“The owners of this country know the truth... it's called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it!” George Carlin’s ironic statement exposes the hamartia of the American Dream and the emptiness it bestows upon those attempting to attain it. In Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, failure to conquer the American Dream triggers desolation in a multitude of characters. Throughout Miller’s play, the quest for the American Dream occurs on four different frontiers: Brooklyn, New York; the African Jungle; American West; and the new promise of Alaska. Each frontier poses myriads of obstacles to its questers. While some achieve financial success and well-being, others acquire despondency and failure.
The protagonist of Miller’s
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She wishes to provide her husband and sons with a welcoming environment, rather than the sullen atmosphere the Loman home possesses. Despite Linda serving as an ideal 1940s motherly figure, her quest for a happy home faces major opposition. Willy’s inability to remain truthful in their marriage yields tension and stress in the family dynamic. Though creating a happy home seems like an attainable task for the average 1940s homemaker, Willy’s lies and the damages bestowed upon the family, especially between Willy and his son Biff, crushes Linda’s dreams.
Willy’s boys, Happy and Biff seem content with reality; however, the two yearn for the great outdoors. Both freethinking boys seek the freedom of nature. The Loman’s financial failure in the business world better asserts the notion that working under one’s own authority may yield better success. Biff and Happy wish to go out West and start a new life. This vision offers prosperity and power in doing things for one’s self. Unfortunately, the dream of achieving real self-knowledge outside of the business world greatly conflicts with Willy’s dream for his boys to become successful
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Willy’s inability to leave his business jungle in New England for the African jungle expresses his failure to follow Ben and achieve great success. The exotic African lifestyle contrasts with Willy’s mundane reality to manifest Willy’s obsession with the industrial world, which ironically traps him in his delusional state. As Willy’s life crashes down around him, he declares, “The woods are burning! I can’t drive a car!” making clear the woods, more specifically the jungle, represent life. Ironically, Willy insists New York is a city of opportunity and abundant success; meanwhile he idolizes Ben’s African adventures and prosperity. Subconsciously, Willy is no longer sure America is truly the land of
Miller’s use of personification and symbolism in the book shows the situational irony that surrounds Willy. This highlights the overall message of blind faith towards the American Dream. The major case of irony in the book is Willy’s blind faith in the American Dream. This belief is that if one is well-liked, they will become successful. The truth is actually completely opposite. The real belief is that if one works hard, with no regard to how well liked they are, they will be successful. This relationship is shown between Willy and his neighbor Charley. While Willy believes likability is the only way to success, Charley works hard and does not care how people think of him. Through his hard work, Charley started his own business, and is now very successful. Willy, however, ends up getti...
Willy Loman longs for the success of his brother Ben, but refuses to accept the drudgery in the work of his friend, Charley. Essentially, Willy wants the freedom that Ben has – leaving for Alaska on a whim, ending up in the wrong place, and still succeeding on his own – without the responsibility and hard work that Charley puts in to be modestly and stolidly successful. The incongruity in Willy’s wishes – that Willy wants all the glory without any of the guts – leaves him in a place where, truly, he is still a child. And, like a child, Willy could never live like Ben because he needs the security of a job and life like the one Charley has. As the play winds on, Willy cannot wake up from his fantasized version of true American success and, ultimately, allows Miller to illustrate the shallowness of the American Dream.
A white picket fence surrounds the tangible icons of the American Dreams in the middle 1900's: a mortgage, an automobile, a kitchen appliance paid for on the monthly - installment - plan, and a silver trophy representative of high school football triumph. A pathetic tale examining the consequences of man's harmartias, Arthur Miller's "Death of A Salesman" satisfies many, but not all, of the essential elements of a tragedy. Reality peels away the thin layers of Willy Loman's American Dream; a dream built on a lifetime of poor choices and false values.
Willy’s dream was to become like Dave Singleman, who was a very popular salesman, liked by his clients and, able to do business by just making a phone call. Because he was so well liked, when Singleman died, customers from all over his region came to his funeral. Willy dared to believe that his funeral would be similar to Singleman's. Throughout his life, Willy believed that if one were attractive and well liked, everything would be perfect. The doors would automatically open for such a man, and he was sure to be successful. Willy’s American dream was to become rich and famous through his sales, a dream that consumed his life, making him live in an imaginary world where he would often talk to himself.
Willy refuses to recognize that he does have true abilities, as in the field of construction. He appears at times to have hope for the future, “on the way home tonight, I’d like to buy some seeds” (1243). Nonetheless, there is a pinning undercurrent of fear for Willy, as Linda discovers, “…sure enough, on the bottom of the water heater there’s a new little nipple on the gas pipe” (1237). Although the illusions that Willy puts forth are real to him, they are, nevertheless, simply that: Illusions. Deep down he knows things are not as they should be, with his family, his job and his life.
Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman focuses on the American Dream, or at least Willie Loman’s version of it. *Willie is a salesman who is down on his luck. He "bought into" the belief in the American Dream, and much of the hardship in his life was a result. *Many people believe in the American Dream and its role in shaping people’s success. Willy could have been successful, but something went wrong. He raised his sons to believe in the American Dream, and neither of them turned out to be successful either.
Miller uses the misapplication and failure of the "American Dream" to captivate the audience and make them feel sorrow for both Willy and Biff Loman. It is heart breaking to see this sixty-year-old man finally come to the realization that he is really not who he thought he was. In addition to that, the fact is pointed out by his own son, who turns out to be wiser than him. Unlike Willy, Biff finds out who he is, and that the American Dream is not for everyone.
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.
In brief, it is apparent that Willy’s own actions led to not only his own demise, but his children’s as well. The salesman tragically misinterpreted the American Dream for only the superficial qualities of beauty, likeability and prosperity. Perhaps if Willy had been more focused on the truth of a person’s character, rather than purely physical aspects, his family’s struggles and his own suicide could have been avoided. On the whole, Arthur Miller’s play is evidence that the search for any dream or goal is not as easy and the end result may seem. The only way to realize the objective without any despair is the opposite of Willy Loman’s methods: genuineness, perseverance and humility.
An American dream is a dream that can only be achieved by passion and hard work towards your goals. People are chasing their dreams of better future for themselves and their children. The author Arthur Miller in Death of a Salesman has displayed a struggle of a common man to achieve the American dream. Willy Loman the protagonist of the play has spent his whole life in chasing the American dream. He was a successful salesman who has got old and unable to travel for his work, and no one at work gives him importance anymore. He is unhappy with his sons Happy and Biff because both of them are not successful in their lives. Moreover, Biff and Happy are also not happy with their father Willy because they don’t want to live a life that Willy wants them to live. The heated discussions of Willy and his older son Biff affect the family and the family starts to fall apart. However, Willy is unable to achieve the American dream and does not want to face the reality that his decisions for himself and his family have lead him to be a failure in the society. In the play Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller, the protagonist Willy Loman spends his whole life to achieve the American Dream by his own perception and denies facing the reality, just like nowadays people are selling themselves and attempting to find success in life.
Willy Loman is a 60 year old senile salesman who desperately wants to be a successful salesman; however, his ideas about the ways in which one goes about achieving this are very much misguided, just as his morals are. He believes that popularity and good looks are the key to achieving the American dream, rather than hard work and dedication. He not only lives his entire life by this code, but instills his delusional beliefs in his two sons Biff and Happy. As a result, his sons experience similar failures in their adult lives. Willy led a life of illusion, lies and regret which not only ruined his life, but gad a negative impact on the lives of family as well.
A second aspect of Willy’s American dream is material possessions. The Loman's do not have nice things, and Willy believes that what he possesses says he is not a success. He is very aware that he has not achieved this part of his dream, and he is envious of those who have. He tells Linda, "Charley bought a General Electric [refrigerator] and it's twenty years old and it's still good, that son-of-a-bitch" (1488; Act 2). Willy Loman also believes his children would love him more if could give them more.
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 only concerned how Biff’s class mates reacted to his joke of the teachers lisp. Willy’s dream of success for his son Biff who was very well liked in High School never actually became anything. Biff turned into a drifter and a ranch worker. In the play “Seize the Day” Tommy who is financially unstable also pursues the idea of getting to the “American Dream” and becoming wealthy. He foolishly invests his last seven hundred dollars and eventually loses it leaving him broke and out of work. In both plays following the American Dream is followed in different characters and in both the characters are far away from it leaving them broke and forgotten by almost everyone.
America has long been known as a land of opportunity. Out of that thinking comes the "American Dream," the idea that anyone can ultimately achieve success, even if he or she began with nothing. In "The Death of a Salesman", Arthur Miller uses the characterization of Willy Loman to represent the failure of his ideal of the American Dream. Willy’s quest for the American Dream leads to his failure because throughout his life he pursues the illusion of the American Dream and not the reality of it. His mindset on perfection, obsession with success, and his constant reminiscence of the past and predictions of the future, all contribute to his defeat in the end.
...y he is so obsessed with trying to attain it. He is the product of his own illusions and of a society that believe that with hard work everything is possible. The reader can understand that Willy’s skewed perspective of the “American Dream” is due to his distortion of his life and the dream that he thinks he lives in everyday.