Dreams in ‘Death of a Salesman’.

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The Importance Of Dreams In Death Of A Salesman

        Dreams are part of any man’s nature. To dream is to live a life that you hope for yourself in the future. These dreams may or may not be achievable but will always drive people toward them. People may take these dreams seriously like Willy Loman; but to most people to achieve their dreams would be to achieve the impossible. Dreams can be very dangerous if they are the only driving forces behind a person’s life and lead them, not to hope but to want for things beyond their reach. This is the case in ‘Death of a Salesman’.

        

The driving force behind Willy Loman throughout the Death of a Salesman, is the idea that he can achieve the “American Dream”. He wants to have the material things in life and to have the best of everything; he wants lots of money, a big house, and a loving family and, “To come out the number-one man”. He sees Ben as the epitome of success, he longs to be as successful as Ben or even as successful as Bernard, always asking “What’s the secret?”  Instead of being discouraged from this by Linda she is tolerant of him, constantly backing down, right to the end. Even in his plans of suicide, she is scared to “contradict” him, instead replacing the rubber hose every evening when he comes home.

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Happy idolises his father and buys into the “American Dream”. Right until the end, he believes he actually is somebody. When Biff points out, “You’re one of the two assistants to the assistant” he still tries to convince himself of his importance. He is very like his father in his need for success, when he looks where there is no success he has to make it up. Both of them believe they have to lie to people to make themselves likeable. When Willy dies, instead of understanding how futile his dream is, Happy vows to fight on for Willy ...

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