Analysis Of Arthur Miller s The Death Of A Salesman

Arthur Miller is one of the most successful and enduring playwrights of the post-war era in America. He focuses on middle-class anxieties since the theme of anxiety and insecurity reflects much of Arthur Miller’s own past. The play addresses loss of identity and a man’s inability to change within him and society (Miller 16). The American Dream has been an idea that has motivated society for centuries. It often times becomes the main theme for many movies, novels, and poems. In, The Death of a Salesman main character Willy Loman decides he wants to make this dream a reality. He soon is faced with this reality when his idea of the American Dream he had been working for turns out to be unattainable. The American dream vision of economic opportunity is available to all those who work for it regardless of race or class. Wily Loman represented the primary target of the dream (Miller 20). Just as most middle-class working people, he struggles to support his family with financ ial security and had dreams about making himself a huge financial success. After years of working as a traveling salesman, he has only an old car, an empty house and defeated spirit. Dysfunctional family tragedy helps to keep the American Dream alive. Linda and Happy work very hard to keep the fantasy of the dream of success alive. Dysfunctional Loman family, the wife is restricted to the role of housekeeping and bolstering her husband’s sense of self-importance and purpose (Miller 60). Linda jugglesShow MoreRelatedAnalysis Of Arthur Miller s Death Of A Salesman 1183 Words   |  5 PagesEmily Alimusa COM 101—FALL 2014 Death of A Salesman Essay Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman offers an instructive example for understanding the production and maintenance of identity through communicative interaction in a family using the character Biff Loman. 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Although he was a hard worker and kept up with an exhausting schedule, his family always practically lived in poverty and Willy was inferior in his company. He always told his family that they would get the big break he deserved. He had raised two sons, Happy and Biff, to think that life has somehow cheated them and insists that they will get their payback someday. Willy s wife, Linda, lives in denial