Salesman American Dream

1348 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Character of Willy Loman in Death of Salesman

What is true meaning to be successful? In America, many people see success in earning good money and fulfilling their dreams, while many others defined happiness in their lives as a success. Everybody has dream to have opulent comfort of limonene, but it is not easy to chase for a high standard American dream and achieved it. There is more in life than earning money and being well-known. It is about being happy, proud, and secure about oneself. Like many other writers, Arthur Miller successfully represented the theme of the American dream in his play “death of a salesman”. In this play, Miller shows how ambitions of average family to achieve higher dreams. Throughout the play, there is major thought difference between two characters, Biff and …show more content…

Throughout his life, Biff values the truth and compelled the truth about himself. When Happy insists Biff to tell lies about Oliver’s meeting, he said “listen, will you let me out of it, will you let me out of it. I can’t talk to him” (Miller 634). He cannot go against the truth and he tries to tell the truth about what actually happened at Oliver’s place. Even though Happy tries to hold him back from not telling the truth, he finally reveals the truth and tell how he feels about it to Willy Loman. When Willy asked why he went there, he said “why did I go? Why did I go? Look at you! Look what’s become of you!” (Miller 635). Furthermore, Biff is the only member who bring the truth of whole family at the end of the play. He said “And I never got anywhere because you blew me so full of hot air I could never stand taking orders from anybody! That’s whose fault it is!” (Miller 640). He told his father that his failure is ultimately related to him and he is the one only one who raised him with falsie disillusion. Neither Willy nor anyone else face the facts until the last 24 hours of Willy’s life. The truth had a devastating effect on Loman’s family (Campo

Show More
Related

  • Willy Pride Quotes

    536 Words  | 2 Pages

    “BIFF [crying, broken]: Will you let me go for Christ’s sake? Will you take that phony dream and burn it before something happens?” By saying this Biff tries to address his family on the giant rift between Willy’s dreams for him and reality. He tries to explain that all he wants is for Willy to let go of those dreams and high standards he has set for him so he can create his own reality rather than fulfill his father's dream. Willy's dreams for Biff were very unrealistic for the reality of his situation,which caused him to fill unsuccessful and push himself away from his father. The reason Willy wanted his children to do so well and had such big dreams for them was because he wasn't able to achieve the dream and had a fear he had failed and so he wanted to force his dream to be fulfilled by his children. Therefore, due to Willy’s wildly unrealistic amount of pride, causing him to make poor decisions, betray his family by having a mistress and finally his unrealistic dreams for his sons, he paved his way towards his failure and his deep fear of isolation and

    Read More

  • Themes In All My Miller's Death Of A Salesman?

    1145 Words  | 3 Pages

    Biff Loman is flawed, he cannot hold down a job, he steals from all of his employers, and he even went to jail for three mouths. The deal with Biff is that he is Willy 's oldest son and the one whom Willy seems to be more concerned with than Happy. Biff caught his dad cheating on his mom this seems to be the thing that cause him to become a wonder working on ranches in the West. Happy Loman is Biff’s younger brother who is almost an exact copy of his father Willy Loman. Though Happy is relatively successful in his job, he has his dad 's very unrealistic self-confidence and his imposing dreams about getting rich quick. Happy always-felt second best has more of a desire to please his father. Despite his respectable accomplishments in business and the numerous women, he had slept with in his life like his bosses’ wife he did it three times to other people that are above him. Happy is extremely lonely because he wants to settle down with a good woman. . Just as the melancholiest

    Read More

  • Man vs. Himself: Betrayal and Abandonment Shown in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman

    1513 Words  | 4 Pages

    Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman tells the story of a man trying and failing to obtain success for him and his family. Willy Loman, a traveling salesman, has been trying to ‘make it big’ for the majority of his life. Miller’s play explores the themes of abandonment and betrayal and their effects on life’s success. Willy sees himself as being abandoned by his older brother, Ben, and constantly views his sibling’s betrayal as one that changed his prospects forever. Willy, in turn, is guilty of a different type of abandonment and betrayal of his sons, especially Biff.

