Comparing The American Dream In Arthur Miller's Death Of A Salesman

In Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller’s character, Willy Loman, is desperately trying to achieve the unattainable American Dream. Throughout the play, Willy encounters many challenges that have derailed his course and his perseverance drives him and his family insane.

In Death of a Salesman, by Arthur Miller, Willy Loman’s life seems to be slowly deteriorating. It is clear that Willy’s predicament is of his own doing, and that his own foolish pride and ignorance lead to his downfall. Willy’s self-destruction involved the uniting of several aspects of his life and his lack of grasping reality in each, consisting of, his relationship with his wife, his relationship and manner in which he brought up his children, Biff and Happy, and lastly his inability to productively earn a living and in doing so, failure to achieve his “American Dream”.

Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman offers a distinct commentary on the American Dream, best explored in the death of its protagonist, Willy Loman. Almost immediately before Willy and his wife Laura are to make their final payment on their twenty-five year mortgage and take full ownership of their house, Willy, crazed and desperate, commits suicide. As his family mourns and praises him, Willy’s eldest son, Biff, bemoans, “He had the wrong dreams. All, all, wrong…He never knew who he was” (Miller 111). This occurrence sheds light on the truth Miller hoped to convey: The American Dream – what should be equated with home, family, and happiness – may all too often be corrupted into something much more superficial. It may be warped into the

The American Dream ~ for many, it is the unlocked door that leads to happiness.  It is the hope for a future filled with success and fortune.  Although most people have a similar idea of what the American Dream is, they may have different ideas on how to achieve it.  For Willy Loman, a struggling salesman, achieving this dream would be a major accomplishment.  Unfortunately, his unusual ideas of how this dream can be achieved prevent him from reaching his goal.

In Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, the author conveys the reader about how a person lives his life when he or she cannot live the “American Dream.” Willy Loman, the main character in the play is a confused and tragic character. He is a man who is struggling to hold onto what morality he has left in a changing society that no longer values the ideals he grew up to believe in. Even though the society he lives in can be blamed for much of his misfortune, he must also be the blame for his bad judgment, disloyalty and his foolish pride.

Many workers today go through a low time or a struggle and give up. Today’s workers do not necessarily commit suicide when they are in a low point but they do things such as quitting the job or relying on government assistance. Willy strives to achieve the American dream and he eventually realizes that he has failed and gives up on life. This dream is a belief in America and that all things are possible if you work hard enough (Criticism of ' the American Dream' in 'Death of a Salesman'). Arthur Miller uses this story to expose the problems with pursuit of such a dream: “What Miller attacks, then, is not the American Dream of Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, but the dream as interpreted and pursued by those for whom ambition replaces human need and the trinkets of what Miller called the ‘new American Empire in the making’ are taken as tokens of true value” (Bigsby). “Death of a Salesman” creates a challenge to the American Dream and shows that an American should live a prosperous and plentiful life instead of get lost and die tragically (Criticism of ' the American Dream' in 'Death of a Salesman'). Gradually throughout the play, Willy gets farther and farther away from achieving his idea of the American Dream. His income slowly decreases to nothing: “as a salesman, Willy stages a performance for buyers, for his sons, for the father who deserted him, the brother he admired. Gradually, he loses his audience, first the buyers, then his son, then his boss” (Bigsby). His problem is that he completely surrenders to the American Dream and by the team he realizes his mistake, he has nothing to fall back on (Panesar). If Willy would have embraced his natural talent for manual labor and his family’s love for the countryside, the Lomans could have a totally different lifestyle (Panesar). Towards the end of the play, Willy became overwhelmed

Willie Loman is an ordinary man who embodies traditional American values of success. He has reached the age where he can no longer compete successful in his chosen career, that of a traveling salesman. Faced with the termination of his job, he begins to examine his past life to determine its value. At this critical point in Willie’s existence, his oldest son Biff has returned home for a visit, and Willie’s old desire for his son to be a traditional success in life is rekindled. But the old tensions between the two men are also renewed. Once again, to Willie’s great disappointment, his son rejects Willie’s values and aspirations. (“Death of a Salesman Arthur Miller 1949 Drama”)

