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Beret Dunn

Dr. Stinson

Intro to Literature

May 3, 2017

Willy Loman and the American Dream

The problem Willy Loman has in Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller is that he cannot meet

the expectations society had set for the standards of the myth, The American Dream. The drama was

written post World War II in the midst of celebration for the Best Fought War. During this time,

Americans have defeated their home front battle, The Great Depression, and began to economically

become a stronger country again. Consumers had the idea of a comfortable lifestyle on all of their minds

but it wasnt always that accessible. With the continuous rise of urbanization and the economy, I believe

Arthur Miller portrayed the difficulties of trying to keep up with the rapidly changing society through the

perspective of Willy Loman, his family and the characters he either wishes to be or strives to not be.

Willy Loman experienced the tragedy of this new era (Ansarey 152). As the pressures of the

dream began to close in, the more their beliefs in it intensified (Schockley 53). Society had been taught

that if you make more money, you can spend more money and Willy was its star pupil. The disease of

the myth was making Willy delusional and causing him to flashback to the times his dreams were alive

and well. Arthur Miller portrayed Ben, who made an appearance on multiple occasions, as the character

who was living the life Willy desired to have so badly. In the scenes that Ben comes around, Miller uses

him as a motive for Willy, making him want to strive to achieve more, even though it is slowly killing

him.
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Being in the career of Salesmanship for 25 years, he watched it transform from a more

personable and comradely profession to a statistical and analytical expertise for college graduates

(Ansarey 156). Returning from the war were energetic young men that were replacing the older

generation of men like Willy Loman (Ansarey 157). A Salesman was a job for respectable men during the

early and mid-twentieth century. Post- World War II, industries were able to transfer from war materials

to peace time consumer goods, and the citizens of America wanted it. However, Willy Loman was only

getting older and struggling to keep up with the modernization of his profession, no longer being able to

sell enough products to make a commission that could allow him the comfortable lifestyle he longed for.

Willy struggled with absorbing facts that were not part of what he envisioned for him and his

sons lives, especially Biffs (Schockley 50). These facts were not allowed to get in the way of his

American Dream (Schockley 50). Continuously, there is a struggle of who Willy Loman believes he should

be. A top-notch salesman with a football star son, while in reality, he was an over sixty year old man,

suffering from dementia whose son had given up on the dreams of his father. The Loman family had to

face a harsh reality. The American Dream was an out of reach expectation they felt could be achieved,

only making them fall harder. Miller showed the power of this dream through the dangers of it; the cost

and emptiness (Schockely 52).

When you compare Willy with other characters in the play, such as Charlie, you find that he has

paired a believer of the dream verses a realist. During this play, Charlie was always there to lend a

helping hand. He states that, ..nobodys worth nothin dead.. (Miller 1073), meaning that Willy is

putting all of his time and efforts into a lifestyle that is brutally defeating him, physically and financially.

Charlie never seemed to fall for the leisure of what the American Dream offered which is why Miller

chose to create him in comparison to Willy, who fell prey to the dream. The man that Willy thought was

exactly who he didnt want to be, was in reality, the man that he truly needed to be.
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To know who you truly are in America is to be redeemed from America (Siegel 28). Willy knew

who he was, or so he thought he did. He was a man with dreams that were going to take him places.

Diamonds in Alaska, a son who will be a football star and a house that wont be surrounded by ever-

expanding apartment buildings with a garden in the backyard. The ideas he puts into his head not only

affected him but it affected the work ethic and lifestyle of his children. He enabled Biff, from a young

age, allowing grades to slide by, girls be mistreated and stealing from the school. All of that added up to

build the character of Biff as an adult who cant seem to hold a steady job and still has problems with

stealing including confessing he had spent time in jail because of it. This all leads back to the fact that

Willy allowed his dreams to overtake the father figure his boys needed, making them into the men he

thought he worked so hard for them not to be.

Kindness is Willys tragic flaw (Siegel 29). When he is addressed with a situation that he

believes he would triumph over with his assertiveness and masculinity, he fails to get the job done. He

had finally concluded that he could not live on commission any longer and when he tries to confront his

boss, Howard, about changing to salary and staying in town, Howard walks all over him. Willy states,

your father came up to me the day you were born and asked me what I thought about the name of

Howard (Miller 1062), trying to sugar-coat the deteriorating confrontation. You named him Howard

but you cant sell that (Miller 1073), Charlie tells Willy after he was terminated. It signifies the fact that

Willy is no longer a salesman; he cant even sell a negotiation with his boss to keep his job.

In conclusion, Miller allows Willy to fatally succumb to the desires of the American Dream. He is

fully enveloped with the emptiness, loneliness and price of the dream. There were instances where he

tried to bandage the wounds that were being dug from his failure through infidelity and by living

vicariously through his sons. In the end, he allowed himself to get to a point of no return by ignoring the
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flaws of the dream. He chose to push passed them in any way possible, whether through lying or

cheating to get ahead, none of that mattered because the dream instinctively took its prey.
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Works Cited

Shockley, John S. "Death of a Salesman and American Leadership: Life Imitates Art." Journal of American
Culture (01911813), vol. 17, no. 2, Summer94, p. 49. EBSCOhost,
search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=9501161846&site=ehost-live.

Ansarey, Diana. "Death of Salesmanship and Miller's Death of a Salesman." ASA University Review, vol.
7, no. 1, Jan. 2013, pp. 151-160. EBSCOhost,
search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=116350619&site=ehost-live.

Siegel, Lee. "Willy Loman's Secret." Nation, vol. 294, no. 18, 30 Apr. 2012, pp. 28-30. EBSCOhost,
search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=74412109&site=ehost-live.

Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman The Norton Introduction to Literature, edited by Kelly J. Mays,
W. W. Norton, 2017, pp. 1018-1099.