Death of a Salesman: The Loman's Misguided American Values
Rick Welch
Professor Frantz
Writing Seminar
December 2, 2002
Death of a Salesman: The Loman's Misguided American Values
Arthur Miller’s The Death of a Salesman explores the Lomans’ values. The entire family values a misconceived notion of the American dream. The American dream is something that we all chase after, yet we have different concepts of it. Willy Loman’s vision of this dream is a rather distorted one; he and his family never really obtain the dream. They never actually have all the stability, success, security, and love that they expect they will, and are constantly worrying about finances. After hearing his bills, Willy exclaims: "A hundred and twenty dollars! My God, if business don't pick up I don't know what I'm gonna do!" (Miller 1933). This constant worrying about money also eliminates the chance for having a happy, communicating family, because it inhibits all of Willy's time.
Willy Loman is a part of our capitalist society; he measures success by material wealth and popularity. One author writes, "Miller dramatizes the limited nature of Willie's values of material success and continual optimism" (Magill 1).
Wealth and success are all the things that he values; he believes that they are the American dream.
Willy teaches these values to his sons, "It's not what you say, it's how you say it -- because personality always wins the day" (Miller 1947). His belief that popularity provides the essential tools for success proves to be a tragic mistake. Willy grew up believing that being “well-liked” is the secret to becoming a success. He thinks that popularity will help you charm teachers and even open doors in business. This may be true, especially in our superficial society. However, one should also have real skills. Not to mention the fact that this is a plainly immoral view. So, one can even say that his ideas are twisted in more than one-way. Miller shows multiple points in the story where Willy speaks of the importance of being well liked and of the importance of appearances. Willy says, “…I thank the almighty God you’re both built like Adonises” (Miller 1931).
His values are twisted from the very beginning, there are numerous other examples of this. He is blinded by his narrow-minded views. For instance: he scoffs at the slightly nerdy Bernard, who is too focused on his academic success to be popular. In a flashback Willy has a conversation with Biff: “Bernard is not well-liked, is he?… Bernard can get the best marks in school, y’understand, but when he gets out into the business world, you are going to be five times ahead of him” (Miller 1931). While still in high school Biff’s future was assured, described as “...a young God. Hercules - something like that” (Miller 1949). He was also tremendously “well-liked”, but it all came crashing down soon afterwards, when he failed math. Biff never studied, or thought about the value of grades. He valued what his father instructed him to.
Willy believes that this teen popularity will guarantee Biff’s success in his adult life. Even though Biff fails as an adult, his father still holds on to the poorly conceived idea that Bill Oliver, a businessman who Biff met numerous years ago will offer him a job. He will not let himself believe that Biff stole from this man. On top of it all, after Biff confesses to stealing the pen from Oliver, Willy gives his regular old great advice. Again, his advice is to lie: “You give it to him and tell him it was an oversight!... You were doing a crossword puzzle and accidentally used his pen!” (Miller 1971). Willy's overall goals may be okay, however, his values are not. They are incredibly off-target, valuing only image, and popularity; never thinking about hardwork, honesty, or skills of any sort.
Another misconception Willy has is that he believes Biff can be successful in business. Ardolino writes: "He believed that Biff, who was already 'divine' as a football player, would become [even] more so as a businessman" (1). He thinks that this company will be successful because of Biff’s popularity and attractive personality alone. Willy never considers the possibility that the company may very well be a failure because of Biff’s lack of experience or knowledge. Miller writes, “Lick the world! You guys together could absolutely lick the civilized world!” (Miller 1947). But Biff knows this isn't true, he knows that once again his father is just filling him full of "hot-air".
