Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman" and the death of the American Dream:
The play "Death of a Salesman" by Arthur Miller shows the falseness of the American dream, namely that by obtaining material security for one's self and one's family, one finds true happiness. Willy, even during his lifetime expresses dismay he has worked a lifetime to pay for his house, only to not have his favored elder son live in it. He takes his life, feeling that he is better off dead, rather than living and working on commission, and his wife's final outcry at his grave that the family now owns the home and is free and clear seems hollow -- clearly she would rather have a living husband and debt, than a dead husband, an empty life, and a full bank account. Happy states to Linda, "he had no right to do that. There was no necessity for it. We would've helped." Willy's friend, ever the injection of realism into the drama merely says "Hmmm," while Biff urges Linda to "Come along, Mom," from Willy's grave. (Miller, 6.1) Death is the final, indissoluble contract that cannot be renegotiated.
Loman's suicide at the end of the play is clearly the act of an unbalanced mind and an unbalanced system of values that puts materialism above true feeling. Willy Loman is about to lose his job at the beginning of the play. He is failing as a salesman and failing in mind and body. Although Willy commits suicide at the end of the play, clearly he has been thinking about the topic for a long period of time, as is evidenced in this dialogue between his sons. At one point, Happy observers of his father's driving, a critical function to Willy's occupation as a salesman, "he's going to get his license taken away if he keeps that up. I'm getting nervous about him, y'know, Biff?" (Miller, 1.2)
However, even Biff (who has returned home only for a brief visit and has made clear that he has no intent of sticking around his father's home) deploys his father's and the family's usual defense mechanism of shutting out the truth. "His eyes are going," Biff says of his father. Happy persists, "No, I've driven with him. He sees all right. He just doesn't keep his mind on it. I drove into the city with him last week. He stops at a green light and then it turns red and he goes." Absurdly, Biff rejoins, " Maybe he's color-blind. (Miller, 1.2)
Willy feels as if he might be better off dead than alive because of his inability to make money, something that the playwright Miller suggests is really the failure of American capitalism's ability to give full value human mind and spirit as well as Willy's failure as a provider to his family. Capitalism only sees Willy's diminishing ability to return material rewards. Willy is also failing as a father -- not because of his financial poverty, but because of his refusal to see either his wife or sons as whom they truly are, a failing he has exhibited throughout his life. Willy encouraged Biff in sports, rather than in school, and encouraged him to ingrate himself with his teachers than to work hard. Significantly, he kills himself not during a low point but, according to "though Willy has obviously contemplated suicide for a long time, he only makes his final, irrevocable decision after the play has reached its undoubted emotional climax," after Biff's dramatic declaration to his father: that he is nothing. (Phelps, 239)
According to the psychoanalytic critic Frank Ardolino, Willy's mad drive for a false form of specious material and social success perverts what is good about his own character and his family's character, and this is why he fails as a person, a father, and as a salesman. Adorlino states "to achieve the depths of tragedy," a common man's life, "Miller expands, the ordinarily limited expressive capabilities of demotic English by exploiting the sounds and multiple meanings of simple verbal, visual, and numerical images." In other words, simple phrases like being...
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