Failure of the Common Man

Yosief Hailemichael

EWRT-1B

Essay- 3

November 16, 2006

Failure of the Common Man

The reality of the American Dream is that people are capable of succeeding. Success, though, requires one to work hard and be dedicated to both his/her professional life and family life. Yet, the illusion of the Dream is that attaining material prosperity defines success. Failing to acknowledge the importance of hard work in achieving the American Dream is another aspect of the illusion. Willie Loman, in “Death of a Salesman", has lived his life in pursuit of the American dream. Willy is fascinated by accumulating things. His desire for goods makes him want objects that he neither needed nor could afford. Willy Loman’s warped view of the American Dream caused his failure to achieve the true American Dream and a tragedy in his family because he stressed the importance of popularity over hard work and risk-taking over perseverance.

Willy’s main problem is his inability to forget his part and his fear of facing his realities. By ignoring the present, Willy fails to deal with reality. He has a tendency of living in the past and thinking of the future. He always thinks that if he had done something differently then this could have happened, or things will get better as time passes. His habit of distorting the past, never allows Willy to realize what is going on right then and there in the present. At one time, when Willy goes off down memory lane, he "says" to Biff and Happy, "America is full of beautiful towns and fine, upstanding people. And they know me, boys…the finest people…there’ll be open sesame for all of us, ‘cause one thing boys: I have friends. I can park my car in any street…and the cops protect it like their own" (31). Willy makes this distortion of the past in order to make himself believe that he has achieved the American Dream. At times when doing this was not possible, Willy looks to the future and thinks he can still achieve it then. For instance, he has this dream of having a big, spectacular funeral. In the end when Willy dies, at his funeral, Linda says, "Why didn’t anybody come…Where are all the people he knew?" (137). All his life, he holds on to this fantasy, but he never faces the reality of how he could have made it come true. It is his vision of the people of the past that lead Willy to follow a particular path, leading to his failure to achieve the American Dream and his suicide in the end.

The success attained by Willy’s role models, his father and his brother Ben, is what he envisions to be the American Dream. He only visualizes the end product, being successful, and not the process they may have gone through to achieve that success. Material success, such as money, luxury, and wealth, and popularity are his goals and his definition of success. On the other hand, self-fulfillment and happiness through hard work is not. By only focusing on the outer appearance of the American Dream, Willy ignores the reality of the hard work and dedication required to obtain it. His constant obsession with being successful, being well-liked, and attaining that Dream with the “perfect” job, the “perfect” family, and the “perfect” life, never leaves his mind.

The unattainable part of Willy’s notion of the American Dream is perfection. This illusion shadows Willy as it takes him through his life. He has this set picture in his mind of how everything should be: a good