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105 Death of a Salesman Essay Topics & Examples

Death of a Salesman is Arthur Miller’s multiple award-winning stage play that explores such ideas as American Dream and family. Our writers have prepared a list of topics and tips on writing the Death of a Salesman thesis statement, essay, or literary analysis.

Death of a Salesman

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Death of a Salesman: Introduction

Death of a salesman: plot summary, death of a salesman: detailed summary & analysis, death of a salesman: themes, death of a salesman: quotes, death of a salesman: characters, death of a salesman: symbols, death of a salesman: theme wheel, brief biography of arthur miller.

Historical Context of Death of a Salesman

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Full Title: Death of a Salesman
When Written: 1948
Where Written: Roxbury, Connecticut
When Published: The Broadway premiere was February 10, 1949. The play was published in 1949 by Viking Press.
Literary Period: Social Realism
Genre: Dramatic stage play
Setting: New York and Boston in 1948.
Climax: Biff's speech to Willy at the end of Act Two.
Antagonist: Howard Wagner; the American Dream that allows Willy and his sons to delude themselves.

Extra Credit for Death of a Salesman

Death of a Simpson: Beleaguered, overweight family man Willy Loman has been the genesis not only of live-action domestic sitcoms like All in the Family and Married with Children , but animated satires like The Family Guy and The Simpsons , both of which have made knowing reference to Death of a Salesman in various episodes.

Salesman in Beijing: In 1983, the People's Art Theatre in Beijing wanted to put on a Chinese-language production of Death of a Salesman . Arthur Miller flew to Beijing and spent six weeks directing the cast, though he only spoke two words of Chinese. He documented his experiences in the book Salesman in Beijing , published in 1984 with photographs by his wife, Inge Morath.

Literary Theory and Criticism

Home › Drama Criticism › Analysis of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman

Analysis of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on July 30, 2020 • ( 0 )

Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman is, perhaps, to this time, the most mature example of a myth of Contemporary life. The chief value of this drama is its attempt to reveal those ultimate meanings which are resident in modern experience. Perhaps the most significant comment on this play is not its literary achievement, as such, but is, rather, the impact which it has had on spectators, both in America and abroad. The influence of this drama, first performed in 1949, continues to grow in World Theatre. For it articulates, in language which can be appreciated by popular audiences, certain new dimensions of the human dilemma.

—Esther Merle Jackson, “ Death of a Salesman : Tragic Myth in the Modern Theatre”

It can be argued that the Great American Novel—that always elusive imaginative summation of the American experience—became the Great American Drama in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman . Along with Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night , Miller’s masterpiece forms the defining myth of the American family and the American dream. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is the play’s only rival in American literature in expressing the tragic side of the American myth of success and the ill-fated American dreamers. A landmark and cornerstone 20th-century drama, Death of a Salesman is crucial in the history of American theater in presenting on stage an archetypal family drama that is simultaneously intimate and representative, social and psychological, realistic and expressionistic. Critic Lois Gordon has called it “the major American drama of the 1940s” that “remains unequalled in its brilliant and original fusion of realistic and poetic techniques, its richness of visual and verbal texture, and its wide range of emotional impact.” Miller’s play, perhaps more than any other, established American drama as the decisive arena for addressing the key questions of American identity and social and moral values, while pioneering methods of expression that liberated American theater. The drama about the life and death of salesman Willy Loman is both thoroughly local in capturing a particular time and place and universal, one of the most popular and adapted American plays worldwide. Willy Loman has become the contemporary Everyman, prompting widespread identification and sympathy. By centering his tragedy on a lower middle-class protagonist—insisting, as he argued in “Tragedy and the Common Man,” that “the common man is as apt a subject for tragedy in its highest sense as kings were”—Miller completed the democratization of drama that had begun in the 19th century while setting the terms for a key debate over dramatic genres that has persisted since Death of a Salesman opened in 1949.