The struggle for financial security and success has always been prominent in the American culture. The idea of the American dream captures the hearts of so many, yet leaves almost all of them enslaved in the endless economic struggle to achieve high status, wealth, and a house with a white picket fence. In Arthur Miller's, Death of a Salesman, we see how difficult it is for Willy Loman and his sons to achieve this so called American dream. In Lorraine Hansberry's, A Raisin in the Sun, she examines an African-American family's struggle to break out of the poverty that is preventing them from achieving some sort of financial stability, or in other words the American dream. Both plays explore the desire for wealth, driving forces that

The success attained by Willy?s role models, his father, Dave Singleman, and Ben, is what he envisions to be the American Dream. He only visualizes the end product, being successful, and not the process they may have gone through to achieve that success. Willy?s father sold flutes and made that his living. In an encounter with his thoughts of the past, Willy listens to Ben, his brother, who refers to their father by saying, "Great Inventor, Father. With one gadget he made more in a week than a man like you could make in a lifetime" (49). Willy assumes that by being a salesman, like his father was, he is automatically guaranteed success, and that it wasn?t something that he would have to work for. Material success, such as money, luxury, and wealth, and popularity are his goals and his definition of success. On the other hand, self-fulfillment and happiness through hard work is not. By only focusing on the outer appearance of the American Dream, Willy ignores the

Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman tells the story of the failure of a salesman, Willy Loman. Although not all Americans are salesmen, most of us share Willy’s dream of success. We are all partners in the American Dream and parties to the conspiracy of silence surrounding the fact that failures must outnumber successes.(Samantaray, 2014)

Willy believes education is not important for his son's future. Although Biff is failing his math course and Bernard is passing Willy still accepts the fact that his son will achieve success. Being handsome, popular, and excellent in sports adds to this belief. Willy does not realize that an individual must work hard to accomplish success. He also feels he is higher in status than Bernard's father Charley because "Charley is not-liked. He's liked, but he's not-well liked." (1257) Even though he feels this way he is also jealous of Charley's business success. Willy felt too proud to even accept a paying job from Charley after his boss, Howard Wagner, fired him. The audience can see Willy's definition of success defined in the conversation he holds with Charley in Act II:

Success: Accomplishing Your Dream Completing the "American Dream" is a controversial issue. The American Dream can be defined as having a nice car, maybe two or three of them, having a beautiful, healthy family, making an impact on the world, or even just having extra spending money when the bills are paid. In the play "Death Of A Salesman," by Arthur Miller, the "American Dream" deals with prosperity, status, and being immortalized.

Willy Loman is a man on a mission. His purpose in life is to achieve a false sense of the "American Dream," but is this what Willy Loman really wants? In Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller analyzes the American Dream by portraying to us a few days in the life of a washed up salesman named Willy Loman. The American Dream is a definite goal of many people, meaning something different to everyone. Willy's version is different from most people though; his is based more on being well-liked and achieving monetary successes rather than achieving something that will make him happy. Willy never becomes part of the "American Dream" because he never follows his true dreams and

Willy believes that wealth is the key to your happiness, and the extent of your wealth is exposed by the amount of materialistic items one has. Miller explains Willy’s thoughts in Timebends, “The publicity apparatus tells Willy that if he works hard like Edison, that if he perseveres like Goodrich, that, if he is “well-liked” like Dave Singleman, then he will rise like Charley and become rich and powerful.” Willy’s thought process is foolish, and his belief that failure cannot be tolerated in his family causes him to lie about his success. This is evident when Biff says “We never told the truth for ten minutes in this house! [130]” The American Dream is to blame for imprinting wealth is all you need to be happy, into Willy’s mind.

In today’s society the term “American Dream” is perceived as being successful and usually that’s associated with being rich or financially sound. People follow this idea their entire life and usually never stop to think if they are happy on this road to success. Most will live through thick and thin with this idealization of the “American Dream” usually leading to unhappiness, depression and even suicide. The individual is confused by society’s portrayal of the individuals who have supposedly reached the nirvana of the “American Dream”. In the play “Death of a Salesman” Willy thinks that if a person has the right personality and he is well liked it’s easy to achieve success rather than hard work and innovation. This is seen when Willy is