Death of a Salesman the Essay

And this is perhaps the most important underlying notion of Miller's play. The American Dream, which can perhaps be seen as the principle at the heart of the work, is also the ambition which pushes Loman through his life of artifice and vain pursuit. In a flashback, Willy is shown to be a man of aspiration, who wishes to transform his diligence and respect for authorities into a life of comfort and reputation. Even wishing eventually to start his own business, Willy Loman is a startling figure insofar as his decline does not occur without a background of optimism and forward momentum. This is the crux of Miller's point though, that there is an illusory nature to the expectations of the American Dream. Working for somebody else's ideals and to line some other rich man's pockets his whole life, we find that Willy has been exploited by the false promises of this dream.

It is at the play's inception that Willy acknowledges, even if somewhat unconsciously, that he is at the end of a road which never led to its expected destination. Returning from an aborted trip, Willy tells his wife, "I'm tired to death. . . I couldn't make it Linda. I just couldn't make it." (13) as with much of what Willy has to say, this is a sentiment which is layered with meanings below the surface. We see a man defeated. Though most immediately, he has been vanquished by the overwhelming duty of the recent trip, but more poignantly, he seems to be bowled over by a sense of his own failure.

This is as the basis of the poor relationship which Willy shares with his two sons as well. They recognize his failure and have contrary but equally interpretable emotional responses to it. Biff has come to lash out, finding that there is reflected in his own short-falling ambitions the shadow of his often absent father. Here, Miller shows that there is a psychological continuity to the alienation of the American Dream. In Willy's absence, he has actually had a profound impact on his son's lofty expectations and his idling response to their elusiveness. And in Happy, we see that there is actually a knee-jerk withdrawal from his father's approach to the world. Aspiring only to work for himself, to womanize rather than to start a family and to exude a confidence independence, Happy is driven to success by a fundamentally negative filial example.

In the two sons, there is a reproachfulness for Willy. With his suicide though, the empathy and emotion which is displayed by both, uncharacteristic given the distance between many of the figures throughout the play, suggests that the audience is expected to forgive Loman for his trespasses of ineffectualness and social conformity. Miller exonerates the salesman by recognizing that his psychological condition is a product of his environment rather as much as of his character, ultimately offering a work that resonates with key themes which afflict us in modern life.…