Lyndsay Amiro
Amiro 1
Dr. Lipscomb
ENG 4934
26 April 2012
The Wrong Dream in Death of a Salesman
Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman remains a timeless masterpiece because of its
ongoing impact on society. It was a hit right away and has remained one of the most popular
plays of all time. Miller focuses Death of a Salesman on “the American ideal of business
success” and “its conclusions were challenged to standard American business values”
(Loeffelholz 700). Death of a Salesman can be seen in a variety of different ways, from tragedy
to memory, which contribute to its ongoing study. Around the world, but specifically in America,
Willy Loman remains a business icon who is a reflection of us. Willy has the wrong dream all
along and this is what ultimately leads to his downfall. He puts too much emphasis on being
“well-liked” as successful, rather than hard work and dedication. The cultural context of Death of
a Salesman plays a major role because of society’s expectations dealing with the American
Dream. These expectations cause Willy’s fatal error in judgment, the wrong dream, which is the
origin of his inevitable failure. In this context, this is a play about the American family and the
American Dream.
WWII and The Great Depression had a worldwide impact and affected numerous
families. “The suicides of millionaire bankers and stockbrokers made the headlines, but more
compelling was the enormous toll among ordinary people who lost homes, jobs, farms, and life
savings in the stock market crash” (Norton Anthology 1185). Although Willy would have started
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his career a great many years prior to this, the 1940’s, in which the play is set, is a time when the
job market was more demanding thus causing him to fail as a salesman due to his lack of skills.
As a result of this, Willy does not live up to his version of the American Dream of being a
successful salesman. “Willy Loman entered the world’s consciousness as the very image of the
traveling salesman,” states Murphy, but in the end he does not live up to this image.
In the 1940’s it was common for Americans to feel disillusioned about the American
Dream. According to James Ryan and Leonard Schulp, authors of the Historical Dictionary of
the 1940’s , the nation was still coping from The Great Depression and some minority groups
were seeing the American Dream as a nightmare. “As the war dragged on, these groups became
more vocal in their pursuit of the American Dream, thereby raising expectations to a higher
level.” In the 19th century version of the American Dream a single man went out into nature and
tried to make a fortune from the land. In the 20th century this idea shifted to focus more on an
industry full of service and sales as representation of the American Dream. For example, Willy’s
brother Ben says, “Why, boys, when I was seventeen I walked into the jungle, and when I was
twenty-one I walked out. (He laughs.) And by God I was rich” (Miller 1.715). Ben represents
what Willy hoped to achieve in life; his idealized American Dream. Willy regrets settling for a
lesser dream of being a salesman and wonders why he didn’t go to Alaska with Ben when he had
the chance. Ben provides Willy with nothing but dreams and empty promises that push him
further into delusion.
For while Ben is undoubtedly the embodiment of one kind of American dream to Willy,
so too is Dave Singleman representative of another kind--and that is part of Willy's
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confusion: both men symbolize the American dream, yet in his mind they represent value
systems that are diametrically opposed to each other. The memory scenes are important
in bringing out this contrast and showing what Willy's perception of Ben reflects about
Willy's own conflicting values (Centola).
Because Willy did not accept Ben’s offer, we can see this as “his need to preserve the dream, and
not jeopardize it by too close a contact with reality. His rejection of Charley’s job offer, on the
other hand, is a result of a refusal to admit that he has failed” (Benziman). Instead of moving
forward with his life and accepting a job from someone like Charley further emphasize his error.
Society’s expectations were demanding and Willy was not able to live up to them because of his
attachment with the past. Looking at the cultural context and the time period of the play, it is
evident that Willy was delusional and too caught up in what really had no significance. Society
was interested in a man who could make a name for himself and his family through hard work
and dedication, not being well-liked.
These changing times were in effect but Willy remained too focused on the past. Perhaps
part of Willy’s failure as a salesman was that he was not going about it the right way. Perhaps he
was not keeping up with the times and this is part of his failure. According to Murphy, the oldstyle career salesman is dead and maybe this signifies the end for Willy all along.
To be like Willy is to be a failure. Therefore we will make the job of sales as different as
we can from the job as Willy did it. Of course, this is a cultural, not a literary evocation.
The point is that he represents the conjunction of traditional sales methods and failure. To
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escape Willy's fate, the salesperson need simply follow this good advice.... if only Willy
Loman had known what we do now (Murphy).