Miller’s subjects, themes, and dramatic mission reflect his life experiences, informed by the Great Depression, which he regarded as a “moral catastrophe,” rivaled, in his view, only by the Civil War in its profound impact on American life. Miller was born in 1915, in New York City. His father, who had emigrated from Austria at the age of six, was a successful coat manufacturer, prosperous enough to afford a chauffeur and a large apartment over-looking Central Park. For Miller’s family, an embodiment of the American dream that hard work and drive are rewarded, the stock market crash of 1929 changed everything. The business was lost, and the family was forced to move to considerably reduced circumstances in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn in a small frame house that served as the model for the Lomans’ residence. Miller’s father never fully recovered from his business failure, and his mother was often depressed and embittered by the family’s poverty, though both continued to live in hope of an economic recovery to come. For Miller the depression exposed the hollowness and fragility of the American dream of material success and the social injustice inherent in an economic system that created so many blameless casualties. The paradoxes of American success—its stimulation of both dreams and guilt when lost or unrealized, as well as the conflict it created between self-interest and social responsibility—would become dominant themes in Miller’s work. As a high school student Miller was more interested in sports than studies. “Until the age of seventeen I can safely say that I never read a book weightier than Tom Swift , and Rover Boys, ” Miller recalled, “and only verged on literature with some of Dickens. . . . I passed through the public school system unscathed.” After graduating from high school in 1932 Miller went to work in an auto parts warehouse in Manhattan. It was during his subway commute to and from his job that Miller began reading, discovering both the power of serious literature to change the way one sees the world and his vocation: “A book that changed my life was The Brothers Karamazov which I picked up, I don’t know how or why, and all at once believed I was born to be a writer.”

In 1934 Miller was accepted as a journalism student at the University of Michigan. There he found a campus engaged by the social issues of the day: “The place was full of speeches, meetings and leaflets. It was jumping with Issues. . . . It was, in short, the testing ground for all my prejudices, my beliefs and my ignorance, and it helped to lay out the boundaries of my life.” At Michigan Miller wrote his first play, despite having seen only two plays years before, to compete for prize money he needed for tuition. Failing in his first attempt he would eventually twice win the Avery Hopwood Award. Winning “made me confident I could go ahead from there. It left me with the belief that the ability to write plays is born into one, and that it is a kind of sport of the mind.” Miller became convinced that “with the exception of a doctor saving a life, writing a worthy play was the most important thing a human could do.” He would embrace the role of the playwright as social conscience and reformer who could help change America, by, as he put it “grabbing people and shaking them by the back of the neck.” Two years after graduating in 1938, having moved back to Brooklyn and married his college sweetheart, Miller had completed six plays, all but one of them rejected by producers. The Man Who Had All the Luck, a play examining the ambiguities of success and the money ethic, managed a run of only four performances on Broadway in 1944. Miller went to work at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, tried his hand at radio scripts, and attempted one more play. “I laid myself a wager,” he wrote in his autobiography. “I would hold back this play until I was as sure as I could be that every page was integral to the whole and would work; then, if my judgment of it proved wrong, I would leave the theater behind and write in other forms.” The play was All My Sons, about a successful manufacturer who sells defective aircraft parts and is made to face the consequences of his crime and his responsibilities. It is Miller’s version of a Henrik Ibsen problem play, linking a family drama to wider social issues. Named one of the top-10 plays of 1947, All My Sons won the Tony Award and the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award over Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh. The play’s success allowed Miller to buy property in rural Connecticut where he built a small studio and began work on Death of a Salesman .

This play, subtitled “Certain Private Conversations in Two Acts and a Requiem,” about the last 24 hours of an aging and failing traveling salesman misguided by the American dream, began, as the playwright recounts in his introduction to his Collected Plays , with an initial image

of an enormous face the height of the proscenium arch which would appear and then open up, and we would see the inside of a man’s head. In fact, The Inside of His Head was the first title. . . . The image was in direct opposition to the method of All My Sons —a method one might call linear or eventual in that one fact or incident creates the necessity for the next. The Salesman image was from the beginning absorbed with the concept that nothing in life comes “next” but that everything exists together and at the same time within us; that there is no past to be “brought forward” in a human being, but that he is his past at every moment. . . . I wished to create a form which, in itself as a form, would literally be the process of Willy Loman’s way of mind.

The play took shape by staging the past in the present, not through flashbacks of Willy’s life but by what the playwright called “mobile concurrency of past and present.” Miller recalled beginning

with only one firm piece of knowledge and this was that Loman was to destroy himself. How it would wander before it got to that point I did not know and resolved not to care. I was convinced only that if I could make him remember enough he would kill himself, and the structure of the play was determined by what was needed to draw up his memories like a mass of tangled roots without ends or beginning.

