Willy Loman And The American Dream

In "Death of a Salesman" Arthur Miller was attempting to create fully rounded characters. He wanted to figure out their emotional reactions to the failure of the American Dream. Willy Loman tried to pursue all the optimism of a salesperson. Charley is the neighbor of the Loman family. He is practically the definition of an American ideal. He is hardworking, successful, kind, and generous. He even offered Willy a job because he realized Willy was struggling financially. Charley says to Willy, “you want a job?” So Charley is just trying to give Willy a helping hand. Willy is a little jealous of Charley so Willy refused the job. Charley eventually said to Willy, “When the hell are you going to grow up?” Willy only earns commission on his sales job and he has not been able to make a lot of money. Charley has also paid the mortgage on Willy’s house even though Willy keeps saying he will pay him back. Unlike Willy, Charley raises his children to study

The American Dream is a sought after idea sold to Americans and immigrants alike. It promises the opportunity to create a better future for oneself. So long as said individual works hard it promises a happy ending. Arthur Miller reveals the reality of the American Dream in his play Death of a Salesman through the life of Willy Loman and his family. Willy represents the primary target audience as a working class man providing for his family. His pride causes him to be two steps behind in his life-long quest to achieve the American Dream and his family inherit his failures in their own individual quests.

Biff said when realizing the type of house he grew up in. Everyone in the Loman household was unsatisfied, the family left unstable. The top of the causes for the problems in the Loman household lead to Willy. Growing up Willy never had a true support system. His father left him at a early age. And his brother went to Africa. With all this abandonment in life, Willy learns to live on the dependency of being well approved of by others, and following a dream he saw as the “American Dream”. This dream led Willy into more failure than it did success. Willy never knew when to look at reality or chase a dream. When it came to a point in life when he realized he could no longer achieve this American Dream, he tried to live it through his sons. He never held his kids accountable for their faults because they were “well liked” Willy sees how much people like you as an equivalence to a human's success in life. Linda once said, “I don’t say he’s a great man. Willy Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper. He’s not the finest character that ever lived. But he’s a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. He’s not to be allowed to fall into his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must be finally paid to such a person.” Willy filled all his actual doings in life, with dreams and visions of a successful him or of anything to make the pain of his actual life

Because of Willy' incapability to accept Biff for who he is, Willy's failure increases. Willy wants Biff to be the best because he might be a failure as a salesman but he does not want to be a failure as a father. But in some ways he is a failure as a father because he never lets Biff be his own person. It is always about what Willy wants, a "his way or the highway" sort of deal. His not accepting Biff for who he is causes Biff not succeed and because of this Biff and Willy failure becomes one in the same .

Former American Lawyer and politician Robert Ingersoll once said, “In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are consequences.” Ingersoll states that all actions have the same general result, people do not get rewarded nor punished, but instead they suffer from any plausible repercussions of these actions. As Willy Loman in “Death of a Salesman” by Arthur Miller tries to pursue his own american dream, he leaves behind a series of consequences due to the decisions he makes throughout the novel. Willy creates an unrealistic american dream for himself, which causes the family to struggle with him and his worthless belief of himself.

Willy foolishly pursues the wrong dream and constantly lives in an unreal world blinded from reality. Despite his dream Willy constantly attempts to live in an artificial world and claims “If old Wagner was alive I’d be in charge of New York by now” (Miller 14). As a result, Willy often ignores his troubles and denies any financial trouble when he says “business is bad, it’s murderous. But not for me of course” (Miller 51). Another false segment of Willy’s dream includes the success of his two sons Happy and Biff. Biff was a high school football star who never cared about academics and now that he needs a job says “screw the business world” (Miller 61). Ironically, Willy suggests that Biff go west an “be a carpenter, or a cowboy, enjoy yourself!”, an idea that perhaps Willy should have pursued. Constantly advising his boys of the importance of being well liked, Willy fails to stress academics as an important part of life (Miller 40). Furthermore, Willy dies an unexpected death that reveals important causes of the failure to achieve the American dream. At the funeral Linda cries “I made the last payment on the house today... and there’ll be nobody home” to say that she misses Willy but in essence his death freed the Lomans from debt and the hopes and expectations Willy placed on his family (Miller 139). Very few people attend

The American Dream is the belief that if you work hard you will gain success and wealth in life. In Death of a Salesman written by Arthur Miller, the idea of the American dream is shown through the main character Willy Loman. Willy has a flawed perception of success and the American Dream. His desire for wealth and popularity is what eventually leads to his downfall. His obsession with his image and his desire to be someone he wasn’t overtime drives him crazy and leads to his death.

