Willy Lohman had a dream, but this dream was based on Dishonesty. His dreams of being a well-known and prestigious salesman were only dreams, not reality, and should have been acknowledged as such. Unfortunately, Willy’s dreams of being a great man, as well as being a famous and popular salesman were foolish, yet not unattainable. At the same time, these self-images were very unrealistic and just not true. What Willy presents to his own family about his self-image is a false one, yet his oldest son Biff is infected by these false images of his father. In turn, he believes that he can accomplish and have anything he would like, even when he knows a particular thing is unattainable. Not only is Willy dishonest, but his two sons Biff and Happy are as well. Biff is dishonest several times during the play, and in one instance he stole, or as he claimed “borrowed” a football from his school claiming that he would return it the next day at school. Willy has two sides to himself most of the time when it comes to Biff. At times, Willy praises him saying how great he was and still is. Other times, he is complaining and venting off steam by talking down at Biff and speaking negatively of him. Because of Biff’s false sense of security that his dreams have given him, the theme of dishonestly comes into play more so. This is the case due to the fact that this particular dishonestly would never have taken place if only Biff understood what it meant to be an honest guy. He never got a chance to due to his father’s perception of reality and his false dreams. Willy dreams that one day Biff will become something big, something that he could be proud of. Unfortunately, Biff is incapable of achieving his father’s high expectations for him, and gets very frustrated at times as a result. These dreams are the cause of this particular dishonesty-filled scenario, thus giving the theme of dreams the most importance and acknowledgement. Willy is the most dishonest of all characters in Death of a Salesman, and as such is prime subject of this theme. Willy’s aspirations and dreams slowly become smaller and as he has grown older, he begun to realize that he is living a lie, a dream. As a result of this realization, he tries to kill himself. Willy is also unsatisfied with his wife Linda at times, so he cheats on her with a woman from Boston. He tries to lie his way out of it, yet is unsuccessful. This is yet another example of his dishonestly. His dreams of wealth not only for his family, but for himself, are very far-fetched. These aspirations, false dreams, and dishonestly were ultimately the death of Willy Lohman.
Performance and Time at the end of time are the other two key themes of Death of a Salesman that will be discussed. Willy is the main performer of the play, and as such he is the most dramatic of any of the Lohman family members. Most of his life is one big performance when speaking about his experiences out of town and this coincides with the fact that it is not at all a reality, but a dream. Each character of this play follows through on one of there own performances, and because of the theme of dreams, these performances take place as a result. Willy’s false sense of reality rubs off on his oldest son Biff. Biff adopts his father’s approach on life, and he goes forth with the idea that because he is a Lohman, he should be treated with a greater sense of respect and should automatically be promoted in his job. This is obviously not the correct approach to anything you should do during your lifetime, yet since Willy insisted that is how it should be. Biff is naive and believes and learns through his father’s experiences and lessons. Willy’s particular life lessons, if you can call them lessons at all, are not at all helpful for Biff or Happy because they revolve around the notion that everything should be given to them, and you have to lie, cheat and steal your way to the “top” of the business world so to speak. The theme of dreams is compared yet again with this scenario because of the fact that in Willy’s perception of the world, he believes that everything should be handed to him and any member of his family should be seen as a complete dream as well. Biff performs as well in regards to his football career when Willy’s enthusiasm gets the most of them both. Happy also performs most particularly in regards with Miss Forsythe. Happy insists to Biff that they can start up their own sporting goods store, when he knows this idea is a creative one, yet a very far-fetched one as well. This far-fetched idea did not deter him from telling Biff about it either. These performances all coincide with each one of their perceptions of reality, and therefore each one of their performances are only a visualization of their dreams. Time at the end of time is also a very important theme is Death of a Salesman due to the fact that time is of essence in this play, mostly regarding how much time Willy Lohman has to live before he eventually dies at the end of the play. Time seems to be ending for each and every character in this play, but none more so then Willy. There was absolutely no reason for Willy to kill himself, but his aspirations and dreams eluded him. Therefore, he decided the best way to end time is to kill himself. The theme of time at the end of time coincides with the theme of dreams. Everything has already happened in Willy’s lifetime, and there is a sense of ending for him, thus he feels the need to kill himself at the end of the play because he has nothing that he has not already tried to accomplish and fail at more so then he already has anymore. The dream that Willy attempts to perform is a false one, built up of old memories that have no place in any one of the Lohman family members’ lives. Thus, Willy feels one last time the need to defraud the insurance company in order to give Biff the start he has never been able to give him. Through his death, Willy thought he was going to be remembered as a hero to his family members, yet instead of a hero’s acknowledgement of accomplishment, he was deemed to be a coward by the remaining three Lohman family members by going through and ending his dream-like life.
The importance of my chosen theme of dreams is very evident not only in itself, but in the other three themes that I explained in full detail. As a result, in the Lohman families false hopes of their non-successful aspirations and dreams, the themes of Dishonesty, Performance, and Time at the end of time were all only sub-themes in comparison to the major theme of dreams. The Lohman family is a model of what the American dream should be all about, minus the reality of their actual situation at the time. The three themes mentioned above are all very significant in the play, each happening at different times, several times. Yet, even though these three themes all reoccur many times during the play, the major theme that they all revolve around is dreams. The realization of the Lohman family’s false aspirations and dreams drove Willy Lohman to the point of no return, that being his ultimate suicide death.