At once realistic in its documentation of American family life and expressionistic in its embodiment of consciousness on stage, Death of a Salesman opens with the 63-year-old Willy Loman’s return to his Brooklyn home, revealing to his worried wife, Linda, that he kept losing control of his car on a selling trip to Boston. Increasingly at the mercy of his memories Willy, in Miller’s analysis, “is literally at that terrible moment when the voice of the past is no longer distant but quite as loud as the voice of the present.” Reflecting its protagonist, “The way of telling the tale . . . is as mad as Willy and as abrupt and as suddenly lyrical.” The family’s present—Willy’s increasing mental instability, his failure to earn the commissions he needs to survive, and his disappointment that his sons, Biff and Happy, have failed to live up to expectations—intersects with scenes from the past in which both their dreams and the basis for their disillusionment are exposed. In the present Biff, the onetime star high school athlete with seeming unlimited prospects in his doting father’s estimation, is 34, having returned home from another failed job out west and harboring an unidentified resentment of his father. As Biff confesses, “everytime I come back here I know that all I’ve done is to waste my life.” His brother, Happy, is a deceitful womanizer trapped in a dead-end job who confesses that despite having his own apartment, “a car, and plenty of women . . . still, goddammit, I’m lonely.” The present frustrations of father and sons collide with Willy’s memory when all was youthful promise and family harmony. In a scene in which Biff with the prospect of a college scholarship seems on the brink of attaining all Willy has expected of him, both boys hang on their father’s every word as he exults in his triumphs as a successful salesman:

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. And when I bring you fellas up, there’ll be open sesame for all of us, ’cause one thing, boys: I have friends. I can park my car in any street in New England, and the cops protect it like their own.

Triumphantly, Willy passes on his secret of success: “Be liked and you will never want.” His advice exposes the fatal fl aw in his life view that defines success by exterior rather than interior values, by appearance and possessions rather than core morals. Even in his confident memory, however, evidence of the undermining of his self-confidence and aspirations occurs as Biff plays with a football he has stolen and father and son ignore the warning of the grind Bernard (who “is liked, but he’s not well liked”) that Biff risks graduating by not studying. Willy’s popularity and prowess as a salesman are undermined by Linda’s calculation of her husband’s declining commissions, prompting Willy to confess that “people don’t seem to take to me.” Invading Willy’s memory is the realization that he is far from the respected and resourceful salesman he has boasted being to his sons as he struggles to meet the payments on the modern appliances that equip the American dream of success. Moreover, to boost his sagging spirits on the road he has been unfaithful to his loving and supportive wife. To protect himself from these hurtful memories Willy is plunged back into the present for a card game with Bernard’s father, Charley. Again the past intrudes in the form of a memory of a rare visit by Willy’s older brother, Ben, who has become rich and whose secrets for success elude Willy. Back in the present Willy is hopeful at Biff’s plan to go see an old employer, Bill Oliver, for the money to start up a Loman Brothers sporting goods line. The act ends with Willy’s memory of Biff’s greatest moment—the high school football championship:

Like a young god. Hercules—something like that. And the sun, the sun all around him. Remember how he waved to me? Right up from the field, with the representatives of three colleges standing by? And the buyers I brought, and the cheers when he came out—Loman, Loman, Loman! God Almighty, he’ll be great yet. A star like that, magnificent, can never really fade away!

