievery and lack of direction. Willy's younger son, Happy, has a more defined and secure career path, but he is a shallow character.

The twisted beliefs Willy instilled in his sons, namely luck over hard work and likability over expertise, led them to disappoint both him and themselves as adults. By presenting them with the dream of grand, easy success, he overwhelmed his sons, and this is true both of Biff and Happy, who produce nothing substantial.

Willy, at 63, is still working, trying to plant seeds in the middle of the night, in order to give his family sustenance. Biff realizes, at the play's climax, that only by escaping from the dream that Willy has instilled in him will father and son be free to pursue fulfilling lives. Happy never realizes this, and at the end of the play he vows to continue in his father's footsteps, pursuing an American dream that will leave him empty and alone.

Willy's role as a provider in regards to Linda is equally fraught. While he is enthralled by the Woman in Boston because she “liked” him, which stoked his twisted ideal of successful business man, when he gives stockings to her instead of Linda, he is overcome with shame. Still, he fails to realize that what his wife wants is love and not financial security

In Death of a Salesman , stockings represent the covering-up of imperfection, and Willy’s (failed) attempt to be a successful businessman and thus, a provider. Both Linda Loman and the Woman in Boston are seen holding them. In the play, Willy reprimands Linda for mending her stockings, implicitly suggesting that he intends to buy her new ones. This reprimand takes on new significance when we learn that Willy, in the past, bought new stockings as a gift to The Woman when they meet for secret trysts in Boston. On the one hand, the silk stockings that Linda Loman mends are an indicator of the strained financial circumstances of the Loman family, on the other, they serve Willy as a reminder of his affair.

In Death of a Salesman, the jungle represents the antithesis of the middle-class life that Willy Loman had strived to achieve. While Willy’s life is predictable and risk-averse, the jungle, which is praised mainly by the character of Ben, Willy’s brother, is full of darkness and dangers, but, if conquered, it leads to higher rewards than any average salesman-life could.

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Home › Drama Criticism › Analysis of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman

Analysis of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on July 30, 2020 • ( 0 )

Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman is, perhaps, to this time, the most mature example of a myth of Contemporary life. The chief value of this drama is its attempt to reveal those ultimate meanings which are resident in modern experience. Perhaps the most significant comment on this play is not its literary achievement, as such, but is, rather, the impact which it has had on spectators, both in America and abroad. The influence of this drama, first performed in 1949, continues to grow in World Theatre. For it articulates, in language which can be appreciated by popular audiences, certain new dimensions of the human dilemma.

—Esther Merle Jackson, “ Death of a Salesman : Tragic Myth in the Modern Theatre”

It can be argued that the Great American Novel—that always elusive imaginative summation of the American experience—became the Great American Drama in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman . Along with Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night , Miller’s masterpiece forms the defining myth of the American family and the American dream. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is the play’s only rival in American literature in expressing the tragic side of the American myth of success and the ill-fated American dreamers. A landmark and cornerstone 20th-century drama, Death of a Salesman is crucial in the history of American theater in presenting on stage an archetypal family drama that is simultaneously intimate and representative, social and psychological, realistic and expressionistic. Critic Lois Gordon has called it “the major American drama of the 1940s” that “remains unequalled in its brilliant and original fusion of realistic and poetic techniques, its richness of visual and verbal texture, and its wide range of emotional impact.” Miller’s play, perhaps more than any other, established American drama as the decisive arena for addressing the key questions of American identity and social and moral values, while pioneering methods of expression that liberated American theater. The drama about the life and death of salesman Willy Loman is both thoroughly local in capturing a particular time and place and universal, one of the most popular and adapted American plays worldwide. Willy Loman has become the contemporary Everyman, prompting widespread identification and sympathy. By centering his tragedy on a lower middle-class protagonist—insisting, as he argued in “Tragedy and the Common Man,” that “the common man is as apt a subject for tragedy in its highest sense as kings were”—Miller completed the democratization of drama that had begun in the 19th century while setting the terms for a key debate over dramatic genres that has persisted since Death of a Salesman opened in 1949.

Miller’s subjects, themes, and dramatic mission reflect his life experiences, informed by the Great Depression, which he regarded as a “moral catastrophe,” rivaled, in his view, only by the Civil War in its profound impact on American life. Miller was born in 1915, in New York City. His father, who had emigrated from Austria at the age of six, was a successful coat manufacturer, prosperous enough to afford a chauffeur and a large apartment over-looking Central Park. For Miller’s family, an embodiment of the American dream that hard work and drive are rewarded, the stock market crash of 1929 changed everything. The business was lost, and the family was forced to move to considerably reduced circumstances in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn in a small frame house that served as the model for the Lomans’ residence. Miller’s father never fully recovered from his business failure, and his mother was often depressed and embittered by the family’s poverty, though both continued to live in hope of an economic recovery to come. For Miller the depression exposed the hollowness and fragility of the American dream of material success and the social injustice inherent in an economic system that created so many blameless casualties. The paradoxes of American success—its stimulation of both dreams and guilt when lost or unrealized, as well as the conflict it created between self-interest and social responsibility—would become dominant themes in Miller’s work. As a high school student Miller was more interested in sports than studies. “Until the age of seventeen I can safely say that I never read a book weightier than Tom Swift , and Rover Boys, ” Miller recalled, “and only verged on literature with some of Dickens. . . . I passed through the public school system unscathed.” After graduating from high school in 1932 Miller went to work in an auto parts warehouse in Manhattan. It was during his subway commute to and from his job that Miller began reading, discovering both the power of serious literature to change the way one sees the world and his vocation: “A book that changed my life was The Brothers Karamazov which I picked up, I don’t know how or why, and all at once believed I was born to be a writer.”

