Willy Loman's Birth Of The American Salesman

Lens Essay According to Walter A. Friedman’s book Birth of the American Salesman “salesmen not only fed America’s thirst for consumerism, they shaped it.” Why does America have a thirst for consumerism? Anybody can acquire the ability to sell goods and provide services. However, certain qualities must be present in order to be efficient. To be the best salesman, just being able to sell goods and provide services, won’t get you very far. One must go above and beyond the normal expectations of society in the workforce. In Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman the protagonist and father of two, Willy Loman, tries to do this in order to satisfy his family financially. The tragedy by the controversial American playwright is a well-known classic.
The article distributed titled Birth of the American Salesman also describes the lifestyles and credentials of American salesmen as a whole. Laura Linard, director of Historical Collections at Baker Library, interviews an author from Harvard named Walter A. Friedman. They discuss his book (Birth of the American Salesman), significant time periods for American business, the difference between sales and advertising, the most important person in the sales industry, and traits of a businessman. Friedman explains how American business has grown like no other country by having more corporations, causing there to be more workers, products, and a higher demand all by the 1920’s. Living in this time period was John H. Patterson, who according to Friedman was “the most significant figure in the history of sales.” Walter then talks about all of Patterson’s successes such as making the all-encompassing system of sales management, a global sales force that brought new customers and tried to sell replacement merchandise to existing ones, monthly quotas, testing different methods of compensation, and promoting “scientific
Patterson might be the most significant figure in the history of sales, but it was also stated that he wasn’t well-liked, just like Willy Loman. He was said to “break men down” and “treat them cruelly at times, then rebuild them as good agents or executives.” This pattern of behavior is very similar to Willy because he contradicts himself and his actions many times in the story. Patterson was able to find more success in his work than Willy Loman because he was living in the prime time of salesmanship, which according to Friedman was the 1880’s to about the 1920’s. In Willy’s case, he had the same qualities as Patterson but he was just born in the wrong time period. This connects to another book called Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. In this book, studies show that everything matters about the very exact date that one was born. One example from the book talks about famous icons in history such as Bill Gates. If Bill Gates were not around in the period where computers weren’t as advanced, he wouldn’t have gotten to spend as much time as computers and wouldn’t have been able to make all of his successes making him worth $50 billion dollars today. If Bill Gates were born one hundred years ago, he would never have been able to have to opportunity to start his technological advances. If thought about, Willy Loman was not exactly born in the right time frame but Patterson was. The business industry was growing from the 1880’s to the 1920’s, right where Patterson had made