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Death Of A Salesman And The American Dream Analysis

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America has created a reputation as a place where anyone, no matter how economically challenged, can make a living and support a family. Immigrants have flooded the country since its founding, chasing the American dream and citizens were raised based on the idea that they as Americans were also entitled to success. This is true of the main characters in both of Arthur Miller’s plays, Death of a Salesman and All My Sons. However, when the American dream is viewed only through capitalistic eyes it can lead to self-destruction. This paper will synopsize these two plays and then analyze how they were casting a negative light on laissez-faire capitalism with similar ideals to those of Karl Marx. Death of a Salesman Miller’s Death of a Salesman portrays a delusional family headed by Willy Loman, an unsuccessful salesman with unrealistic expectations. After a work trip where he almost crashed multiple times, he and his wife realize that he can no longer commute and decide he should ask his boss for a local job in New York. His son Biff is in town, which he is not exactly ecstatic about because of his farm hand career choice. He feels his son is wasting his time pursuing such a fruitless job …show more content…

This capitalistic materialism has blurred his morality and caused him to raise his children with the wrong frame of my mind and thus set them up for failure. As a middle class man with a sales job that he is not particularly amazing at, he was able to raise enough money to pay off a house and other necessities for his family. However, he did not see this as success because they didn’t have a financial surplus. His family and owning a small house was never his dream. He thought the American dream was getting rich, so because he wasn’t able to do this in a lifetime he descended into

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