In 1934 Miller was accepted as a journalism student at the University of Michigan. There he found a campus engaged by the social issues of the day: “The place was full of speeches, meetings and leaflets. It was jumping with Issues. . . . It was, in short, the testing ground for all my prejudices, my beliefs and my ignorance, and it helped to lay out the boundaries of my life.” At Michigan Miller wrote his first play, despite having seen only two plays years before, to compete for prize money he needed for tuition. Failing in his first attempt he would eventually twice win the Avery Hopwood Award. Winning “made me confident I could go ahead from there. It left me with the belief that the ability to write plays is born into one, and that it is a kind of sport of the mind.” Miller became convinced that “with the exception of a doctor saving a life, writing a worthy play was the most important thing a human could do.” He would embrace the role of the playwright as social conscience and reformer who could help change America, by, as he put it “grabbing people and shaking them by the back of the neck.” Two years after graduating in 1938, having moved back to Brooklyn and married his college sweetheart, Miller had completed six plays, all but one of them rejected by producers. The Man Who Had All the Luck, a play examining the ambiguities of success and the money ethic, managed a run of only four performances on Broadway in 1944. Miller went to work at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, tried his hand at radio scripts, and attempted one more play. “I laid myself a wager,” he wrote in his autobiography. “I would hold back this play until I was as sure as I could be that every page was integral to the whole and would work; then, if my judgment of it proved wrong, I would leave the theater behind and write in other forms.” The play was All My Sons, about a successful manufacturer who sells defective aircraft parts and is made to face the consequences of his crime and his responsibilities. It is Miller’s version of a Henrik Ibsen problem play, linking a family drama to wider social issues. Named one of the top-10 plays of 1947, All My Sons won the Tony Award and the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award over Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh. The play’s success allowed Miller to buy property in rural Connecticut where he built a small studio and began work on Death of a Salesman .

This play, subtitled “Certain Private Conversations in Two Acts and a Requiem,” about the last 24 hours of an aging and failing traveling salesman misguided by the American dream, began, as the playwright recounts in his introduction to his Collected Plays , with an initial image

of an enormous face the height of the proscenium arch which would appear and then open up, and we would see the inside of a man’s head. In fact, The Inside of His Head was the first title. . . . The image was in direct opposition to the method of All My Sons —a method one might call linear or eventual in that one fact or incident creates the necessity for the next. The Salesman image was from the beginning absorbed with the concept that nothing in life comes “next” but that everything exists together and at the same time within us; that there is no past to be “brought forward” in a human being, but that he is his past at every moment. . . . I wished to create a form which, in itself as a form, would literally be the process of Willy Loman’s way of mind.

The play took shape by staging the past in the present, not through flashbacks of Willy’s life but by what the playwright called “mobile concurrency of past and present.” Miller recalled beginning

with only one firm piece of knowledge and this was that Loman was to destroy himself. How it would wander before it got to that point I did not know and resolved not to care. I was convinced only that if I could make him remember enough he would kill himself, and the structure of the play was determined by what was needed to draw up his memories like a mass of tangled roots without ends or beginning.

At once realistic in its documentation of American family life and expressionistic in its embodiment of consciousness on stage, Death of a Salesman opens with the 63-year-old Willy Loman’s return to his Brooklyn home, revealing to his worried wife, Linda, that he kept losing control of his car on a selling trip to Boston. Increasingly at the mercy of his memories Willy, in Miller’s analysis, “is literally at that terrible moment when the voice of the past is no longer distant but quite as loud as the voice of the present.” Reflecting its protagonist, “The way of telling the tale . . . is as mad as Willy and as abrupt and as suddenly lyrical.” The family’s present—Willy’s increasing mental instability, his failure to earn the commissions he needs to survive, and his disappointment that his sons, Biff and Happy, have failed to live up to expectations—intersects with scenes from the past in which both their dreams and the basis for their disillusionment are exposed. In the present Biff, the onetime star high school athlete with seeming unlimited prospects in his doting father’s estimation, is 34, having returned home from another failed job out west and harboring an unidentified resentment of his father. As Biff confesses, “everytime I come back here I know that all I’ve done is to waste my life.” His brother, Happy, is a deceitful womanizer trapped in a dead-end job who confesses that despite having his own apartment, “a car, and plenty of women . . . still, goddammit, I’m lonely.” The present frustrations of father and sons collide with Willy’s memory when all was youthful promise and family harmony. In a scene in which Biff with the prospect of a college scholarship seems on the brink of attaining all Willy has expected of him, both boys hang on their father’s every word as he exults in his triumphs as a successful salesman:

America is full of beautiful towns and fine, upstanding people. And they know me, boys, they know me up and down New England. The finest people. And when I bring you fellas up, there’ll be open sesame for all of us, ’cause one thing, boys: I have friends. I can park my car in any street in New England, and the cops protect it like their own.

