These flashbacks illustrate Willy’s loss of reality from the world.

Throughout the story, Willy often has flashbacks of the conversations that he and his brother Ben once had. As a salesman, Willy was a failure and he tried desperately to prevent his sons to never end up like him.Īs a result, he loses his grasp on reality. Loaded! What is he stealing? He’s giving it back, isn’t he? Why is he stealing? What did I tell him? I never in my life told him anything but decent things.” Willy’s goal throughout life was to achieve financial success. At one point, he defends Biff for stealing just because he was an amazing football player. While raising his boys and trying to instill his “American Dream,” he fails to teach them any sense of morality, leading them down what he feels is the wrong path. His wife Linda is extremely supportive and is Willy’s only connection to reality. Willy Loman is a salesman who believes that success comes from being well liked and popular and has tried desperately to instill his ideas to his two boys: Happy and Biff, Willy’s biggest aspirations in life. In 1949 Arthur Miller wrote “Death of a Salesman,” in which the American Dream is depicted as a fruitless pursuit.

Miller is acknowledging to the Americans that they are in an illusion and that the dream is fake resulting in various social problems and even in death like with Willy. To have success, capitalism and consumerism are planned and implemented by the help of politicians and the media. Capitalism, consumerism, and the American Dream are interlinked ideas and when each of the latter idea occurs, the former happens. Arthur Miller alludes to the ‘American Dream’ in “Death of a Salesmen,” which has the effect of capitalism and consumerism, through the depiction of two protagonists: Willy and Biff Loman and moves to further criticize these ideas by showing the tragic end of Willy Loman. Capitalism is an economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.

Happy death of a salesman