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How does the American dream fit into the context of the death of a salesman
How does the American dream fit into the context of the death of a salesman
How does the American dream fit into the context of the death of a salesman
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Author Miller expresses in Death of a Salesman the tragic toll of having unrelenting faith in the American Dream by using Willy Loman to believe that anyone who is well liked and charismatic shall attain success rather than by hard work. The concept of the American Dream, where anyone can achieve financial success, lies at the heart of the novel and is being conveyed through various characters in different ways. Ben achieves this concept when he went off into the jungles of Africa and soon came into wealth by accidentally discovering a diamond mine. Howard Wagner inherits his Dream without much effort through his father's company. However, Bernard was a determined and quiet child, yet he became a successful lawyer through hard work. Over the course of his lifetime, Willy and his sons was not able to reach the …show more content…
However, the real tragedy of the novel is not that Willy is failing to achieve financial success, but rather that he buys into the dream so blindly that he ignores the real things in his life and escapes to his memories. A couple of ways Death of a Salesman demonstrates, through Willy, the tragic effects of the American Dream are his flashbacks, suicide attempts, and faith towards being a salesman. One of the ways Willy Loman was affected by the belief in the American Dream were the constant flashbacks of his past that contained hidden meanings. It becomes clear that his flashbacks actually trace the beginning of his mistakes and his family’s present troubles. An example in Death of a Salesman is the first flashback where Happy and Biff are teenagers helping Willy wash the car. During his memory, he tells the boys how well liked and respected he is when he goes on business trips. Willy says he will soon open a more successful
At the beginning of the play it is evident that he cannot determine the realities of life, and so he repeatedly contradicts himself to establish that his conclusion is correct and opinion accepted. These numerous contradictions demonstrate that Willy is perturbed of the possibility that negative judgements may come from others. Willy strongly believes that “personality always wins” and tells his sons that they should “be liked and (they) will never want”. In one of Willy’s flashbacks he recalls the time when his sons and him were outside cleaning their Chevy. Willy informs Biff and Happy the success of his business trips and how everyone residing in Boston adores him. He mentions that due to the admiration of people he does not even have to wait in lines. He ultimately teaches his sons that being liked by others is the way to fulfilling one’s life and removing your worries. These ideals, that one does not need to work for success, demonstrate Willy’s deluded belief of achieving a prosperous life from the admiration and acceptance of others. This ultimately proves to be a false ideology during his funeral, when an insufficient amount of people arrive. Willy constantly attempts to obtain other’s acceptance through his false tales that depict him as a strong, successful man. In the past, he attempts to lie to his wife, Linda, about the amount of wealth he has attained during his
Throughout the play, Willy can be seen as a failure. When he looks back on all his past decisions, he can only blame himself for his failures as a father, provider, and as a salesman (Abbotson 43). Slowly, Willy unintentionally reveals to us his moral limitations that frustrates him which hold him back from achieving the good father figure and a successful business man, showing us a sense of failure (Moss 46). For instance, even though Willy wants so badly to be successful, he wants to bring back the love and respect that he has lost from his family, showing us that in the process of wanting to be successful he failed to keep his family in mind (Centola On-line). This can be shown when Willy is talking to Ben and he says, “He’ll call you a coward…and a damned fool” (Miller 100-101). Willy responds in a frightful manner because he doesn’t want his family, es...
Willy doesn’t want to accept that he is not successful anymore, he still recognize his son as handsome heroes. Biff as the football star when he was at high school and Happy an...
In Death of A Salesman by Arthur Miller, the character Willy Loman is an average modern American man with a superficial American Dream: to be liked, to succeed over everyone else, to be a great salesman. Willy has a misguided love for his family and a yearning for success. As his life takes its course, it peaks in his son’s high school years when he was a football star, and then sadly concludes in his suicide. A life full of
The American dream is an ideal that most people are often left wanting. To be able to essentially rise from nothing and grow to be financially stable and live life in excess after a great deal of hard work. In Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, the American dream is represented in different ways by the characters, though most of the plot centers around Willy’s failed aspirations for the American dream. Miller shows that the American Dream may not actually be reachable by everybody or that it may not even be a relevant dream for everybody in America.
His two sons had to carry upon themselves the ideals that his father placed on them after years and years of living inside his house; “Thus Willy's refusal to accept life on its own terms results in nothing but disorder and fragmentation for those he loves most.” (Scheidt) The Death of the Salesman is an example of the mindset that many people in America had back then, and can allow to an individual to see the desires that we share with Willy Loman in the present time such as cheating, lying and wrong perceptions about
After losing his job and ability to provide for himself, Willy saw that as the worst possible outcome for his life and decided to commit suicide. His ultimate downfall reveals many things about the nature of the quest for the American Dream such as the fact that it is not possible for everyone to reach, and even if you strive for it your entire “Charley: 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 dont tell you the law or give you medicine. He’s 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 yourself 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.”(Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman). Charleys interpretation of Willy being amongst the dreamers of the American people establish Willy as a true tragic hero, a victim of the American society and himself. “LINDA: Why didn’t anyone come? CHARLEY: It was a very nice funeral. LINDA: But where were all the people he knew? Maybe they blame him.”(Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman). After Willy’s death, Linda notices no one showed up to Willy’s funeral. The reason being that Willy had no friends which reveals a lot. Although he worked his whole life on being well-liked and harnessing a good reputation, in the end he is
American dream is no doubt the best way to get successful in life. However, the understanding of the American dream is very important. Miller has beautifully described the life of Willy Loman following the American dream and also the opposing side of American dream with the success of Charlie and Ben. The most important part is to face the reality and believe in your-self. In Death of a Salesman, the author Arther Miller has done a fabulous approach by highlighting the life of Willy Loman following the American dream without facing the reality and accepting failure in life, as in present people are following the American dream without knowing their aim in life just like Willy Loman.