Triumphantly, Willy passes on his secret of success: “Be liked and you will never want.” His advice exposes the fatal fl aw in his life view that defines success by exterior rather than interior values, by appearance and possessions rather than core morals. Even in his confident memory, however, evidence of the undermining of his self-confidence and aspirations occurs as Biff plays with a football he has stolen and father and son ignore the warning of the grind Bernard (who “is liked, but he’s not well liked”) that Biff risks graduating by not studying. Willy’s popularity and prowess as a salesman are undermined by Linda’s calculation of her husband’s declining commissions, prompting Willy to confess that “people don’t seem to take to me.” Invading Willy’s memory is the realization that he is far from the respected and resourceful salesman he has boasted being to his sons as he struggles to meet the payments on the modern appliances that equip the American dream of success. Moreover, to boost his sagging spirits on the road he has been unfaithful to his loving and supportive wife. To protect himself from these hurtful memories Willy is plunged back into the present for a card game with Bernard’s father, Charley. Again the past intrudes in the form of a memory of a rare visit by Willy’s older brother, Ben, who has become rich and whose secrets for success elude Willy. Back in the present Willy is hopeful at Biff’s plan to go see an old employer, Bill Oliver, for the money to start up a Loman Brothers sporting goods line. The act ends with Willy’s memory of Biff’s greatest moment—the high school football championship:

Like a young god. Hercules—something like that. And the sun, the sun all around him. Remember how he waved to me? Right up from the field, with the representatives of three colleges standing by? And the buyers I brought, and the cheers when he came out—Loman, Loman, Loman! God Almighty, he’ll be great yet. A star like that, magnificent, can never really fade away!

The second act shatters all prospects, revealing the full truth that Willy has long evaded about himself and his family in a series of crushing blows. Expecting to trade on his 34 years of loyal service to his employer for a nontraveling, salaried position in New York, Willy is forced to beg for a smaller and smaller salary before he is fired outright, prompting one of the great lines of the play: “You can’t eat the orange and throw the peel away—a man is not a piece of fruit.” Rejecting out of pride a job offer from Charley, Willy meets his son for dinner where Biff reveals that his get-rich scheme has collapsed. Bill Oliver did not remember who he was, kept him waiting for hours, and resentfully Biff has stolen his fountain pen from his desk. Biff now insists that Willy face the truth—that Biff was only a shipping clerk and that Oliver owes him nothing—but Willy refuses to listen, with his need to believe in his son and the future forcing Biff to manufacture a happier version of his meeting and its outcome. Biff’s anger and resentment over the old family lies about his prospects, however, cause Willy to relive the impetus of Biff’s loss of faith in him in one of the tour de force scenes in modern drama. Biff and Happy’s attempt to pick up two women at the restaurant interconnects with Willy’s memory of Biff’s arrival at Willy’s Boston hotel unannounced. There he discovers a partially dressed woman in his father’s room. Having failed his math class and jeopardized his scholarship, Biff has come to his father for help. Willy’s betrayal of Linda, however, exposes the hollowness of Willy’s moral authority and the disjunction between the dreams Willy sells and its reality:

Willy: She’s nothing to me, Biff. I was lonely, I was terribly lonely.

Biff: You—you gave her Mama’s stockings!

Willy: I gave you an order!

Biff: Don’t touch me, you—liar!

Willy: Apologize for that!

Biff: You fake! You phony little fake! You fake!

Willy’s guilt over the collapse of his son’s belief in him leads him to a final redemptive dream. Returning home, symbolically outside planting seeds, he discusses with Ben his scheme to kill himself for the insurance money as a legacy to his family and a final proof of his worth as a provider of his sons’ success. Before realizing this dream Willy must endure a final assault of truth from Biff who confesses to being nothing more than a thief and a bum, incapable of holding down a job—someone who is, like Willy, a “dime a dozen,” no better than any other hopeless striver: “I am not a leader of men, Willy, and neither are you. You were never anything but a hard-working drummer who landed in the ash can like all the rest of them!” Biff’s fury explodes into a tearful embrace of his father. After Biff departs upstairs the significance of his words and actions are both realized and lost by the chronic dreamer:

Willy, after a long pause, astonished, elevated Isn’t that—isn’t that remarkable? Biff—he likes me!

Linda: He loves you, Willy!

