Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller

Section I; Willy is not a victim of the American Dream

A common person can be a capable of becoming a tragedy hero just like any other person of   royal status.  Arthur Miller in his play the Death of a Suleiman crucifies the old notion of the American Dream. The author puts down the old fashioned idea that people associated America with being successful. He indicates that this has become a fairy tale that can hardly be achieved.  This central idea of the play is seen in the Requiem and the last section of the second act.  The author condemns the old fashioned dream through the delusional success of Happy, the epiphany of Biff, and death and funeral of Willy. Willy just like Biff and Linda are tragedy heroes in this play. He is a common man who has no wealth or royalty. Throughout Willy’s life, he thought that he will one day fulfill the common notion of the American dream by becoming prosperous. This, however, never happened. In his chance for the American dream, he did not manage to find true happiness and how it feels like to be happy. He is just like many people in the world who rely on fantasy and make wrong and unrealistic dream. Willy is like a child and  even in his sixties, he has never grown up.  The American Dream should not be blamed. Therefore, Willy is not a victim of the American dream. Willy Loman in the play is not a victim of American Dream. Willy is an old travelling salesman who is almost breakdown with his life. The author presents his as common hero who everyone can identify with.  In his youth, Willy has set up high standards goals, but, through ill fate, he has not managed to realize them and this made him be controlled by illusion of his success.  However, the many lies in his life became real, and he does no longer handle the actual truth of what his life had become.  He commits suicide after becoming convinced that his insurance was more of value than his life.  He dies without realizing who he actually was.

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Charley, who is Willy’s best friend, asks him when he will grow up. This means that the friend is tired of the many lies that Willy has of his life. He does not want to face the facts that define him or failures in his life. He only hid behind the picture of success and popularity. In his advice to his sons, he only wanted them follow his path yet in the true sense he had achieved nothing.  In reality, he wanted  Happy and Biff  to  be better  salesmen a than he was,  and   this made the  sons grow up with impractical goals and elevated  dreams  life those of  their father. This shows that Willy is like a child who dreams of fantasy and he never grew out from the unrealistic world.  These dreams clogged his mind, and he could not make smart decisions. He   could not let go the image of wanting to be seen as prosperous and   successfully. Miller through Willy presents the various aspects on the modern day society that is driven by success, dreams, values and goals.People in the current American society place too much emphasis on inappropriate and unrealistic goals because they have been brain washed by propaganda.   Willy is not a victim of the American dream, but he let himself be fooled by basis his values of phoning for prosperity and success. This is in disregard of his personal effort of attaining financial growth he hoped to achieve and his desired respect. He valued to reexamine this valued and it when the truth catches up with him that he commits suicide.  This is a true indication that Willy was not a victim of the dream, but he lacked knowledge and wisdom.

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Section II Annotated Bibliography

Rosinger L (1987) Miller’s Death of a Salesman

 Rosinger analyzes the modern tragic drama, Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller. Rosinger shows that the modern tragedies do not have to be based on the Astristotelian principles. He says that the vocabulary of the play suggests similarity to the old forms of drama.   The modern day play is not bound by Aristotelian principles. This is because the modern day strategies is all about the ordinarily person like Willy Loman and not people of the high status. The authors go ahead to state that the vocabulary used in the play Death of a Salesman suggests the old form of drama. For instance, when Willy talks about   his boss who passed away, he says, “That man was a prince; he was a masterful man (p 133)”.

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 The use of the term ‘prince’ hints royalty. The same term is later used when Biff says to Miss Forsythe on if she has seen a prince walk by a brilliant and troubled prince an unappreciated and hardworking prince (p, 204).  Rosinger shows that there are several allusions that Miller has used in his play of the classical mythology. For example, he sees a link between Aristotle and Miller when gets into Willy’s houses when he hears him shouting. He says that there is a pity and trepidation as an application of Aristotle view.

The message that Miller is passing to the readers is that Charley is reacting to the situation that Willey is in. This is just like the way anyone reacts to a tragedy Rosinger’s analysis presents anew attention on the sophisticated use of language that Miller has used in his play. It is a language that pervades the dialogues.  Rosinger review presents Arthur Miller as a language stylist. He shows that Miller is a dramatist who goes beyond the use of the common man’s language to adopt the Aristotelian perspective that is full of figurative speech.  The play presents rhythms and images that have   the poetical patterns. This is because Miller maximally works within a colloquial prose and dialogues are used to elevate the play. Thus, takes the forms of idioms, clichés, and colloquialisms of the language used by a common man. The poetical language can be seen from the shifting of words in their connotative and denotative meanings.

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Reference

Miller, a (2002) Death of a Salesman. Structure, Sound, and Sense. Boston: Thomson Higher Education, p 1445-1525.

 Rosinger L (1987) Miller’s Death of a Salesman. Winter87, Vol. 45 Issue 2, p55, 2p. Retrieved from

http://web.ebscohost.com. /ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=793ac079-ca90-4db1-98a7-207ccb1c51cd%40sessionmgr10&vid=6&hid=13

 On November 30th 2012