Death of a Salesman

The American Dream is like winning the lottery. It gives a lot of people plenty of hope to attain it, but only a handful of people are rewarded. There are those who keep fighting for it all their lives but try in vain and end up empty and disheartened. The American Dream can instil both positive and negative values on people. It is not wrong to dream big, but to dream without doing anything can lead to false hope and unrealistic expectations. There is no problem desiring to become more than who we are, but there is a thin line between desire and envy. Everybody must strive to achieve his or her potentials, but it is not healthy to try to become someone who we are not, like envying someone who has more than us.

To those who never grow out of their fixation to become somebody else, they take it out on their children. This brings about overbearing stage parents who push their children to become somebody they are not, thus destroying their hopes and aspirations in the process. These people are full of pride and insecurities that they are usually defensive and refuse to be offered help. They are materialistic and cannot appreciate the little things in life that are really more important.

In the play, Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller, Willy Loman was a disillusioned old man who always aspired to have success in life, but never achieved any. He was one of those who pursued the American Dream, but fell short like so many others. He always thought that becoming successful was easy and did not require hard work. Willy never realized that there was no shame in not being wealthy or not being popular, but the current time he was living in proclaimed otherwise. He was full of pride and never accepted any help from his only friend, Charley. He focused on materialistic gains all his life, that he lost sight of the more important things he had going for him. Inside, he was deeply lonely, yet he could not see that there were people who wanted to help him. Willy was not a bad person and cared for his family, but he never fulfilled the expectations he had for himself. Eventually, he took it out on his two sons, Biff and Happy. He had their best interests in mind, but his obsession for being successful blinded him. However, as much as he wanted to, his character prevented him from being a good father. Ben Loman, his successful older brother, was partly a cause for Willy’s flawed character, but society was the bigger culprit. Willy could not escape the shackles of society. He always wanted to be big, and when everything had failed for him, he killed himself in order to be significant. The American Dream inevitably drove Willy to his own demise.

Biff Loman was Willy’s first born, and had great promise as a child, but turned out to be a huge disappointment, at least, in the eyes of Willy. Biff had been taught by his father a lot of things, and one of them was to dream big and strive for success. Willy pushed Biff to be popular and to be successful that it resulted in the complete opposite. Willy’s philandering changed Biff’s perspective of his father forever. The turning point in Biff’s life was when he caught his father in Boston with another woman. Biff intentionally flunked out of high school and refused to go to college in order to get back at Willy for his betrayal. He ended