Happy ,deeply moved Always did, Pop.

Willy: Oh. Biff! Staring wildly: He cried! Cried to me. He is choking with his love, and now cries out his promise: That boy—that boy is going to be magnificent!

Analysis of Arthur Miller’s Plays

Doggedly holding onto the dream of his son’s prospects, sustained by his son’s love, Willy finally sets out in his car to carry out his plan, while the scene shifts to his funeral in which Linda tries to understand her husband’s death, and Charley provides the eulogy:

Nobody dast blame this man. You don’t understand: Willy was a salesman. And for a salesman, there is no rock bottom to the life. He don’t put a bolt to a nut, he don’t tell you the law or give you medicine. He’s a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back—that’s an earthquake. And then you get a couple of spots on your hat, and you’re finished. Nobody dast blame this man. A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory.

Linda delivers the final, heartbreaking lines over her husband’s grave: “Willy. I made the last payment on the house today. Today, dear. And there’ll be nobody home. We’re free and clear. We’re free. We’re free . . . We’re free. . . .”

The power and persistence of Death of a Salesman derives from its remarkably intimate view of the dynamic of a family driven by their collective dreams. Critical debate over whether Willy lacks the stature or self-knowledge to qualify as a tragic hero seems beside the point in performance. Few other modern dramas have so powerfully elicited pity and terror in their audiences. Whether Willy is a tragic hero or Death of a Salesman is a modern tragedy in any Aristotelian sense, he and his story have become core American myths. Few critics worry over whether Jay Gatsby is a tragic hero, but Gatsby shares with Willy Loman the essential American capacity to dream and to be destroyed by what he dreams. The concluding lines of The Great Gatsby equally serve as a requiem for both men:

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eludes us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther . . . And one fine morning—

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Analysis of "Death of a Salesman"

Categories: Death of a Salesman

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Published: Jan 31, 2024

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Body paragraph 1: the illusion of the american dream, body paragraph 2: the demise of the traditional family, body paragraph 3: the dehumanizing effects of capitalism, body paragraph 4: the evolving definition of success, counterargument: critiques and alternatives, references:.

Trandell, Jesica et al. "American Dream: Is the American Dream Dead or Alive?" Michael H. Conseur Company, 2020, https://www.ihcnp.com/american-dream/.
"Family Dynamics - a Look at the American Family." Walden University, http://www.waldenu.edu/connect/newsroom/publications/articles/2012/08-family-dynamics-a-look-at-the-american-family.
Kasser, Tim. "Materialistic Values and Goals." Psychology Today, 21 June 2012, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/psychology-and-the-good-life/201206/materialistic-values-and-goals.
Ramasubbu, Shantala. "Death of a Salesman: A Mindmap and General Notes." Ramasubbu, 2011, https://ramasubbutech.blogspot.com/2011/02/death-of-salesman-mindmap.html.
SparkNotes Editors. "SparkNote on Death of a Salesman." SparkNotes.com, SparkNotes LLC, 2002, http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/salesman/.

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Discuss the theme of the American Dream in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman

The theme of American Dream in Death of a Salesman

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Arthur Miller’s play “Death of a Salesman” is a thought-provoking exploration of the American Dream and its disillusionment. Set in the late 1940s, the play portrays the life of Willy Loman, a struggling salesman who firmly believes in the promise of the American Dream.

The theme of American Dream in Death of a Salesman:- However, as the story unfolds, it becomes evident that the pursuit of success and material wealth can lead to despair and personal downfall. This essay aims to delve into the theme of the American Dream in “Death of a Salesman” and analyze how Miller challenges the idealized notion of success in post-war America.

1. Illusion vs. Reality: The central conflict in “Death of a Salesman” revolves around the dichotomy between illusion and reality. Willy Loman epitomizes the American Dream, driven by the belief that charisma and likeability are enough to achieve success. He idolizes the idea of being “well-liked,” equating it with prosperity and popularity. However, the play exposes the hollowness of these illusions. Willy’s relentless pursuit of the American Dream blinds him to the harsh realities of his life, leaving him trapped in a cycle of self-deception and disillusionment.

Death of a Salesman “Summary”

“Death of a Salesman” is a renowned play written by Arthur Miller, first performed in 1949. It delves into the life of Willy Loman, a struggling salesman in post-war America, and explores themes of the American Dream, disillusionment, and the human condition.

The theme of American Dream in Death of a Salesman:- The play presents a critique of the capitalist society and examines the destructive effects of blind ambition, societal expectations, and the pursuit of material success. Through the tragic story of Willy Loman, Miller provides a thought-provoking portrayal of the complexities and shortcomings of the American Dream and the human desire for recognition and validation.

The American Dream is a central theme in “Death of a Salesman.” Willy Loman, a dedicated but unsuccessful salesman, believes in the myth that anyone can achieve success and prosperity through hard work and charisma. He spends his life chasing the illusion of the American Dream, convinced that wealth and popularity will lead to happiness and fulfillment.

