About Arthur Miller's 'Death of a Salesman‪'‬

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: Nobody 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 couple 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.