The American Dream

1. The American Dream • In the 1940’s and 1950’s success was defined in monetary ($$) terms. The characteristics for success were thought to be masculinity, competitiveness and popularity. The myth was that becoming rich was simple a matter of using your personal qualities as an individual. It was believed that the more money you made the more successful you were. Success was demonstrated by the number of material possessions you had – house, car, boat, swimming pool, etc. Working in some form of business was the way to achieve success. Starting at the bottom, working faithfully, being loyal to the company, never questioning the boss, being totally devoted to working for the business 24 hours a day were qualities that were demanded and the hope that one would eventually get to the top was held out like a jewel. Working with your hands, being a laborer was looked down upon.

2. The role of family • Marriage was a must for everyone as soon as possible. The wife was uneducated, was expected to keep the house clean, to raise the children and to be totally devoted to her husband. Children were expected to fulfill their parents’ dreams, to follow in their footsteps, to make them proud, to give them a reason for living. No one was allowed to be his or herself, to develop their own potential, grow as they wanted. Conforming to the social code was very important. The myth is that failure to achieve the American dream indicated a failure of personality.

3. What is capitalism • Capitalism is a political system that depends on the continual encouragement of wants. People must want more and buy more in order to fuel the economy and enable people to work to produce these goods. In Death of a Salesman Arthur Miller is disparaging about the capitalist system which encourages people to want more and more goods, such as cars and refrigerators, as if this is the ultimate point of existence. The play describes the economic boom and increasing desire for material goods that followed the war. For anyone who lived through the Great Depression of the 1930’s when it became clear that American society could not provide opportunities for all, and some might starve, this consumerism must have seemed a troubling development. The consequence is a spiritual vacuum and, to his credit, Willy notices this.

4. Themes in Death of a Salesman • The American Dream - Willy believes wholeheartedly in what he considers the American dream. He believes a “well liked person” and “personal attractive” man in business will indubitably and deservedly acquire material comforts offered by modern American life. • Willie Believes in the American dream. He believes there is a frontier in America. Everything is there for the taking. You just have to reach out and take it. America is just like the jungle. But why can’t Willy find any diamonds? Why can’t he fulfill his dreams of success? • What are the qualities needed for a person to be successful? Why does Willy’s fixation on the superficial things in society cloud his ability to realize what is important in life? • How does the American dream lead to his psychological decline when he is unable to accept the disparity between the dream and his own life?

5. Abandonment • Willy’s life charts a course from one abandonment to the next, leaving him in greater despair each time. Willy’s father leaves him and Ben when Willy is very young, leaving Willy neither a tangible (money) nor an intangible (history) legacy. Ben eventually departs for Alaska, leaving Willy to lose himself in a warped vision of the American Dream. Likely a result of these early experiences, Willy develops a fear of abandonment, which makes him want his family to conform to the American Dream. His efforts to raise perfect sons, however, reflect his inability to understand reality. The young Biff, whom Willy considers the embodiment of promise, drops Willy and Willy’s zealous ambitions for him when he finds out about Willy’s adultery. Biff’s ongoing inability to succeed in business furthers his estrangement from Willy. When, at Frank’s Chop House, Willy finally believes that Biff is on the cusp of greatness, Biff shatters Willy’s illusions and, along with Happy, abandons the deluded, babbling Willy in the washroom.

6. Hopes and Dreams • Hope and dreams – Life is built on hopes and reams. Present circumstances and events are tolerable if personal hope and dreams suggest that the future hold promise of better things. • -Willy believes there is hope of better things to come so the present doesn’t matter. • - Both Willy and Linda had dreams. Were they similar? Did they create conflict in their marriage? How has Willy’s dreams fallen become Biff’s responsibility?

7. Betrayal Willy’s primary obsession throughout the play is what he considers to be Biff’s betrayal of his ambitions for him. Willy believes that he has every right to expect Biff to fulfill the promise inherent in him. When Biff walks out on Willy’s ambitions for him, Willy takes this rejection as a personal affront (he associates it with “insult” and “spite”). Willy, after all, is a salesman, and Biff’s ego-crushing rebuff ultimately reflects Willy’s inability to sell him on the American Dream—the product in which Willy himself believes most faithfully. Willy assumes that Biff’s betrayal stems from Biff’s discovery of Willy’s affair with The Woman—a betrayal of Linda’s love. Whereas Willy feels that Biff has betrayed him, Biff feels that Willy, a “phony little fake,” has betrayed him with his unending stream of ego-stroking lies.

8. Responsibility and Support • Responsibility and support – Behind every successful man is a great woman. Some people believe that it is the wife’s responsibility to support her husband through thick and thin, right and wrong, good or bad. • Linda is supportive of Willy. Is she too supportive? • Biff is aware of Willy’s difficult times. What are his views on how to help Willy cope with life’s responsibilities? • Did Willy’s suicide or sacrifice accomplish anything? Why or why not?