Dreams they spend all of their miserable lives clinging onto for dear life. All that keeps a person going is that bright shining light at the edge of the horizon in the distant future where they are great and loved and respected and revered. For Willy Loman his dream was to become a salesman, all his adult life was a feeble attempt to climb up in the ranks of his department. He wanted to become that man that he admired who “----”. Audiences can relate, they too have had an idol in their head that they have aspired to become. This detail garners pity in the audience when they see what a failure Willy Loman. He hasn’t achieved his dream and he knows it. He understands. But in his deep deluded mind twisted with broken memories and false hopes he can never truly accept it. He never has that point of discover that a tragic hero does. Willy Loman never realizes how the doom that awaits for him at the end of his downward spiral. Even his attempt at suicide wasn’t even great. “--(Linda can’t cry)---” it was so expected and almost a mundane willy move that it blends in with the rest of his sepia colored life. No one shows up at the funeral. He is not great like a tragic hero. Willy Loman is a nobody, he is only a tragic hero to himself, just like everyone in the audience. Everyone sings the song of their own tragedy here in America, land of the vain. That is the American Tragedy. Everyone is the American Tragic Hero with their own tragedy. It is something
Willy believes if he works hard and focuses on his career he will make it big no matter the circumstances. “WILLY: Don’t say? Tell you a secret, boys. Don’t breathe it to a soul. Someday I’ll have my own business, and I’ll never have to leave home any more.
The pursuit of the American dream can inspire ambition. It can transform a person and cause him to become motivated and hard-working, with high standards and morals. Or, it can tear a person down, to the point of near insanity that results from the wild, hopeless chase after the dream. This is what occurs to Biff, Happy, and Willy Loman in Arthur Miller's book Death of a Salesman. In the play, Willy Loman is a traveling salesman whose main ambition in life is wealth and success, neither of which he achieves. Corrupted by their father, Biff and Happy also can not attain success. Biff fails to find a steady, high-paying job even though he's 30, and he hates the business world, preferring instead to live on a farm in California. Happy, on the other hand, has a fairly well-paying, steady job, but still suffers from emptiness and a sense of being lost, a void which he fills by sleeping around with many women, some of whom are even married or engaged. Thus, Miller uses motifs, such as deception, theft, and hallucination, to show the pathology that all three of these characters experience in the wake of the American dream.
One major theme in Death of a Salesman is the pursuit of the American dream. Playwright Arthur Miller details main character Willy Loman’s misguided quest of this dream. Death of a Salesman was written in postwar America, when the idea of the American Dream was a way of life. The United States was flourishing economically, and the idea of wealth was the base of the American Dream. Capitalism was alive and well, and by living in a capitalist society, everyone in America was supposed to have a chance to become rich and successful. Miller makes the reader realize this dream is a falsehood, because it doesn’t always work for everyone as planned. In the play Death of a Salesman, Willy Loman is a prime example of someone trying desperately, yet unsuccessfully, to pursue the false hope of the American Dream, directly resulting from capitalism’s effects.
The pursuit of the American Dream has been a long sought ambitions of many. Generally speaking the American Dream is the ability to become prosperous, successful and to be financially free. In “The Death of a Salesmen” by Arthur Miller Willy Lomans’ character has his own perception of the American Dreams. Likewise, “The Death of the Salesman” challenges Willy’s perception of the American Dream. Throughout the play the dialogue and actions of the Willy character illustrate desperate pursuit of the American Dream.
Willy's American dream is to be known to everyone and financially successful. Willy doesn't believe in hard work and honesty to achieve the highest respect but instead focuses on personal appearance and social judgement. "He worries that people do not like him, admitting that people seem to respect Charlie which talks less, but Linda cheers him up, insisting that he will be fine." (Arthur miller) Willy's view of how to achieve the dream is a flawed one and he doesn't want to admit one bit of it. Willy plays his sons as to be the greatest and the worst failures in life sometimes. "Willy boasts that his sons will achieve more than Bernard becuase they are more attractive and bet...
Willy is a salesman trying to find success in a country known for its endless amount of opportunities. He grows up seeing how successful his brother, Ben, has become and because of this he is determined to succed in his lifetime. He wants to show his family that they can achieve whatever they put their mind to. Willy sees the American dream as the ability to become prosperous by the amount of individuals that like him. It is easily shown that he feels personality, not hard work and improvement, is the key to living a successful life. “You and Hap and I, and I’ll show you all the towns… 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…” (Miller 24). Willy always raised his kids to think being popular and well liked was most important. He told them that if they had those two traits t...