FREE ESSAY ON A SALESMANS DEATH

A SALESMANS DEATH

An Analysis of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman
When people accept an ideal to live by it can be a glorious and noble thing unless they
become so obsessed with the ideal that it becomes a yolk and they are unable to realize
their dream. This is especially true for Arthur Miller's play Death of a Salesman. In
this play Miller portrays a lower-middle class man, Willie Loman, respectively, who lives
by an ideal that ultimately is self-defeating. Willie lived to pursue the American dream
rather than living the American dream. He pursed the ideal rather than living it and thus
is unable to succeed.
Willie Loman, in Death of a Salesman, has lived his life in pursuit of the American
dream. Traditionally the American dream meant opportunity and freedom for all, and Willie
believed that. However, hard work could not earn him everything that he wanted or thought
he deserved. Willy judged himself and those around him by their material accumulation, as
is demanded by capitalism and the protestant work ethic. The ethic demands accumulation
and work as signs of favor in the eyes of god. Thus in order to please god and himself he
had to accumulate wealth and objects. The consumer oriented society in which Willy lives
will not allow him to live the American Dream. Willy is fascinated by accumulating
things. His desire for goods makes him want objects that he neither needed nor could
afford. As he tries to live the American dream he venerates those who have been
successful at doing so, like Thomas Edison, B.F. Goodrich, and Ben, his successful
brother. Furthermore he punished those who did not work towards that ideal or accomplish
it, such as Biff, his son, and most importantly himself. The extreme to which he followed
the dream brought him to disillusionment and lose sense of reality. Willy created a
reality for himself where he knocked 'em cold in Providence, and slaughtered 'em in
Boston (p.33). The ultimate result of his disillusionment is his suicide. It is ironic
that he dies for his ideals although they are misconstrued.
The problem with Willy's ideals which ultimately kills him is that he has lost sight of
achieving the true goal of the American Dream, happiness and freedom, and the dream took
control of him. He struggled to achieve something that he could not; he did not have the
talent to be a salesman. He became so obsessed with living the dream that he was unable
to be content with his talents in carpentry and with his family. There is also a manner
in which he pursues the Dream. He is a salesman, a profession that is associated with
trickery and illusion. He could not pursue a noble dream by doing something that is based
in deceit. His quest was cursed from the start and the fact that he lived the quest and
not the dream made it worse.
Bibliography
Miller, Author. The Death of a Salesman.