9. Self-concept/roles • Self-concept and roles –Some people say, “What you do is what you are.” Your work is a reflection of your values and ideas. Your work is your life. • Willy’s funeral is ironic because when he is talking to be about killing himself for the insurance money he talks about all the people that will come from Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont… and how Biff will thunderstruck. Yet, in reality the only people who are there are Linda, Charley and his sons. • Willy believes that being well liked and personally attractive will make you sucessful in life. • Biff learns that his father was happy working with his hands, and he followed the wrong dreams by not being truthful with himself and following the American Dream.

10. Ideals/Success • Ideals and success – If you are gong to be a success in the world it is important to be a person of action, someone who does things, not just a talker. Show me don’t tell me. • Ben and Bernard are successful. They do things. Ben went into the jungle and emerged with diamonds. Bernard pursued his studies and ended up presenting a case in the Supreme Court. Why does Willy admire Ben so much versus his opinion of Bernard? Who is the real success and why can’t Willy see it? • Is seems Willy is just a talker. Things don’t work out for him. Willy assumes it is not what you now but who you know. How does this affect his life and work?

11. Symbols in DOAS • The stockings • The jungle • The diamond • The seeds/garden • Rubber hose

12. Seeds • Seeds represent for Willy the opportunity to prove the worth of his labor, both as a salesman and a father. His desperate, nocturnal attempt to grow vegetables signifies his shame about barely being able to put food on the table and having nothing to leave his children when he passes. Willy feels that he has worked hard but fears that he will not be able to help his offspring any more than his own abandoning father helped him. The seeds also symbolize Willy’s sense of failure with Biff. Despite the American Dream’s formula for success, which Willy considers infallible, Willy’s efforts to cultivate and nurture Biff went awry. Realizing that his all-American football star has turned into a lazy bum, Willy takes Biff’s failure and lack of ambition as a reflection of his abilities as a father.

13. Diamonds • To Willy, diamonds represent tangible wealth and, hence, both validation of one’s labor (and life) and the ability to pass material goods on to one’s offspring, two things that Willy desperately craves. Correlatively, diamonds, the discovery of which made Ben a fortune, symbolize Willy’s failure as a salesman. Despite Willy’s belief in the American Dream, a belief unwavering to the extent that he passed up the opportunity to go with Ben to Alaska, the Dream’s promise of financial security has eluded Willy. At the end of the play, Ben encourages Willy to enter the “jungle” finally and retrieve this elusive diamond—that is, to kill himself for insurance money in order to make his life meaningful.

14. Stockings • Linda’s and The Woman’s Stockings • Willy’s strange obsession with the condition of Linda’s stockings foreshadows his later flashback to Biff’s discovery of him and The Woman in their Boston hotel room. The teenage Biff accuses Willy of giving away Linda’s stockings to The Woman. Stockings assume a metaphorical weight as the symbol of betrayal and sexual infidelity. New stockings are important for both Willy’s pride in being financially successful and thus able to provide for his family and for Willy’s ability to ease his guilt about, and suppress the memory of, his betrayal of Linda and Biff.

15. Rubber Hose • The rubber hose is a stage prop that reminds the audience of Willy’s desperate attempts at suicide. He has apparently attempted to kill himself by inhaling gas, which is, ironically, the very substance essential to one of the most basic elements with which he must equip his home for his family’s health and comfort—heat. Literal death by inhaling gas parallels the metaphorical death that Willy feels in his struggle to afford such a basic necessity.

16. Quotable Quotes • Biff is a lazy bum! • There’s one thing about Biff – he’s not lazy • To suffer fifty weeks of a year for the sake of a two week vacation • All you really desire is to be outdoors. • I thank the Almighty God you’re both built like Adonises • The woods are burning • Boys when I was seventeen I walked into the jungle, when I was twenty one I walked out. And by God I was rich.

17. Quotable Quotes • Nothing’s planted. I don’t have a thing in the ground • Ben I’ve been waiting for you for so long. What’s the answer? How did you do it? • Because I know he’s a fake. • Will you stop mending stockings? • There were promises made across this desk. • You can’t eat the orange and throw the peel away • A man is not a piece of fruit.

18. Quotable quotes continues… • He laid down and died like a hammer hit him. • He wasn’t beaten by it at all. • I named him. I named him Howard. • When are you gonna realize them things don’t matter? • The only thing you got in this world it what you can sell. • The funny thing is you’re a salesman and you don’t know that. • you end up worth more dead than alive. • Let’s hold on to the facts tonight. • The woods are burning boys • Does it take more guts to stand here the rest of my life ringing up a zero?

19. I’m a dime a dozen, and so are you • I saw the things that I love in this world. • The door of your life is wide open! • I am Willy Loman, and you are Biff Loman! • I am not a leader of men, Willy, and neither are you. • I’m one dollar an hour. • He cried to me. • That boy is going to be magnificent. • One must go in to fetch a diamond out. • A diamond is rough and hard to the touch

20. The Requiem • I can’t understand it. • We were free and clear. • There’s more of him in that front stoop than in all the sales he ever made. • He was a happy man with a batch of cement. • He had all the wrong dreams. • He never knew who he was. • Nobody dast blame this man. • And when they start not smiling back – that’s an earthquake. • A salesman is got to dream.

21. Last quotes • I’m gonna show you and everybody else Willy Loman did not die in vain. • It’s the only dream you can have, to come out number – one man. • Why did you do it? • We’re free