Death Of A Salesman American Dream Analysis

The premises that the American Dream has been based upon show a pattern of relating heavily on the economic state of the country, as well as the individual who is trying to obtain the American Dream. Shortly before Death of a Salesman was performed in 1949, “James Adams referred to the American dream in the period of the Great Depression, when American identity was in crisis, and since then it has become a catch phrase in American public discourse, but its definition and significance are often taken for granted” (Ştiuliuc 2011 pg.364). Shortly before the cold war America’s identity was in question, consequently this presented the opportunity for the definition of the American Dream to be altered into materialistic ideals of success that only

In fact, “I don’t want a change! I want Swiss cheese. Why am I always being contradicted?”(Miller 1949 Act I) demonstrates Willy stubbornness and his ethnocentrism attitude towards the most harmless aspects of life such as a sandwich. However when he mentions Biff’s failures in his life, we then realize there may be an association between both Willy and Biff’s life. For instance, when Willy states, “I’ll get him a job selling. He could be big in no time. My God! Remember how they used to follow him around in high school? When he smiled at one of them their faces lit up. When he walked down the street... “(Miller 1949 Act I) one can assume that Willy, being the career-driven man he his, couldn’t have actually observed how his, now thirty-four year old, son and his peers interacted. We can then infer that Willy is actually reminiscing events based upon his past. At this moment, we see that Willy is inadvertently acknowledging that his life as “the center of attention” is a thing of the past. To illustrate, from Willy Loman’s Secrets written by Lee Siegel, “His touching reminder to Howard that he, Willy, gave him his name only proves his softness and ineffectuality leads to his dismissal… Most of all, his humanness makes him turn toward the past in an effort to recapture the respect, the gratitude, the comradeship, the love that

As revealed by Fred Ribkoff, “It is the confrontation with feelings of shame that enables Biff to find himself, separate his identity from that of his father, and empathize with his father. Moreover, it is the denial of such feeling that cripples Willy and the rest of the Loman family” (Ribkoff 2000 Pg.49). Willy’s midlife crisis was the epiphany Biff needed to realize that there was an identity beyond the one that society said he should have. In particular, “I saw the things that I love in this world. The work and the food and the time to sit and smoke. And I looked at the pen and I thought, what the hell am I grabbing this for? Why am I trying to become what I don’t want to be . . . when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am” (Miller 1940 Act II)? Biff was consumed in his fathers ideas of success he begin making business decisions similar to