Historical
Criticism
Death of a Salesman was
written by Arthur Miller in 1949. During this time, the American Dream was
highly emphasized by the American people. This is shown through the character
Willy. The way Willy views himself as a family man and successful business man
highlights the goal of the American Dream. For example, when he is reminiscing
on times with his sons, he imagines them wanting to go with him on his business
trips and he tells them, “You and Hap and I, and I’ll show you all the towns.
America is full of beautiful towns and fine, upstanding people. And they know
me, boys, they know me up and down New England. The finest people” (18). The
way that Willy remembers things, not how they actually happened, shows how the
people of this time created a myth around the capitalism that was going on in
the postwar America. To continue, Willy bragged in the fact that he thought he
“averaged a hundred seventy dollars a week in the year of 1928” (57). This
statement also emphasizes the materialism that was going on in America at this
time and how the goal was to be liked by everyone and to make money. Willy
Loman portrays the classic American during the postwar era and the skewed
American values.
Biff Loman symbolizes the American
during the Age of Conformity which was going on around this time by the way he
grows into finding his own identity. First, when Biff confronts his father for
the first time he says, “‘Why am I trying to become what I don’t want to be?
What am I doing in an office, making a contemptuous, begging fool of myself,
when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am!
Why can’t I say that, Willy?’” (97). Biff contrasts what is going on in most of
the American people at the time. He want to be free of the tension within his
family to become a business man just as his father was, but this is not the
classic American Dream. The people during this time period were facing the
tensions of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, so
they did everything they could to stay away from communism, and that took form
in pushing capitalism and conforming to the American Dream. Biff does not do
this while he searches for himself. He goes against the social conformity that
was ideal and appealed to the Americans that wanted to go out and make their
own name. Biff Loman represented the people that searched for their own
identity during the Age of Conformity in America.
The
conflicting traits in Biff and Willy Loman further the conflict within America
at the time between those who favored conformity and those who wanted to find
their own life. During this time period, there were many people taking jobs
that were against the American Dream, such as writers and artists, which upset
the norm of straining after material success. People did not approve of going
against the norm, just as Willy does not approve of Biff being a farm hand when
he says, “‘How can he find himself on a far? Is that a life? A farmhand?’” (6).
Biff is out finding his own path that does not follow what his family is
defined as, business men. This conflict within the family is the struggle that
many families identified with during this time, which added to the confusion
and chaos in America.