    Read More

  • The Devastating Impact of the American Dream In Death Of A Salesman

    1282 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Death Of A Salesman Analysis

    1097 Words  | 3 Pages

    Moseley, Merritt. "The American Dream in Arthur Miller 's Death of a Salesman." In Bloom, Harold, ed. The American Dream, Bloom 's Literary Themes. New York: Chelsea Publishing House, 2009. Bloom 's Literature. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 30 Nov. 2015

    Read More

  • Character Analysis in Death of a Salesman, by Arthur Miller

    793 Words  | 2 Pages

    Biff is home for a visit and is talking with his brother, Happy in their room just as they did when they were young boys. Willy has come home prematurely from a business trip and is downstairs when the boys overhear him talking to himself in a sort of quasi-reality. In the meantime, the two boys discuss the past. It is interesting here that the roles of the two boys with respect to each other seem to have reversed. Happy was the shy one growing up and Biff had all the courage and self-confidence. Now, Biff appears to have been beaten down by life and is on the brink of the se...

    Read More

  • Self Deception In Willy Loman

    1601 Words  | 4 Pages

    Biff never kept a steady job during his young adult life, and did not possess a healthy relationship with anyone that was in his life. As the play progresses the reader sees how much Biff becomes more self- aware. An online source states, “Unlike the other members of his family, Biff grows to recognize that he and his family members consistently deceive themselves, and he fights to escape the vicious cycles of lies.” When Biff returns home it becomes a struggle to keep a healthy relationship with his parents. Once Willy and Biff decide together that Biff will go and ask Bill Oliver for a loan is when the differences between the two characters are truly seen. Biff accepts reality for the first time in his life, and realizes how ridiculous it is to ask Bill Oliver for a loan, when he barely knows the man and worked for him about ten years ago. When Biff meets up with Willy after the ‘meeting’ Biff is talking to his Father and says, “Why am I trying to become what I don’t want to be? What am I doing in an office, making a contemptuous, begging fool of myself, when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am!” This quote reveals that Biff recently has just experienced an epiphany, and realizes that what he was doing was making no sense. Biff is escaping the self- deception he was caught in with the rest of his

    Read More

  • Inner Conflict in Death of a Salesman

    1435 Words  | 3 Pages

    In many ways Biff is similar to his father. In the beginning of the play we see that Biff shares many of the same ideas as Willy. He values being well-liked above everything else and sees little value in being smart or honest. One of ...

    Read More

  • Death Of A Salesman Willy Character Analysis

    655 Words  | 2 Pages

    Interactions like these show the audience that Willy is perfectly comfortable with lying to anyone and everyone around him and that Biff has been taught to lie comfortably by his father. For instance, as Howard is firing Willy, who is much older than him, he says “But where am I going to put you, kid. No, but it’s a business, kid.

    Read More

  • Biff And Happy In Death Of A Salesman Research Paper

    1232 Words  | 3 Pages

    He does not want to end up like his father; he is determined to break through the lies surrounding the Loman family in order to introduce some realism into his life.   Biff's break through comes when he returns home with his father from `Frank's Chop House'. He realises that to reclaim his own identity he must expose his father's false illusions.   Biff: " Pop! I'm a dime a dozen, and so are you!"

    Read More

  • Death Of A Salesman American Dream Essay

    1297 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Identity Crisis in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman

    1191 Words  | 3 Pages

    Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman is the story of a man much like Miller's father, a salesman, "whose misguided notions of success result in disillusionment" (Draper 2360). The suppression of the main character, Willy Loman's, true nature is a result of his pursuit of a completely misguided dream. The fraudulent and miserable existence this generates is accentuated by the father-son relationship he shares with his son Biff.

    Read More

  • Death Of A Salesman Critical Analysis

    719 Words  | 2 Pages

    WILLY: [with pity and resolve.] I’ll see him in the morning; I’ll have a nice talk with him. I’ll get him a job selling. He could be big in no time. My God! (Act 1)

    Read More

  • Willy Loman In Arthur Miller's Death Of A Salesman

    937 Words  | 2 Pages

    Displaying those characteristics led his children to catch onto them as well. Biff shows minimal communication and doesn’t seem to have much confidence in himself as he used to. He also constantly

    Read More

  • The Character of Willy Loman in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman

    1127 Words  | 3 Pages

    Willy is a multi-faceted character which Miller has portrayed a deep problem with sociological and psychological causes and done so with disturbing reality.  In another time or another place Willy might have been successful and kept his Sanity, but as he grew up, society's values changed and he was left out in the cold.  His foolish pride, bad judgment and his disloyalty are also at fault for his tragic end and the fact that he did not die the death of a salesman.

    Read More

More about Salesman American Dream

Open Document