Hello and welcome to the Discourse. In a third-world country, a common man often leads a laborious life, struggling for his bread and butter, facing the consequences of the pandemic alone, and dying an incongruous death from frustration and failure. To an American citizen, such a life is difficult to imagine. He is a citizen of the land of plenty and wealth. He is the one who can proudly reject the government-aided vaccination for Corona of his suspicion of the government and vaccination in general. While in a third-world country, like Pakistan, people face a dearth of medicines and vaccines, where Polio is still an endemic, even during the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, anti-vaccine activism in the USA accelerated, amplified, and formed an alliance with political groups and even extremists.
Arthur Miller’s "Death of a Salesman" offers a similar scenario of the land of the plenty and hence, offers a challenge to the American dream, shattering it, and showing the face of reality in the shards of the broken dream. He challenged the common belief that to be an American is to enjoy a life of excess, equality, and ecstasy. No American should die an unlamented death.
The idea of the American Dream oozes from the "Declaration of Independence" which says, 'We believe that all men are born with these inalienable rights - life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.'
This idea, this dream is based on the genuine and determining ground of belief that in America, there can be no exploitation, no partialism, and thus, all things are possible to all men, regardless of birth or wealth; if you work hard enough you will achieve anything.
However, Arthur Miller artistically describes how people have been misguided and have misunderstood the idea of the American Dream in his play Death of a Salesman. He offers moving destruction of the whole farce around the American Dream.
The tragedy of Willy Loman, says Arthur Miller, is:
“Willy gave his life, or sold it, in order to justify the waste of it…”
Willy represents a common man in America, it is a tragedy of every low man in America. Death of a Salesman is a social tragedy. A Social Tragedy is a modern genre of tragedy that depicts the conflicts between the protagonist as an individual and society as a whole. The protagonist becomes a victim of society’s ill-treatment. The salesman Willy Loman is the victim of social injustice and this social injustice causes his tragedy. But he had his own flaws too. He was the one who mistook the meaning of the American Dream and lead his life following the falsehood around the American Dream. Willy believes in the American falsehood that “Success is obtained by being well-liked”. His dream ends up in a nightmare. Like the American Dream, the idea of Capitalism has also been tarnished and mutilated in America and the play equally challenges the wrong perception of Capitalism too.
To Willy, American Dream means becoming rich overnight. For him, the success of merit is money, big houses, costly cars, immoral affairs, and other material things. Willy gives two hoots to nobility, truth, honesty, and other virtues. Willy is not only a victim of this fraud based on the American Dream, but he also traps his sons Biff and Happy in the same fraud. For Willy, instead of hard work and courage, there is salesmanship. He considers salesmanship a trick to fraud. For Willy, it is the ability to sell a commodity irrespective of its intrinsic values or uselessness. For a salesman, the goal is to earn a profit, he doesn’t care for the trust of the buyer.
Willy is the victim of this falsehood which makes him spiritually hollow. He is unable to understand the difference between good and bad. When Linda complains about Biff’s bad behavior towards girls, he scolds Linda and asks if she wants her son to be a worm like Bernard. Bernard for Willy is liked but not well-liked.
Miller offers the characters of Charley and Bernard to show that despite all the fraud and falsehood surrounding the American Dream, not everyone is fooled by that. Charley is a man of virtues and hardship, he teaches his son the same, and despite being ‘liked but not well-liked’ they attain success. Charley and Bernard attain material success too though that wasn’t their main goal because material success cannot be a goal, it is the consequence, the end result of gaining success at being a good human.
Willy, on the other hand, ceases to be a man and spiritually, he is hollow. When Charley objects to Biff stealing from a nearby construction site, Willy totally ignores it, rather encourages Biff by claiming that his sons are a couple of “fearless characters.” His downfall isn’t sudden. Willy had high hopes for Biff but stealing became a habit of Biff that caused his downfall. Charley realizes that Willy isn’t an evil man at heart, he is a victim of the falsehood around the glorious idea of the American Dream. He tries to offer reason to Willy again and again but Willy isn’t ready to listen as his dream is so dear to him that he becomes blind to the truth. Charley continues to help him and Willy recognizes that even though they dislike one another, Charley is the only friend he has. Charley fails to save Willy and his downfall reflects the total breakdown of the concept of salesmanship which has been an integral part of the capitalist setup of America.
Willy feels that being “Well-liked” is not only the key to success, but he believes that life’s all problems can be solved by looking 'well-liked'. He fails to understand that in the real world, good looks don’t matter, what matters is your worth, skills, and wealth you have. Money can let you buy anything. The dollar rules the real world and overshadows every other human feeling. Willy had the skills, he worked for his company for more than 36 years. He introduced the business to many new cities and made the firm successful. He believes he is a vital man for the company. However, he fails to understand that in a capitalist setup, a man is vital only till he can raise profit for the firm. As soon as you appear weak in your skills at making a profit, you get fired. This fact falls on Willy in a brutal manner. When he gets old, weak, and ill, he asks for a settled desk job on humanitarian grounds. But Howard, his boss rejects his plea. Rather he fires him for a minute mistake as he says,
“I cannot take blood from a stone.”
Willy realizes that forget being vital, he isn’t even a man for the firm at all. For the capitalist boss, no moral or legal binding obligates him to help Willy with the work he did in past. For him, Willy is commercially useless in present and thus, is trash to be thrown.
“Death of a Salesman” offers an alert to American society. Through this story, Miller essentially says that a man is not a machine and that society needs to respect human values as should an individual. Willy’s suicide is the death of the American Dream. Arthur explains this through Biff, the elder son of Willy who says at his father’s funeral,
“He had the wrong dream. All, all wrong.”
Charley, though realizes that the American Dream in itself isn’t wrong, the wrong is in how Willy or a common American man perceives it. Charley says that a salesman must dream and that for a salesman there is no rock bottom in life. His younger son Happy understands the situation at a deeper level. He realizes that though tragic, his father was no evil man. He knows his father always tried to do something for his boys and never wished to depend on them. He commits suicide as it will bring twenty thousand dollars of insurance which will help Biff to make a good fortune. Happy is the younger son who never got the same attention and affection from Willy that Biff easily got. Yet, apart from Linda and Charley, he is the only one who understands his father and respects him for what he was. He decides to stay in the town, settle and work hard. He rejects the farce and false around the American Dream while embracing it in a true sense as he says,
“Willy Loman did not die in vain. He had a good dream. It’s only dream you can have-to come out number-one man.”
So this is it for today. We will continue to discuss the history of American Literature. Please stay connected with the Discourse. Thanks and Regards!
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