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| The original book cover to "Death of a Salesman" |
Arthur Miller speaks of the American Dream in his novels the
same way that a second-place competitor would speak about being runner-up.
There is a sense of loss in his novels, a sense of tension between what could
of been and what was given. There is a grasping sense of frustration in the way
he speaks about his characters dreams, and what ended up being their realities.
Most of the time, the story is of a character who fails to grasp the idea of
the American Dream, or sees the faulty underlining to what seems like a ‘good
idea’ beneath it. This trend in his work shows with reoccurring struggles in
most of his characters for achievements they never accomplished and dreams that
never came true. This is especially true for a character named Willy Loman, the
main character in Death of a Salesman.
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| Willy Loman and his two sons |
Willy Loman is a salesman, to start with. At sixty years old, he's
an aging businessman who enters his home tiredly, again and again. There is a
crushed feeling that follows Willy: the crushed American Dream he used to cling
so heavily to as a young man. He lives in the shadow of his deceased, rich
brother Ben who struck gold (or diamonds in his case) in Alaska, and in the
shadow of his father who abandoned him as a child. These influential men who
eventually left his life left a huge impact on his sense of the American
Dream.
His father left him and his brother when they were very young,
leaving them neither money nor a legacy to go off of. Ben, as he grew older,
left Willy to find a better life in Alaska and luckily ended up becoming
extremely wealthy with diamonds, something that Willy never could seem to do.
These tangible items -- the money that Willy's father never left him, and the
diamonds that Ben happened upon that made him rich -- gave Willy a warped sense
of what it meant to 'achieve' the American Dream. He translated the achievement
to mean that he must acquire superficial, tangible things to show for his
success, ignoring the other side to the American Dream that demanded hard work
and persistence as a sacrifice for happiness. As Ben said, "A diamond is
hard and rough to the touch"(Miller, Act 2). While the diamond of the
American Dream is attractive and beautiful, it carries with it a 'hard and
rough' upbringing to achieve such brilliance. Willy, unfortunately, never
grasped that side to the American Dream. He failed to understand the entirety
of its meaning.
This lead to Willy to lead a miserable life. At sixty and a
salesman, younger, more healthy salesmen were taking his place. Buyers were
soon forgetting Willy's then-infamous name. He could no longer travel to large
cities and expect anyone, besides the old and decaying, to remember his name.
It had a depressing toll on Willy. All of this, however, stemmed from the fact
that Willy 'missed the mark' -- he missed the idea of what it meant to live out
the American Dream.
This
frustration, this depression, and this feeling of loss is what Arthur Miller
sought to express. He wanted to paint the picture of someone who worked hard
all his life to achieve nothing. Arthur Miller wanted to expose the holes in
the idea of the American Dream, and its unfailing promise of success. As Arthur
Miller suggested some stories do not end happily. One could argue it
was at the fault of Willy, or was it at the fault of the American Dream? Arthur
Miller, in his writings, continued to work through these ideas and thus
perpetuated his obsession with the American Dream.
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