Death of a Salesman - A Story of Dreams

LINDA: Why didn't anybody come?

CHARLEY: It was a very nice funeral.

LINDA: But where are all the people he knew? Maybe they blame him.

CHARLEY: Naa. It's a rough world, Linda. They wouldn't blame him.

[…]

BlFF: He had the wrong dreams. All, all, wrong.

HAPPY, almost ready to fight Biff: Don't say that!

BlFF: He never knew who he was.

CHARLEY, stopping Happy's movement and reply. To Biff: No¬body dast blame this man. You don't understand: Willy was a salesman. And for a salesman, there is no rock bottom to the life. He don't put a bolt to a nut, he don't tell you the law or give you medicine. He's man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back — that's an earthquake. And then you get yourself a cou¬ple of spots on your hat, and you're finished. Nobody dast blame this man. A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory.

BlFF: Charley, the man didn't know who he was.

HAPPY, infuriated: Don't say that!

BlFF: Why don't you come with me, Happy?

HAPPY: I'm not licked that easily. I'm staying right in this city, and I'm gonna beat this racket! He looks at Biff, his chin set. The Loman Brothers!

BlFF: I know who I am, kid.

HAPPY: All right, boy. I'm gonna show you and everybody else that Willy Loman did not die in vain. He had a good dream. It's the only dream you can have — to come out number-one man. He fought it out here, and this is where I'm gonna win it for him.

BlFF, with a hopeless glance at Happy, bends toward his mother: Let's go, Mom.

(Miller 221-222)

My paper deals with the exploration of the American dream for a wealthy, comfortable and successful life and the failure in achieving it, as reflected in the Requiem of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, taking into account the traits of Social Realism that the play meets. In this respect, Willy Loman represents the archetype of man obsessed with material gains and madly engaged in a pursuit for success, but who eventually ends up tragically, as a victim of his own delusions of grandeur.

Willy is a common man, who has struggled all his life to become a rich businessman, in order to provide his sons with a happy, decent future. However, in his superficial interpretation of the American dream – to be “well-liked”(Miller 184), to have “a penny to [your] name”(184) and lots of “contacts”(184) – Willy has missed one of the basic elements that secure the road to success, namely hard work without complaint.

In his profound veneration of Dave Singleman, the mythic salesman who died the impressive “death of a salesman” (180), and at whose funeral “hundreds of salesmen and buyers” (180) came, Willy has skipped one important detail concerning the human side of the former salesman: the fact that he had been working hard all his life, and was still working at the age of eighty-four. He privately hopes that his own funeral will gather the same number of people, so that his accomplishments may be recognized at least after his death. Yet, the only people present at his burial were his wife, his two sons, and his neighbor Charley. Ironically, although “it was a nice funeral” (221), nobody came; this is another tragic reinforcement of Willy’s incapacity to fulfill his life dream.

He has always expected for all the good things to come to him and his sons naturally, without any effort from their side, whatsoever; it is exactly this erroneous outlook on life that doomed him inevitably to failure: “He had the wrong dreams. All, all, wrong” (Miller 221) concluded his elder son Biff after Willy’s death. As opposed to Happy, who shared his father’s self-delusional false expectations of the American dream, Biff has freed himself from this absurd utopia: “I realized what a ridiculous lie my whole life has been! We’ve been talking in a dream for fifteen years.” (197).

Contrary to Happy’s unwillingness to face the facts, “HAPPY, infuriated: Don’t say that!” (Miller 222), Biff cold-bloodedly argued that “the man didn’t know who he was” (222), “He never knew who he was” (221). Fortunately, Biff – at least – came out as a winner, “I know who I am, kid” (222), he has shaped his own identity and realized the pointlessness of continually running towards an empty illusion. In this matter, he has proved to be superior both to his father – who had spent all his life in an endless struggle that culminated with his suicide, in a last desperate attempt to fulfill that great goal – and to his brother Hap – the very incarnation of lie, falsehood and blind servitude to a system that is shiny, but void on the inside.