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The American Dream In Willy Loman's Death Of A Salesman

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The American Dream has, over the course of the last 241 years, transformed from “the land of endless opportunity” to “the belief that through the pioneer virtues of hard work, perseverance, ingenuity, and fortitude, one might find happiness through wealth” and Willy Loman is the embodiment of this transformation. Loman invisions success as acquiring fame, wealth, and fortune while placing value in strictly worldly objects but failing to realize that in the afterlife, no amount of mortal wealth equates to any additional benefits. While based on Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary definition of the word success, Loman would be correct, but the breadth of the meaning of success can not be captured by mere words. With such a confined spectrum, no one, especially not Willy Loman, could comprehend the enormous and monumental meaning of such a simple word composed of 7 simple characters. While analyzing different definitions of success, we first must have a good understanding of the word itself. The word comes from the Latin successus, which means good result or advance. Over the years, this definition has changed, being recorded in the 1580s as “ the accomplishment of desired end” and then in 1882 as “ a thing or person that succeeds, especially in public”. As the definition has …show more content…

Biff, Willy’s son who was used to large amounts of fame and prestige in high school, floundered after high school but see’s the American Dream as finding inner peace and happiness wishes for nothing more than to find fulfilling work on a farm out west. While Biff’s dream is to leave the cage of Willy’s own wishes and go find fulfilling farm work out West, he is never able to find tangible results, always falling short because of Willy’s selfish desires to live vicariously through Biff and find fame and fortune through

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