Death of an American Dream
Perception shapes reality. When misconceptions create an illusion, reality tends to come crashing back into the scene. “Death of a Salesman” by Arthur Miller uses Willy Loman’s relationships with family and friends to show how easily dreams of greatness can subvert a reality full of warning signs and missed opportunities. Biff, Happy, and Charley are just three of the characters within the story who simultaneously fall victim to and pity Willy. Their individual mistakes compound over a lifetime to create a reality that is very different from the dream they started out with.
Willy Loman is a man struggling to find his American Dream. He has a wife and two sons and a home that is about to be paid off. However, he finds little comfort in these things. His eldest son Biff has spent years “finding himself” after aspirations of playing football out of high school failed to pan out. Willy has always focused most on Biff’s good looks and physical prowess, thinking that these traits would make him great: “He could be big in no time. My God! Remember how they used to follow him around in high school? When he smiled at one of them their faces lit up.” Willy is so lost in his memories of the past potential he saw for his son, that throughout the story he begins to lose his hold on what is happening in the present. Not only does he look down upon his son for wanting to put his physical aptitudes to use as a farmhand, but he thinks of ways to try and make his son more like him, when that is the last thing Willy truly wants. But he only sees what he wants to see, and fails to recall that what changed their relationship irrevocably was Biff catching Willy cheating on his wife, Linda, while on a business trip, which is what propelled Biff to go and find himself in the first place.
While Biff is cursed with the inability to live up to Willy’s expectations, another character suffers from the opposite problem. Howard “Happy” Loman strives to be everything his father expected of Biff, trying to grab attention as both a child and adult. Willy knows that Happy thinks of himself as highly accomplished and has actually achieved moderate success, but he refuses to acknowledge so on multiple occasions. In one example, Willy suffers one of his flashbacks while Happy tells him how he will take care of his father, who responds with nothing but scorn: “You’ll retire me for life on seventy goddam dollars a week? And your women and your car and your apartment, and you’ll retire me for life!” These are substantially greater accomplishments than the thirty-five dollars that Biff scrapes together doing manual labor, yet Willy begrudges him even one iota of the approval that Happy so desperately craves.
Role models provide examples of success. However, models for success exist much closer than in distant memories. Charley is not family to Willy, but they have known each other for a long time and their sons grew up together. The stage instructions for Charley describe a man who, “In all he says, despite what he says, there is pity.” Charley has worked hard his entire life and shows interest in whatever his neighbor talks about, but Willy is jealous of his perceived measure of greater success. As a result, Willy is unable to enjoy Charley’s company and conversation during a game of cards. No matter what Charley says, Willy finds a way to twist his words into an insult. After changing the topic multiple times during the game, Willy tells Charley, “A man who can’t handle tools is not a man. You’re disgusting.” In saying so, Willy seems to have not only forgotten his previous condemnation of Biff’s desire to work with his hands, and continually rejects Charley’s offer for a job that might be better suited for him at his age. His jealousy and misperception of Charley (as well as his son Bernard) as poorly liked despite their success prevents him from recognizing the value of their friendship.
Willy and Biff’s final showdown, though dramatic, only goes to show that Willy has learned nothing from the events that have torn his family apart. The false epiphany of Willy, that his life insurance payout is more valuable to his family than his life, is echoed in “Indian Camp” by Ernest Hemingway. In that story, Nick is a young apprenticed to his father, a doctor, who has been called upon to deliver a baby and hopefully save its mother’s life. His father is ultimately successful in both of these tasks, but Nick “did not watch. His curiosity had been gone for a long time.” The obvious gruesomeness of the scene causes Nick to avert his eyes, and his father is commenting on a job well done. It is at this point that they discover that the baby’s father has taken his own life, and Nick sees everything in gory detail. On their return home, Nick has a number of questions for his father, but seems to have ignored or repressed what he has just seen. While Biff and Happy are reminded of their own mortality by their father, Nick “felt quite sure that he would never die.” Willy has lost all faith in life, while Nick’s has only just been sparked.
The ability to “live the dream” is a privilege envied by most, but the dream changes with the dreamer. Willy Loman has always dreamed of great success for himself and his sons, but fails to acknowledge that his fate might be ordinary. He does this not because he believes himself to be great, but because he wants his sons to believe it about themselves.
