Post 8: Using a Lens That Doesn't Require Glasses

The Historical Lens of Death of a Salesman

The play Death of a Salesman, resolves around the postwar era of people evolving to obtain the American Dream. The way that Miller is able to use his own struggles in this era and his own knowledge of the times, allows for a reflective light to be shed upon his play with a historical lens. 

Obtaining the American Dream is the biggest hurdle in this play, as well as figuring out how to live with or without it. Willy describes how the American dream has impacted him, saying, “Figure it out. Work a lifetime to pay off a house. You finally own it, and there’s nobody to live in it” (Miller 6). This heavily reflects on the father being the main provider for the house during this time frame-showing that Willy has worked all of his life to provide for his family but has missed out on being with his family during the process. This aspect of the American Dream affects the relationship that Willy has not only with his sons, but his wife as well, as he is constantly working to keep the house, technology, and food on the table. However, there is one character in this play who has not been able to keep the image of the American Dream that he was destined to uphold, Biff. He had his life set up for him. 

People usually think that the American Dream is only for the adults to uphold in society, but a major role for the parents was to make sure that their children grew up in the image that the American Dream portrayed them in, and Biff had that image. He was a popular football jock who always wore his letterman’s sweater around and had a scholarship to his top choice school. But grades robbed him of his destined American Dream, and he was sent down his own path of what he wanted his American Dream to be. Biff wants to create his own path by working in Texas and, “I’d like to find a girl-steady, somebody with substance” (Miller 14), which is not the norm when looking for a girl in this era. All-in-all, Biff was a shoe-in for the “American Dream” and what it stood for, but a bump in the road set him on his own path which not only let him create his own dreams, but drove him from his family because of it. At the end of the play, the father figure, Willy, kills himself what is only assumed as crashing his car, seeing as Miller does not specifically say in the play. But what drove him to his death, was in fact the American Dream. Willy could not work due to his mental instability and the fact his boss told him to take a break, so what was a man with a wife and kids supposed to do with the standards of the American Dream looking over his shoulder? However, Willy did not know that he was so close. 

The American Dream had phases in this era: as a kid be obedient to your parents, when your an adult and a male have a job that supports you and a potential spouse, as a woman adult find a husband, when married buy a poster house with a white picket fence and have two children, work until everything is paid off then retire, then when you are old have your children and grandchildren support you if needed, die happy. Willy had almost been able to retire and be free, in fact his wife even recognized that after his death, “I search and I search, and I can’t understand it Willy. I made the last payment on the house today. Today dear. And there’ll be nobody home. We’re free and clear. We’re free… We’re free…” (Miller 103). The American Dream drove Willy to his death while also being his standard to life. 

Having a historical lens while looking at this play, fills many holes that may be present to those who do not understand the times. By understanding what Miller was living, and experiencing while writing the play Death of a Salesman, the play is able to exploit the problems and difficulties that the American Dream provided to those who actually lived through it.