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

In the book Death of a Salesman, the author (Arthur Miller) fictionalizes a tragic loss of a man’s identity and failure to accept change within himself and culture. Throughout the passage, mixture of memories, dreams, conflicts, and arguments, all of which make up the difficulties of attaining the American dream. Three major concepts in the passage are denial, contradiction, and ambitious.

When denial takes place, denial becomes a defense mechanism in which an individual unconsciously rejects thoughts, feelings, needs or wishes that they would not be able to deal with if they got into the conscious mind. The situation with the Loman family is that dealing with denial applies to each one of them. Willy Loman is unable of accepting the fact that

Instead of admitting that he is not a famous success, Willy retreats into the past and chooses to relive memories and events in which he is seeming as successful. To Willy, the American dream is being highly respected and wanting to earn more money. It alternates between the past and present using a stream of copiousness techniques and flashbacks. The story follows Willy’s life as a sixty-three-year-old salesman who pursues the American dream even though he’s not that great at his job. Loman tries to escape reality by recalling his memories and leaning on others for support. Willy's favorite memory is of Biff's last football game because Biff promises to make a touchdown just for him. In this chapter, Willy can barely wait to tell the story to his buyers. He considers himself well-known as a result of his son's pride in him. Both of Willy's sons, Biff

Willy's behavior is pierced with contradictions, the only thing that stays the same is Willy is his error. From the very beginning of the book, Willy exposes this tendency and he calls Biff a "lazy bum" but then faces himself with “And such a hard worker.” The real truth about Biff that is true and that is he is not lazy." Willy's contradictions often confuse the readers however, they soon become a trademark of his character. Willy's shifting behavior is the result of his inability to accept reality and his tendency to manipulate or remember the past in an attempt to escape the present. For instance, Willy cannot quit himself to the fact that Biff no longer respects him because of Willy's affair. Rather than admit that their bond is clashing, Willy still retreats to a former time when Biff respected and looked up to him. As the plot raises even more, Willy separates himself more and more from the present as his problems become too many to deal