The theme of American Dream in Death of a Salesman:- However, as the play unfolds, it becomes clear that the American Dream is unattainable for Willy and his family. The play challenges the notion of the American Dream as a one-size-fits-all concept, highlighting its flaws and the pitfalls of blindly pursuing material success.

Disillusionment is another prominent theme in the play. As Willy struggles with financial instability and a deteriorating mental state, he becomes increasingly disillusioned with his life. He realizes that his efforts have not led to the success he had envisioned and that his dreams are shattered.

The theme of American Dream in Death of a Salesman:- This disillusionment not only affects Willy but also permeates the lives of his sons, Happy and Biff. The play explores the consequences of shattered dreams, the emptiness that follows, and the struggle to find meaning in a society that places excessive value on material wealth.

The play also delves into the human condition and the complexities of the individual’s relationship with society. Willy Loman grapples with feelings of inadequacy and a desperate need for validation and recognition. He measures his self-worth based on societal expectations and the opinions of others.

The theme of American Dream in Death of a Salesman:- Miller critiques the pressure placed on individuals to conform to societal norms and ideals, highlighting the damaging effects it can have on mental health and personal well-being. Willy’s internal struggle represents the universal human desire for acceptance and the profound impact it can have on one’s identity and sense of self.

Additionally, “Death of a Salesman” examines the dynamics of family relationships and the strains caused by unfulfilled dreams and societal pressures. The strained relationship between Willy and his sons, Biff and Happy, reflects the complexities of generational expectations and the tension between the pursuit of personal dreams and the desire to live up to societal standards. The play explores themes of familial loyalty, forgiveness, and the consequences of unmet expectations within the family unit.

Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” delves into the theme of the American Dream and challenges the idealized notion of success in post-war America. Through the character of Willy Loman, Miller presents a critique of the relentless pursuit of material wealth, the illusory nature of success, and the detrimental effects of capitalism on personal relationships. Willy’s belief in the American Dream blinds him to the realities of his life, leading to a cycle of self-deception and disillusionment.

The theme of American Dream in Death of a Salesman:- The play highlights the tension between illusion and reality, demonstrating that the pursuit of success does not guarantee happiness or fulfillment. Willy’s fixation on appearance and likeability undermines the value of hard work and authenticity. Miller suggests that the American Dream, as promoted by capitalist society, reduces individuals to commodities and erodes human values.

Moreover, “Death of a Salesman” explores the allure of the past and the failure to adapt to changing times. Willy’s inability to let go of past achievements impedes his ability to navigate the present, ultimately leading to his downfall. Miller critiques the notion that past accomplishments alone can ensure a successful future, emphasizing the importance of adaptation and growth.

The theme of American Dream in Death of a Salesman:- Additionally, the play portrays the disintegration of the family unit as a consequence of the pursuit of the American Dream. Willy’s obsession with success drives a wedge between him and his sons, highlighting the sacrifices made in the name of personal ambition. The play suggests that the pursuit of material wealth often comes at the cost of personal relationships and family bonds, leading to isolation and unhappiness.

In “Death of a Salesman,” Miller presents a thought-provoking examination of the American Dream, challenging its ideals and exposing its flaws. The play serves as a cautionary tale, reminding us of the importance of authenticity, human connection, and the need to redefine success beyond material wealth. Miller’s exploration of these themes continues to resonate, inviting audiences to question the true meaning and value of the American Dream in the pursuit of a meaningful and fulfilling life.

Q: Who is the author of “Death of a Salesman”?

A: The author of “Death of a Salesman” is Arthur Miller.

Q: When was “Death of a Salesman” first performed?

A: “Death of a Salesman” premiered on Broadway on February 10, 1949.

Q: Is “Death of a Salesman” based on a true story?

A: “Death of a Salesman” is not based on a specific true story, but it reflects the struggles and disillusionment experienced by many individuals in post-war America.

Q: What is the American Dream?

A: The American Dream is a concept that suggests that every individual in the United States has the opportunity to achieve success, prosperity, and upward social mobility through hard work, determination, and self-motivation.

Q: How does “Death of a Salesman” critique the American Dream?

A: “Death of a Salesman” critiques the American Dream by highlighting the illusory nature of success, the corrupting influence of capitalism, the allure of the past, and the impact of the pursuit of success on personal relationships and family dynamics. The play challenges the idealized notion of the American Dream and suggests that it can lead to disillusionment and personal downfall.

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Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller Argumentative Essay

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Introduction

Personal failure, cultural failure.

Although he appears visionary and hardworking, Willy Loman fails to teach his sons the lessons of becoming successful in life because of his beliefs. Willy survives with a misconstrued ambition of becoming wealthy and inculcates this idea into his sons, Happy and Biff, even though he did not know how to achieve it. He trained his sons on his approach to life and hoped they would follow and achieve his dream of success.

