Research Paper On Willy Loman

The American Dream can be defined as the set of ideals that include the freedom to succeed and prosper through hard work. This dream is one that many people dream of achieving and living, including Willy Loman. What Willy Loman does not realize, however, is that he has been living the American Dream all along. Willy had a job as a salesman and got a steady income. He purchased a house and a car and would have paid everything off if he had not committed suicide. And lastly, he had a wife and two sons. Living like this is something many people dream of doing, which is where the name American Dream comes from. Willy’s troubling past is the main cause for him not realizing the blessed life he was living.

As we learned from the play “Death of a

Salesman” by Arthur Miller, Willy’s father passed away when he was only three years old. Due to this, Willy never had a father figure around him, and his older brother Ben had also left him and moved to Alaska to work with Timber. As a young boy, Willy never understood why this happened to him and developed this feeling that he was not liked. This is known because, throughout the entire play, Willy always makes comments that insist that he believes being “well liked” is the core of the American Dream. An example of this is on page 86 when Willy was telling Ben about Dave Singleman, an eighty-four-year-old salesman who had died. Willy was describing him as this great salesman who was very loved and known and discussed how he worked and never had to leave his hotel room when he worked because he would call everyone to come to him. Willy told Ben “The whole wealth of Alaska passes over the lunch table at the Commodore Hotel, and that’s the wonder, the wonder of this country, that a man can end with diamonds here on the basis of being liked!” From this quotation by Willy, it is easy to conclude that Willy believes Singleman achieved all his wealth described as “diamonds” simply by being well-liked. Willy knows that Singleman was well-liked due to the number of people at his funeral. We learned later on, however, that Singleman still worked at age eighty-four and even died while working. This conflicted with Willy’s initial thought that Singleman made a lot of money and retired like the American Dream ideal.
Unfortunately, Willy took away his own life before every realizing everything he ever wanted was already there. He had a wife and two grown sons all of whom loved and cared for him very much. He had a house and car that were almost paid off completely. All of this went to waste because Willy failed to realize what he had because he was to busy trying to find himself after what happened to his father and brother when he was only three.