As much as we relate Willy Loman to “failure” and “fear,” Americans need, and could not live
without the salesman icon Willy Loman. He represents everything not to do, providing future
salesman with a commentary on a rather failed life.
In 1963, critic and director Esther Merle Jackson said that Death of a Salesman is “‘the
most nearly mature myth about human suffering in an industrial age’” (Murphy). She states that
Arthur Miller, “‘has formulated a statement about the nature of human crises in the twentieth
century which seems, increasingly, to be applicable to the entire fabric of civilized experience.’”
According to Jackson this play has more of an impact than others of its time because of the
relationship between Willy Loman and contemporary life. Willy is quite literally symbolic for
society at the time the play was written. He exemplifies the morals and values of the so-called
American Dream at that time and how completely upside down they truly were.
Willy believes that the promise of the American Dream is that if you are a well-liked man
in business then you will acquire the material wealth offered by modern American life. He is
fixated on all the wrong things in life: being liked instead of being hard-working as the key to
success in order to obtain the American Dream. An example of this is Willy’s reactions to
Bernard. He doesn’t like Bernard because he thinks he is a bore, but in reality Bernard is closer
to reaching the American Dream because he is hard-working.
WILLY: That’s just what I mean. Bernard can get the best marks in school,
y’understand, but when he gets out in the business world, y’understand, you are
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going to be five times ahead of him … Because the man who makes an
appearance in the business world, the man who creates personal interest, is the
man who gets ahead. Be liked and you will never want (Miller 1.711).
Willy has a diluted vision of the American Dream which sets him up for a swift decline. Willy
has instilled the idea in both Biff and Happy that being well-liked is the ultimate key to success.
He tells them that they will not have to work hard for anything, and that everything will come
very easy to them because of their likeability. Happy does not seem to question his father’s ideas,
but Biff does. Happy does whatever it takes to gain approval from his father. He is constantly
saying, “I’m losing weight, you notice, Pop?” in order to retrieve his father’s attention and be
well-liked. Happy believes that being well-liked is truly the only way to be successful. Biff,
however, is a little more skeptical on the matter. He wants to gain approval from his father while
still remaining true to himself. He sits on both ends of the spectrum of the American Dream:
outdoors and financial. According to Centola, both Biff and Happy are ‘lost’ and ‘confused,’ but
this realization is not fully reached until the end of the play. Biff is worse off than Happy
because he is able to recognize the problem where as Happy remains completely oblivious.
Although Biff realizes the false sense of success that Willy is engraining into them, he still feels
obligated to make something of himself in the business world for the sake of his father.
What makes Death of a Salesman so impactful is the fact that what happens to Willy
could happen to anyone; Willy’s fatal flaw of having the wrong dream evokes pity and fear in
the reader. “While Miller clearly uses Willy's collapse to attack the false values of a venal
American society, the play ultimately captures the audience's attention not because of its
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blistering attack on social injustice but because of its powerful portrayal of a timeless human
dilemma” (Centola). It is evident that anyone can feel and understand the anguish that Willy
Loman went through. The effects of The Great Depression not only crushed the American
Dream for Americans, but for humans worldwide. Centola states that “one can appreciate the
intensity of Willy's struggle only after isolating the things that Willy values and after
understanding how the complex interrelationship of opposed loyalties and ideals in Willy's mind
motivates every facet of his speech and behavior in the play.” Once Willy’s values are analyzed
and understood, the conflict between him and Biff is implicit: he recognizes his role in Biff’s
failure.
“At the root of Biff's wrongdoing and feelings of guilt lie shame and feelings of
inadequacy and inferiority. But, unlike his father, he faces, and learns from, his shame”
(Ribkoff). We understand that Willy is seen through Biff, but Biff still has a chance to redeem
himself unlike his father. Where Willy does not know himself, Biff does and thus he is able to
empathize with his father. Biff’s sense of inadequacy derives from his father and this recognition
is what sends him “running home.” Biff cannot escape his fathers and his society’s ideas and
expectations for success and the American Dream. It takes the shattering moment when Biff
finds out about “The Woman” for his views toward his father change. Up until then Willy has
been a role model, one whom Biff respects and admires.