He has no plan for his life and concentrates on his past failures, and his children seem perched to being successful, primed on his world hypotheses. Salesmanship has given Willy a feeling of greatness and merit. He believes that the present world has dishonored them by taking away the personality of salesmen.

Willy has taught this notion to his sons, who are very receptive and obedient to their father. However, these believes have caused him disappointment as they end up turning down his principles and goals. Willy Loman fails to guide his sons to greatness in their lives because of his personal and cultural beliefs.

Willy has an insensitive personality. He does not realize that his capabilities and aspirations are different from those of his sons. While Biff wanted an outdoors job, his father wanted a white collar job for him. Willy does not admit failure nor consider the opinion of his sons. This has led to rebellion from his sons, when they discover what is right for them.

For example, Biff disliked the business life recommended by his father and opted a life on the farms after realizing that success means an enjoyable life and not money. Willy believed that Biff would be successful in business because of his attractiveness, and his past splendor in high school soccer. However, this notion was wrong as Biff failed to graduate from high school and join college because of his arrogance.

He later recognizes his true personality and decides to work on a farm, where he would enjoy and feel comfortable. Willy is very upset in him and is discontented in all that he does. Contrary to his believe that popularity and fame lead to success; Willy never earned handsome wealth despite his claim for fame, and many years of experience.

This is made unsound when his boss demotes him, and he merely earns a commission before he finally gets fired, despite his friendship with Wagner’s father. His claim for connections fails him again. Willy’s idea of connecting Biff with important people at Penn State would be futile as football does not seem to be the best career for him. To Biff, having the right connections does not always help.

The expectations of Willy that his requiem would be fully packed due to his well connection and popularity failed to turn out as he thought since only the family members were present. Willy had inculcated a sense of superiority in Biff Loman that made him arrogant. This made him unsuccessful in graduating from high school and advance to college.

Willy’s melancholy originates from the misconceptions he had about the American dream and his incapability to connect how the world works with how he thinks it should work. The American dream stated that: through the established qualities of determination, creativity, hard work, and resilience, one may get contentment through riches and that a good-looking and loved man will no doubt attain the comforts of modern life.

This dream can be divided into two significances; the traditional dream and the business achievement dream. When one owns a house, has a good paying job, and lives a secure life, then h/she has accomplished the traditional dream. Willy Loman has accomplished this vision as he has an occupation, a vehicle, a residence, and a family, but he did not appreciate it.

He was so preoccupied with the business dream that he dismantles his family in the end. This dream made him sacrifice going to Alaska in search of his father where he came across the successful salesman, Dave. He decides to follow the same career path as Dave and hopes to get the same success as Dave. It is not until thirty five years of his career when he realizes he had not achieved the prosperity he had hoped to achieve.

What Willy fails to know is that even Dave Singleman, who is his epitome of prosperity, has not fulfilled the American dream. This is because at the age of eighty-four, Dave has not retired, lives in a hotel room, and has no family. His illusion about life and his mental disarray about the real American dream make him fail his sons as he does not know what is really needed of them to succeed.

Willy’s life was a disappointment as he had the wrong ambitions and failed to teach his sons the lessons for victory in life. He deluded himself that he could be a wealthy salesman, when he knew that he would be excellent at operating with hands. If Willy had faced his capabilities in a rational and sincere way, his life would not have ended this way.

It is evident that the top secret to success is a fortune in possessing ordinary talents and aptitude, and readiness to take chances in the corporate world, in addition to being industrious, devoid of taking shortcuts with friends. Cultural believes, such as the American dream, should help to instill values in individuals to put efforts in everything that they do.

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Death of a Salesman: Themes

This Custom-Writing.org article explains the key themes in Death of a Salesman . The American dream , family , betrayal and abandonment are the core issues represented in the play by Arthur Miller.

The key themes in Death of a Salesman are: American dream, family, betrayal & abandonment.

🗽 The American Dream

🔗 References

🗽 death of a salesman: american dream.

One of the main themes in Death of a Salesman is the American dream . Willy Loman believed that being “well-liked” is the secret to being a successful businessman. Sadly, he misunderstands the rules of this world.

The American dream in Death of the Salesman resembles the traditional representation of this belief, that is, being a successful self-made man. However, Willy doesn’t realize that being liked and attractive as a person is not enough . Hard work and sacrifice is what can really lead any American to succeed.

Willy’s disbelief in the fundamental nature of business is reflected in his attitude towards Bernard. He thinks that his friend’s son can never achieve anything in this life. Despite being intelligent and hardworking, he is not well-liked.

However, later, we see that Bernard is the one who finds his place in life and settles well. In contrast, Biff, just like his father, feels lost and is far from being successful.

We can see that both Willy and Biff are blinded by false beliefs and refuse to see the harsh truth of the capitalist world. Deep inside, they enjoy the hard physical work but still want to go the easy way.