In high school, Biff’s peers “used to follow him around in high school” (Miller 6) and he was a star on the football team. In willy’s mind Biff had unlimited potential because he was so well liked, but simply being well liked could not carry him through school. Biff ended up flunking math, and seeing his father with another woman in the same day. This moment haunts Willy and he spends the rest of his life trying to find out if he was the reason his son, instead of following through with his father’s dreams, “laid down and died like a hammer hit him” (Miller 71)

America’s social system and class divisions create barriers to those who want to obtain the American Dream because diligence is needed, and unequal opportunity, and there’s disillusionment Individuals of the lower class need to work harder, on account of the poor conditions and battles that they need to persevere. In Death of a Salesman, the main character Willy Loman has confidence in the American Dream of simple riches and upscale life which later drives him to his grave. At a certain point in the scene, Willy Loman was having a discussion whit his child, Biff Loman. And pointed out the fact that "[He is] 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 the rest of them! "

He fails to realize that he failed as a father and a husband. He can't grasp his true reality because he is too caught up in the illusion of his life that his mind made up. His unwillingness to understand the depths of his failures and that his American Dream is no longer alive leads to his torturous day. His real tragedy is where he completely evaluates himself and justifies his suicide because it gave him sense of personal dignity by leaving an inheritance that will allow Biff to fulfill the American Dream. Although Willy still never grasped that his view of the American Dream, which is to be good looking and having a good personality will get people far in life, changed as he got older, he still wishes his sons success and happy lives, even though he doesn't understand that it

After reading the New York Times review of Death of a Salesman, I agree that “With employment continuing to lag and millions of homes in foreclosure, there are surely many men and women avoiding the mirror and its accusations, believing, like Willy, that their inability to achieve the golden ideal of financial success is somehow a personal indictment.” (Isherwood 2012). This review can be related to any point in time in society. While there is a natural flow of change society always craves the “American dream.”

The “American dream” is very difficult to obtain. The goal of obtaining a big home, great education, good job, and a family is something most people wish for but never truly obtain. Life brings many obstacles, both internal and external, and as they arise the handling of them determines ones success or failure with achieving the American dream. Arthur Miller portrays the pitfalls of the American dream in his play Death Of a Salesman through his characters and their development. Each of his characters has their own version of their American dream and they each try to achieve it differently. Along with different methods each character has their own flaws and here lies the pitfalls of the American dream.

Willy essentially believed that he and his sons could do anything and achieve the American Dream. His beliefs were strong and he placed enormous expectations on Biff to have a successful future. Willy’s pride got in the way of his acceptance of the truth. In reality Willy was actually unsuccessful and was not as well-liked as he thought he was. He also refused to accept Biff’s failures in getting a good job.

The universal theme expressed through Death of a Salesman, The Zoo Story and “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” is that the American Dream is dead. Willy believes a substantial amount about what he views the american dream to be. “That's the beauty of this country a man can end up with diamonds just off of being liked”. The american dream was all about people getting rich off of being liked, willy believed this and he died which shows the american dream is dead. Willy believed that the american dream was people could get rich off of people just liking him but was sadly mistaken that the american dream had died.

My first thought when I read this was the realization of where Willy’s stress and frustration stems from. The successes of his father and brother in difficult environments emasculates Willy. Although he has a great superiority complex when it comes to others, such as Charley when he comes to visit, when Willy speaks to his brother in a hallucination-like state, he acts completely submissive. His brother and father continue to have a strong, dominating hold over him postmortem. My second thought was the realization that this is why Willy is so hard on his children, especially Biff. Although he believes he failed in emulating his father and brother, he views his boys as still