1

Capitalism and the American Dream in Death of a Salesman

Arthur Miller’s play “Death of a Salesman” is, in simple words, the story of a man who

commits suicide after he sees himself as a failure. The play is written in a non-linear narrative

and is concerned with the last two days of the protagonist Willy Loman who recalls the vague

fragments of several events throughout his life as he makes his last attempts to fix everything

before ultimately giving up. Despite dedicating his entire life as a salesman to serve his

employer, he could never achieve the prosperity he dreamed of. The American dream that he

pursued, like millions of other working people, was perhaps a lie that everyone convinced

themselves as true. His belief in the capitalist definition of success as an acquisition of material

wealth built harmful and potentially destructive conceptions regarding career, family, and

relationships which consequently culminated in the unfortunate series of events at the end of the

play. Though it is easy to put blame on characters for their actions, it can be strongly argued that

Willy Loman’s and several others’ lives were simply shaped by forces of the system beyond

their control.

The Loman family living in Boston, New York City, is a typical middle-class American

family. Their fragile house is surrounded by tall apartments all around where people flaunt their

wealth and prosperity from various stories and balconies. The Loman family, like every other

middle-class family, dreams to climb up the ladder, and to the places and things they only see in

advertisements. If they get all those things, they should be happy. And the only way to do so is

through hard work, as the myth of the American Dream says. Well, if everyone keeps saying

that, it must be true. Or so thinks Willy Loman.

 2

Willy Loman is sixty-three. All his life he has worked hard as a salesman for the Wagner

Company. He has traveled all around the country and has made his living out of commissions, a

certain fraction of the total sales given by his boss. He then spends all he has made on the

purchase of the family’s necessities, which are determined not by themselves but by the

expectations of the capitalist society where he lives. A nice car, a decent house, and all sorts of

things he needs to buy to become successful. After all, your worth is measured in terms of your

possession of material wealth. Consumerism is the most effective by-product of capitalism. The

capitalist society must keep consuming so that production keeps increasing. As long as the

production is increasing, profits are being made by the people who make you believe that you

need to consume their products to achieve a certain position in society. Willy has spent every

penny he earns to get to that status. It is too late before Willy realized that the only thing his

constant pursuit of material possessions brought was financial hardships and stress, which

worsened his mental well-being and caused dissatisfaction and grief in the family.

Another key element of capitalism that can be seen in the play is its encouragement of

individualist and competitive behavior. It makes one believe that he is in competition with the

whole world and that he has to be better than everyone. The only way to be better than everyone

is to earn more, get a bigger house, or a nicer car, and so on. The very thing results in ego, pride,

and jealousy if one is unable to win in the competition, which is evident several times in the play.

When Willy is fired from his job as a salesman, his friend Charles, who has always provided him

with financial support in need, offers him a job. However, his pride and ego don’t allow him to

take the offer. Willy sees it as an act of pity from someone who earns better and thus has a more

successful life than him. Similarly, when will recalls the memories of his past, he remembers his

Uncle Ben’s offer to go and work with him in the diamond mines. In this case, too, his
 3

determination to prove his own worth led him to deny the proposal, causing him to regret the lost

opportunity in the last stages of his life.

Other themes that can be commonly associated with capitalism present in the play are

alienation, disillusionment, and loss of familial and societal relations in pursuit of one’s beliefs.

Willy Loman, despite being nowhere near financial success and stability even after decades of

work, forces his son Biff to take a job similar to his. Despite being happy and satisfied in his job,

Biff leaves his work and decides to start a business to fulfill his father’s wishes. This only plants

roots to further dissatisfaction and conflict in the family, destroying the relationship between

father and son. Willy has also lied a number of times about his earnings with his wife and

children, boasting higher numbers to gain their respect only to be found by everyone as a liar.

Such activities only resulted in making him more alienated from himself, and the world.

In his last attempts to fix everything, Willy travels to his boss to ask for a raise and a better

position. Instead, he gets dismissed from his job, citing his lack of enough sales as the reason. He

is seen as no more valuable than a disposable product.

Even till the event of his suicide, Willy has never got rid of the capitalist illusion

ingrained in his mind. He believes that in the event of his death, a lot of people will come to his

funeral as a mark of respect for his life and work. He also sees his killing of himself as an

opportunity to gain insurance money, which will help his family financially and make their lives

a bit easier. Both his life and death are measured in terms of his worth, and he realizes he is

worth more dead than alive at that stage in his life. In this sense, he fails to realize that he is no

different from a commodity. This is the same thing Marx argues in his essay “Estranged

Labour”, where he states that capitalism reduces workers to commodities cheaper than the ones

he produces, indeed the most wretched of commodities (Estranged Labour, Marx, 1844).
 4

Throughout his life, Willy upheld the values of the system he believed in or trusted. He

did his work honestly, reported all his sales to the company, made them rich, and received a

portion of it as compensation. He did the same for three decades. He was convinced that he knew

the formula of success. That was what everyone did. Working hard, paying bills, and buying

things that make their lives seem a success. However, he never got the life he wished for. His

earnings were barely enough to run day-to-day life, let alone pay for mortgages and loans for his

house and cars. His company had no value for his contribution. His familial relations

deteriorated, and he lost the admiration of his sons. Even after his death, he had no visitors at the

funeral as he had expected. The cruel irony was that the system and dream that he had honored

all his life, had no respect for his own.

All these observations of the events unfolding in the lives of the Loman family and

subsequent analysis indicate a deep flaw in the belief in the American Dream or a work-hard-

and-get-rich formula of success. Our efforts to lead our lives the way we desire are

inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. We all act as dictated by the system without our

realization. We are made to trust in the way our society is run since our childhood, without

asking why. Society constructs Willy's thoughts and spread a sense of attaining success at any

cost however it does not show him the way to achievement. It provides no hope or comfort to

individuals who are alienated and fragmented. He strives for the American dream of getting big

success throughout the entire play, yet never achieves what he hopes. His obsession with the

dream directly causes his failure in life, which, in turn, leads to his eventual suicide. It is too late

when we are left with a realization that we have been useful tools of the system the whole time,

serving them while we believe they were serving us. Our perception of everything was built on

this lie.
 5

Therefore, the play provides an excellent observation of the hyper-capitalist world of

Willy Loman. He acted throughout his life just as society trained him and millions of others

since their birth, believing he was doing something significant. It is capitalism that gives the

false sense of the American dream, exploits whole lives of individuals for pennies, dehumanizes

and reduces them to commodities, gets people addicted to consumption and consumerism,

promotes unhealthy competition and individualism, alienates and isolates people, destroys

relationships, and gets people to the point where they see no value of their lives or more value in

their deaths.
 6

Works Cited

“The Idea Of American Dream In Death Of A Salesman”. Edubirdie, 13 Aug. 2021,

edubirdie.com/examples/the-idea-of-american-dream-in-death-of-a-salesman/

Estranged Labour, Marx, 1844.

www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/labour.htm.

Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman: Play by Arthur Miller. 2022.