Even though Willy’s decisions are usually far from agreeable, the reader cannot help
liking him; he is even “well-liked.” While most readers and audience members would disagree
with his course of action, it is plain to see and understand the anguish and struggles Willy is
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dealing with over the course of the play in his persistent pursuit of the impossible American
Dream. Willy “tries to assure himself that he has made the right choices and has not wasted his
life while he also prevents himself from questioning his conduct and its effect on his relations
with others” (Centola). Without knowing it Willy is crying out for help, and even while longing
for material success he wants to regain love and respect from his family along with the selfesteem he has lost. Sadly, he goes about striving to obtain these goals in the wrong way “because
he has deceived himself into thinking that the values of the family he cherishes are inextricably
linked with the values of the business world in which he works” (Centola). He confuses the two
and tries to link them together, resulting in nothing but misfortune and embarrassment for
himself and everyone around him.
“The cultural impact of Death of a Salesman far exceeds the theatrical and literary
experience, however. Willy Loman and his failure and death have a status as defining cultural
phenomena, both inside and outside America's borders, that began to be established in the first
year of the play's life” (Murphy). People were claiming that this play related to them on a
personal level, businesses were using Willy as an example of what not to do as a salesman, and
preachers were incorporating Willy into their sermons explaining the emptiness of his dreams of
material success. Willy has maintained the wrong dream all along; he dreamed of being wellliked instead of hard working.
The problem is particularly evident in the way Willy approaches the profession of
salesmanship. Instead of approaching his profession in the manner of one who
understands the demands of the business world, Willy instead convinces himself that his
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success or failure in business has significance only in that it affects others-particularly his
family’s-perception of him (Centola).
Society has caused Willy to believe that the only way to be successful is to be well-liked; he
cares about perception rather than substance.
The Lomans live on charm and being well-liked rather than working hard to be
successful. Charley serves as a foil to Willy because he has reached the American Dream. In Act
II Charley points out to Willy that everything he has put so much focus on is really worth
nothing
WILLY: Charley, I’m strapped. I’m strapped. I don’t know what to do. I was just
fired.
CHARLEY: Howard fired you?
WILLY: That snotnose. Imagine that? I named him. I named him Howard.
CHARLEY: Willy, when’re you gonna realize that them things don’t mean
anything? You named him Howard, but you can’t sell that. The only thing you got
in this world is what you can sell. And the funny thing is that you’re a salesman,
and you don’t know that (Miller 2.728).
According to Cardullo,
What we are left with in this play, then, is neither a critique of the business world nor an
adult vision of something different and better, but the story of a man (granting he was
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sane) who failed, as salesman and father--or who failed to live up to his own unrealistic
dreams of what salesmanship and fatherhood constitute--and who made things worse by
refusing to the end to admit those failures, which he knew were true.
Willy is trapped, he refuses to look reality in the face and see himself and everyone else for what
they are. This is a sign of his instability and failure to recognize the fact that he has made a fatal
error in judgment by having the wrong dream.
Both Willy and Biff have been unable to understand and acknowledge who they truly are
until the end of the play.
BIFF: No! Nobody’s hanging himself, Willy! I ran down eleven flights with a pen
in my hand today. And suddenly I stopped, you hear me? And in the middle of
that office building, do you hear this? I stopped in the middle of that building and
I saw – the sky. I saw the things that I love in this world. The work and the food
and time to sit and smoke. And I looked at the pen and said to myself, what the
hell am I grabbing this for? Why am I trying to become what I don’t want to be?
What am I doing in an office, making a contemptuous begging fool or myself,
when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am!
Why can’t I say that, Willy? (Miller 2.739).
It isn’t until this moment Biff is able to see himself as he truly is. Willy, on the other hand,
doesn’t seem so lucky. According to Ribkoff, Willy cannot bear to have his dreams and his
vision of himself, and Biff, revealed before him that way. Continuing from the previous
dialogue Biff says, “I am not a leader of men, Willy, and neither are you. You were never
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anything but a hard-working drummer who landed in the ash can like the rest of them!” (Miller
2.739). Biff realizes who he is not and tries to get his father to understand as well; however,
Willy cannot empathize because he is incapable of facing his own guilt. When Biff says, “Will
you let me go, for Christ’s sake? Will you take that phony dream and burn it before something
happens?” he is “not simply asking for his own freedom from the shame produced by not living
up to the dream of success and being ‘well liked’; he is asking for his father's freedom from
shame and guilt as well states Rubkoff. Willy is driven by shame to commit suicide at the close
of the play; this is his last attempt at preserving the image of being “well-liked” not only as a
salesman but as a father, too.