Death of a Salesman: American Dream Quotes

Biff Loman is lost. In the greatest country in the world a young man with such—personal attractiveness, gets lost. And such a hard worker. There’s one thing about Biff—he’s not lazy. Death of a Salesman , act 1

America is full of beautiful towns and fine, upstanding people. And they know me, boys, they know me up and down New England. The finest people. Death of a Salesman , act 1

It’s who you know and the smile on your face! It’s contacts, Ben, contacts! The whole wealth of Alaska passes over the lunch table at the Commodore Hotel, and that’s the wonder, the wonder of this country, that a man can end with diamonds here on the basis of being liked! Death of a Salesman , act 2

👪 Death of a Salesman: Family

The never-ending conflict between fathers and sons appears as one of the play’s central themes. Willy is disappointed in Biff, his elder son, who used to be such a promising football player, but then lost himself and became a thief. The same happens with the younger son, Happy. Even though he has a stable job, he neglects moral values and shows no respect or loyalty to anyone.

When thinking about money and success, Willy chose a more comfortable strategy. Luck instead of hard work and likability instead of skills have become his recipe for a wealthy life. By teaching his sons this philosophy, he destroys his family and their lives.

Loman put this burden of high expectations that can never be achieved on his sons. With Willy’s death , Biff realizes that nothing is holding them anymore, and they can chase their own dreams. However, Happy doesn’t get it and decides to stay in the illusion created by his father.

That’s why, despite all of Willy’s efforts, his family can never be perfect (not to mention his cheating, which we’ll be discussing in the next section.) Moreover, we can conclude that it has never really been about family since the only aim the salesman chases is money and social acceptance.

Death of a Salesman: Quotes on Family

You can’t just come to see me, because I love him. He’s the dearest man in the world to me, and I won’t have anyone making him feel unwanted and low and blue. You’ve got to make up your mind now, darling, there’s no leeway any more. Either he’s your father and you pay him that respect, or else you’re not to come here. Death of a Salesman , act 1

It sounds so old-fashioned and silly, but I tell you he put his whole life into you and you’ve turned your backs on him. Biff, I swear to God! Biff, his life is in your hands! Death of a Salesman , act 1

Where are your sons? Why don’t your sons give you a hand? Death of a Salesman , act 2

🐀 Death of a Salesman: Betrayal & Abandonment

The last theme concerns another tragic issue presented in the play. Willy’s cheating on Linda is only a minor example of the broad topic of abandonment and betrayal. And the stockings serve as the symbol of his affair.

Biff’s betrayal of his father’s hopes and ambitions is the central issue in the play. Willy thinks that since Biff is his son, he owns him. Therefore, as a father, he has every right to expect his son to obey his will. You can see that Biff feels betrayed as well when he finds out about Willy’s mistress .

Moreover, the trace of abandonment follows Willy’s character through the whole play. His father and then brother, Ben, leave him, and he develops unrealistic expectations from his own family.

If we go deeper into the analysis, it becomes clear that Linda and the rest of the family also abandon Willy in the sense that they refuse to help him. Loman is lost and suffers from some psychological issues, but his wife and kids ignore it. They even feed his illusions, as evident in the restaurant when Biff gives his father false hope. Willy stays trapped in his dreams, which slowly pushes him towards the end.

Death of a Salesman: Quotes on Abandonment & Betrayal

Because I know he’s a fake and he doesn’t like anybody around who knows! Death of a Salesman , act 1

You fake! You phony little fake! You fake! Death of a Salesman , act 2

The man don’t know who we are! The man is gonna know! We never told the truth for ten minutes in this house! Death of a Salesman , act 2

We hope that the above information on Death of a Salesman themes was helpful to you. If you’re looking for exciting essay ideas on the play, check out our list of topics .

