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AQA a-level English Literature Aspects of Tragedy: How does Miller use ‘Death of a Salesman’ and the Loman family to present a cynical view of the American Dream?$5.18
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AQA a-level English Literature Aspects of Tragedy: How does Miller use ‘Death of a Salesman’ and the Loman family to present a cynical view of the American Dream?
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Course
Aspects of Tragedy
Institution
AQA
An A* response on how Miller utilises the Loman family to put forward a pejorative comment about the American Dream.
How does Miller use ‘Death of a Salesman’ and the Loman family to present a cynical view
of the American Dream?
Miller, in ‘Death of a Salesman’, exploits the play and the constructs within the Loman
family to put forward a pessimistic perspective regarding the futility of the American Dream.
The contemporary audience can view ‘Death of a Salesman’ as a paradigm for the
dysfunctional society encouraged by the Dream. Perhaps, Miller is offering a critical
interpretation of how the Dream dramatically affected society, boosting the rich and
neglecting the working classes. The American Dream was an ideology that through a
combination of hard-work and determination, prosperity could be achievable for all, linking
back to when the pioneers conquered the wilderness of the frontier. However, despite the
alleged inclusivity of the Dream, the Loman family can never experience the opulence
thought to be directly linked with the Dream, due to their position as a working-class family
trying to overreach their position in society and instead, can be viewed as tragic victims of it.
Even at the very start of the play, Miller seems to associate the American Dream with a
pejorative change as Willy’s neighbourhood seems to become overshadowed by the
encroaching industrial land, symbolised by ‘the apartment buildings’, which seem to be
‘under’ and ‘over’ the Loman household, cultivating an image of claustrophobia. Miller
portrays Willy craving the ‘elm trees’ and flowers which used to grow which are now
replaced by an industrial conjuring up an extreme sense of claustrophobia perhaps
illustrating the restrictive nature of the American Dream. This could perhaps explain why
Miller wanted to feature the ‘concurrency of the past and present’ to highlight the cultural
shift in society and juxtapose the ‘hope’ of the past with the doomed fate of the working
classes as a result of the American Dream, illustrating the pressure to compete with the
social standards ingrained within society. Miller aligns the downfall of the Loman family with
the desperation and pressure to compete with the Dream and the standards it enforces,
ultimately, propounding the tragedy of the play and portraying the American Dream as a
wholly negative concept.
Prompted by his cynical view of the American Dream, Miller’s reveals, in his autobiography,
‘what kept the United States from revolution in the depths of the Great Depression was the
readiness of Americans to blame themselves rather than the system for their downfall’. This
view seems to be reminiscent of Biff as he is more inclined to blame himself for the lack of
economic prosperity and the repercussions for the family. Biff and Happy can never achieve
the success which comes in conjunction with the American Dream as a result of the
corruption of their father, Willy. Biff fails to secure a job at the age of 30 and prefers living
on a ‘ranch’ raising ‘cattle’. Using a vignette of agricultural work, Miller highlights the
consequences of individuals who fail to achieve the American Dream and the construct of
Biff is used to exemplify the emotional impact that the Dream places upon society.
Willy Loman appears to be abandoned by the American Dream despite doing everything in
his power to abide to its standards. Miller argues that he wanted ‘Death of a Salesman’ to
destroy the ‘bull****’ of Capitalism, ‘this pseudo life that thought to touch the clouds by
standing on top of a refrigerator’. The American Dream was a capitalistic belief devised by
the Founding Fathers in 1776, which stated that enough riches were needed to provide
‘wellness’ in life. Willy Loman believes wholeheartedly in the American Dream and is driven
by this materialistic outlook to life and weighs everything based on financial success.
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