Death Of A Salesman The American Dream

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For most people, having their American dream come true is their main goal in life. Although it is called the American dream, almost anyone can have something like it in their life, whether it be getting a dream house with a beautiful family, or just being independent and happy living on your own. In Miller’s play Death of a Salesman all of his characters are attempting to have their dreams come true, but it just seems like it won’t happen. Willy Loman spends the play trying to realize his dream of becoming successful on mere charisma and being good at sales, while his wife Linda hopes everything will work out for the better so she can be happy for once and not worry about her husband. His sons Biff and Happy are trying to keep their father …show more content…

Willy seems to believe that “Under the pressure to succeed in business, the appearance if things is always more important than the reality and the truth about one’s accomplishments is never impressive enough” (Eisinger 100) through this, he manages to convince himself and others that things are going better than they actually are. The American dream to Willy “serves as the “ore” from which Willy fashions the ideological armor he uses to disguise and deny his true psychological state”. (Tyson 215) His character is flawed by his undying want to succeed off of his personality alone and this impacts his whole family, as he has spread these thoughts to his children. He even goes on to praise his child for stealing instead of punishing him, for example, when Biff brought out a football the he had taken from the locker room all Willy said to him was “I want you to return that”(Miller 2119) while laughing with him about the theft. Not long before he basically praised Biff for stealing he had been telling him “Don’t make any promises. No promises of any kind. Because a girl, y’know they always believe what you tell ‘em, and you’re very young, Biff, you’re too young to be talking seriously to girls.”(Miller 2118) Coaching your son to not make promises to girls and to make sure you don’t talk seriously to them doesn’t add up to being father of the year. Being a poor role model most likely comes from his own upbringing when his father left his family while Willy was at the age of 3 and his brother set out to find their father, leaving him without a father figure in his own childhood to learn fatherhood from. When Willy loses his job and the respect of his children he goes into a deep state of depression and in one

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