Near the end of the play, in the most climactic scene, Biff realizes that he needs to face
reality and himself unlike his father. But literally a couple pages before this Willy is talking to
Ben about what it will be like at his funeral.
WILLY: Because he thinks I’m nothing, see, and so he spites me. But the funeral(Straightening up.) Ben, that funeral will be massive! They’ll come from Maine,
Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire! All the old-times with the strange
license plates-that boy will be thunderstruck, Ben, because he never realized-I am
known! Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey-I am known, Ben and he’ll see it
with his eyes once and for all. He’ll see what I am, Ben! He’s in for a shock, that
boy!
BEN: (coming down to the edge of the garden): He’ll call you a coward (Miller
2.736).
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Willy still doesn’t get it even this far into the play, and the fact is he never will. He is still set on
being well-liked and focusing on how many people will attend his funeral. Willy has been
making a fool of himself and even when both Ben and Biff point it out he is still unwilling to
listen. According to Centola, Biff realizes that his dreams have nothing to do with Willy’s own
vision of success. Biff is able to embrace and understand who he is and stop living a lie.
In the Requiem Biff makes the announcement that “he had the wrong dreams. All, all
wrong” (Miller 741). He also states that Willy didn’t know who he was but that he knows who
he is now. Ultimately, Willy fails to fulfill his dream and the Requiem illustrates this point. “His
funeral is certainly not like the grand one he had imagined, and he still remains misunderstood
by his family. But death does not defeat Willy Loman. The Requiem proves that his memory will
continue to live on in those who truly mattered to him while he was alive” (Centola).
Willy Loman exmplifies the idea of the American Dream in the time of the 1940’s. The
world was rapidly changing and people’s ideas and views of success were much different from
what they had been before the time of WWII and The Great Depression. Arthur Miller paints us
a vivid picture of the demands in society and the ways in which we can fall victim to these
demands and expectations. Willy fails to fulfill his dream because he had “the wrong dream” and
because he doesn’t know who he is. Being well-liked is not the measure of success, but rather
hard work and dedication. Although Biff was told from an early age that as long as you are wellliked you will be successful, he still is able to uncover his own version of the American Dream
and discover who he truly is. Willy Loman has and will remain an icon for generations to come
and will always hold a spot in the heart of many men. People who had experienced what he did
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during that time will continue to have Death of a Salesman hit close to home and bring them
back into the time of their own American Dream. When considering the cultural context of the
play, it is that much clearer to see the impact that society had on Willy, why he made the choices
he did and how he tried to fulfill the American Dream.
Willy Loman is the epitome of a failure. He has not only failed himself but he has failed
his family, too. Without Willy’s fatal error in judgment, having the wrong dream, the play would
not have had the same affect that it does. Although it can be argued that there are other
contributing factors to his failure the hamartia is having the wrong dream. Being well-liked of
being hard working and dedicated is what Willy values. Society has impacted him by making
him think that he needs to get ahead in order to be successful. Times were demanding after The
Great Depression and WWII and everyone needed to do what they could in order to survive. If
only Willy had been more like Charley and Bernard he would have understood the true definition
of success and ultimately reached the American Dream. But because Willy had the wrong dream
he ends up taking his own life and leaving his family to pick up the pieces. Willy’s fatal flaw is
the turning point for the downward action of the play and the main reason why he fails.
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Works Cited
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Treatment of the American Dream." South Atlantic Review 70.2 (2005): 20-40. JSTOR.
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Cardullo, Bert. "Death of a Salesman, life of a Jew: ethnicity, business, and the character of
Willy Loman." Southwest Review 92.4 (2007): 583+. Literature Resource Center. Web.
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Centola, Steven R. "Family Values in Death of a Salesman." CLA Journal 37.1 (Sept. 1993): 2941. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Janet Witalec. Vol. 179. Detroit: Gale,
2004. Literature Resource Center. Web. 20 Mar. 2012.
Lawrence, Stephen. “The Right Dream in Miller’s Death of a Salesman.” College English
(1964): 547-549. National Council of Teachers of English. Vol. 25. JSTOR. Web. 17
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Miller, Arthur. "Death of a Salesman." The Compact Bedford Introduction to Drama. Ed. Lee A.
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