‘Death of a Salesman’ Themes and Symbols – ThoughtCo
The American Dream Theme in Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman”
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FAMILY VALUES IN “DEATH OF A SALESMAN” – JStor
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"Death of a Salesman": The American Dream Theme
To the protagonist of "Death of a Salesman," the American Dream is the ability to become prosperous by mere charisma. Willy believes that charming personality, and not necessarily hard work and innovation, is the key to success. Time and again, he wants to make sure his boys are well-liked and popular. For example, when his son Biff confesses ...
The American Dream Theme in Death of a Salesman
The American Dream that anyone can achieve financial success and material comfort lies at the heart of Death of a Salesman.Various secondary characters achieve the Dream in different ways: Ben goes off into the wilderness of Alaska and Africa and lucks into wealth by discovering a diamond mine; Howard Wagner inherits his Dream through his father's company; while Bernard, who seemed a studious ...
American Dream in Miller's "Death of a Salesman" Essay
The play Death of a salesman is indeed an anatomy of the American dream especially because the plot of the story revolves around some of the basic material gains that individuals in the American society yearn for. This is evident from the onset of the play when the lead character Willy Loman arrives home after a failed work mission and ...
Death of A Salesman Thesis Statement American Dream
The document discusses providing assistance to students struggling with writing a thesis on Arthur Miller's play "Death of a Salesman" and its exploration of the American Dream. It states that analyzing Willy Loman's pursuit of success and the disillusionment within the American Dream presented in the play provides challenging angles to consider for a thesis. The document recommends seeking ...
Death of a Salesman Death of a Salesman and the American Dream
Death of a Salesman is a classic American drama that explores the disillusionment and failure of the American dream. In this study guide, you will find a comprehensive summary and analysis of the play, as well as literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, and character profiles. Learn how Arthur Miller portrays the tragic downfall of Willy Loman, a salesman who cannot cope with the ...
Death of a Salesman Analysis
CONCLUSION. The death of a sales man is an attack on the idea of the American dream, showing that it is not always successful i.e. it has a darker side. It also shows that common people also suffer from downfalls which are just as steep as those of people with high status.
Death of a Salesman: Arthur Miller and the Collapse of the American Dream
Explore Arthur Miller's play Death of a Salesman as an ideological critique of the American dream capitalism. D eath of a Salesman is a well-known play written in 1949 by Arthur Miller. The play is a mosaic of dreams, confrontations, arguments, and memories which all play out during the last 24 hours in the life of a salesman called Willy Loman.
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Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman is an anatomy of the American Dream. The American Dream is what Willie Loman is trying to achieve. He believes that if one works hard enough, he will be ...
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Summary: In Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman," the American Dream is interpreted as the pursuit of material success and social status. The play critiques this ideal by showing how it leads to ...
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The "American Dream," in Willy's eyes, is the accomplishments and attainments of a successful career. Being the dreamer he is, Willy attempts to make his mark as a salesman because "selling [is] the greatest career a man [can] want" (Act 2). Unfortunately for Willy, he falls short of his goal of succeeding in his career as a salesman.
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Summary: In Death of a Salesman, the American Dream is portrayed as an unattainable ideal that leads to disillusionment and despair. Willy Loman believes success is equated with being well-liked ...
'Death of a Salesman' Themes and Symbols
The American Dream . The American dream, which assumes that anyone can achieve financial success and material comfort, lies at the heart of Death of a Salesman.We learn that various secondary characters attain this ideal: Ben goes off into the wilderness of Alaska and Africa and, as luck has it, discovers a diamond mine; Howard Wagner inherits his dream through his father's company; the ...
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Categories: Drama Criticism, Literature. Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman is, perhaps, to this time, the most mature example of a myth of Contemporary life. The chief value of this drama is its attempt to reveal those ultimate meanings which are resident in modern experience. Perhaps the most significant comment on this play is not its ...
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12 min. Death of a Salesman is Arthur Miller's multiple award-winning stage play that explores such ideas as American Dream and family. Our writers have prepared a list of topics and tips on writing the Death of a Salesman thesis statement, essay, or literary analysis. Table of Contents.
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Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman" is a timeless tale of an aging salesman, Willy Loman, who clings to an optimistic philosophy of the American Dream and its associated values while struggling to provide for his family. In this essay, I will argue that the play critiques these values and sheds light on the dark side of the American Dream ...
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The theme of American Dream in Death of a Salesman:-Miller suggests that the American Dream, as promoted by capitalism, fosters a dehumanizing environment where individuals are reduced to mere commodities.4. The Allure of the Past: One of the prominent themes in the play is the allure of the past and the failure to adapt to changing times. Willy clings to memories of past success, desperately ...
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Get a custom essay on Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller. He has no plan for his life and concentrates on his past failures, and his children seem perched to being successful, primed on his world hypotheses. Salesmanship has given Willy a feeling of greatness and merit. He believes that the present world has dishonored them by taking away the ...
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This document discusses developing a thesis statement for an essay analyzing Arthur Miller's play "Death of a Salesman" and the American Dream. It notes that crafting a thesis for a complex work like this play requires a thoughtful, precise approach that analyzes the text and its socio-economic context in depth. The document recommends seeking help from HelpWriting.net, where experienced ...
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When "Death of a salesman" is written, that period witnessed a great social shift. That period was time of business prosperity and an era of financial prosperity for Americans.
Themes in Death of a Salesman: American dream & Betrayal
The American dream in Death of the Salesman resembles the traditional representation of this belief, that is, being a successful self-made man. However, Willy doesn't realize that being liked and attractive as a person is not enough. Hard work and sacrifice is what can really lead any American to succeed. Willy's disbelief in the ...
Death of a salesman american dream thesis statement
Death of a salesman american dream thesis statement. Miller illustrates the end of the american dream thesis statement? Suicide is only way though. Happy share a lack of the future was very end of the american dream. All aspects of death comes to meet them. Charley mentions, because the idea is lacking which follows, 1966.

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Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller Argumentative Essay

Introduction

Death of a Salesman: Themes

🔗 References

Death of a Salesman: American Dream Quotes

👪 Death of a Salesman: Family

Death of a Salesman: Quotes on Family

🐀 Death of a Salesman: Betrayal & Abandonment

Death of a Salesman: Quotes on Abandonment & Betrayal

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