Willy Loman American Dream

Willy Loman is a salesman of Arthur Miller’s novel, Death of a Salesman, who recently got fired. To begin, Willy has a wife, Linda Loman, and two boys, Biff and Happy. In the beginning, Willy returns home from working throughout all of New England trying to sell his company products. When he returns home, he is annoyed with everything around him and his wife tries to comfort him. Most importantly, he is angry at his son, Biff, for being a failure. Throughout the whole novel, Biff and Willy go at it with each other, which indicates the conflict of the story, but the only reason why Willy believes Biff is a failure is because he never lived up to his father’s expectations. Willy wanted his son to be just like him, but all Biff ever wanted to
To begin, this theme is combined with the theme of the American Dream, that anyone in America can achieve prosperity through hard work and dedication. America asserts itself as the land of opportunity, which leads up to the American Dream. Anyways, Miller uses Biff as an example of someone who has missed many opportunities and now lives with his parents and does not have a decent job. Biff was a great football player in high school and was extremely popular. Knowing people can land Biff a job, but the only thing that held Biff back was his grades. He never completed high school and never tried to go back and complete it. As a result, he is at the same ranks he was when he was 18, living with his parents and still does not have a job nor a high school diploma. Biff missed all of his opportunities that came at him for jobs and he declined or quit most of them. Biff states,” The term. I haven’t got enough credit to graduate”(Miller, 117). One of Biff’s first missed opportunity was him not graduating high school. Biff states,” Well, I spent six or seven years after high school trying to work myself up. Shipping clerk, salesman, business of one kind or another”( Miller, 22). What Miller is trying to imply is that the American Dream does not work unless the person that wants to achieve it wants to work, which means that taking every opportunity that is offered and if that person does not want to work, there is always someone else in the world that will work. In this case, Biff did not take those opportunities, but wasted them instead. Miller used a theme that is still relevant today, opportunities should be taken in American society today because someone else will be happy to take the opportunity. All in all, Arthur Miller’s novel, Death of a Salesman, shows the theme that people must seize all the opportunities that are offered to