The second act shatters all prospects, revealing the full truth that Willy has long evaded about himself and his family in a series of crushing blows. Expecting to trade on his 34 years of loyal service to his employer for a nontraveling, salaried position in New York, Willy is forced to beg for a smaller and smaller salary before he is fired outright, prompting one of the great lines of the play: “You can’t eat the orange and throw the peel away—a man is not a piece of fruit.” Rejecting out of pride a job offer from Charley, Willy meets his son for dinner where Biff reveals that his get-rich scheme has collapsed. Bill Oliver did not remember who he was, kept him waiting for hours, and resentfully Biff has stolen his fountain pen from his desk. Biff now insists that Willy face the truth—that Biff was only a shipping clerk and that Oliver owes him nothing—but Willy refuses to listen, with his need to believe in his son and the future forcing Biff to manufacture a happier version of his meeting and its outcome. Biff’s anger and resentment over the old family lies about his prospects, however, cause Willy to relive the impetus of Biff’s loss of faith in him in one of the tour de force scenes in modern drama. Biff and Happy’s attempt to pick up two women at the restaurant interconnects with Willy’s memory of Biff’s arrival at Willy’s Boston hotel unannounced. There he discovers a partially dressed woman in his father’s room. Having failed his math class and jeopardized his scholarship, Biff has come to his father for help. Willy’s betrayal of Linda, however, exposes the hollowness of Willy’s moral authority and the disjunction between the dreams Willy sells and its reality:

Willy: She’s nothing to me, Biff. I was lonely, I was terribly lonely.

Biff: You—you gave her Mama’s stockings!

Willy: I gave you an order!

Biff: Don’t touch me, you—liar!

Willy: Apologize for that!

Biff: You fake! You phony little fake! You fake!

Willy’s guilt over the collapse of his son’s belief in him leads him to a final redemptive dream. Returning home, symbolically outside planting seeds, he discusses with Ben his scheme to kill himself for the insurance money as a legacy to his family and a final proof of his worth as a provider of his sons’ success. Before realizing this dream Willy must endure a final assault of truth from Biff who confesses to being nothing more than a thief and a bum, incapable of holding down a job—someone who is, like Willy, a “dime a dozen,” no better than any other hopeless striver: “I am not a leader of men, Willy, and neither are you. You were never anything but a hard-working drummer who landed in the ash can like all the rest of them!” Biff’s fury explodes into a tearful embrace of his father. After Biff departs upstairs the significance of his words and actions are both realized and lost by the chronic dreamer:

Willy, after a long pause, astonished, elevated Isn’t that—isn’t that remarkable? Biff—he likes me!

Linda: He loves you, Willy!

Happy ,deeply moved Always did, Pop.

Willy: Oh. Biff! Staring wildly: He cried! Cried to me. He is choking with his love, and now cries out his promise: That boy—that boy is going to be magnificent!

Analysis of Arthur Miller’s Plays

Doggedly holding onto the dream of his son’s prospects, sustained by his son’s love, Willy finally sets out in his car to carry out his plan, while the scene shifts to his funeral in which Linda tries to understand her husband’s death, and Charley provides the eulogy:

Nobody dast blame this man. You don’t understand: Willy was a salesman. And for a salesman, there is no rock bottom to the life. He don’t put a bolt to a nut, he don’t tell you the law or give you medicine. He’s a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back—that’s an earthquake. And then you get a couple of spots on your hat, and you’re finished. Nobody dast blame this man. A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory.

Linda delivers the final, heartbreaking lines over her husband’s grave: “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 . . . We’re free. . . .”

The power and persistence of Death of a Salesman derives from its remarkably intimate view of the dynamic of a family driven by their collective dreams. Critical debate over whether Willy lacks the stature or self-knowledge to qualify as a tragic hero seems beside the point in performance. Few other modern dramas have so powerfully elicited pity and terror in their audiences. Whether Willy is a tragic hero or Death of a Salesman is a modern tragedy in any Aristotelian sense, he and his story have become core American myths. Few critics worry over whether Jay Gatsby is a tragic hero, but Gatsby shares with Willy Loman the essential American capacity to dream and to be destroyed by what he dreams. The concluding lines of The Great Gatsby equally serve as a requiem for both men:

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eludes us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther . . . And one fine morning—

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

A Summary and Analysis of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Death of a Salesman is that rare thing: a modern play that is both a classic, and a tragedy. Many of the great plays of the twentieth century are comedies, social problem plays, or a combination of the two. Few are tragedies centred on one character who, in a sense, recalls the theatrical tradition that gave us Oedipus, King Lear, and Hamlet.

But how did Miller come to write a modern tragedy? What is Death of a Salesman about, and how should we analyse it? Before we come to these questions, it might be worth briefly recapping the plot of what is, in fact, a fairly simple story.

Death of a Salesman : summary

The salesman of the title is Willy Loman, a travelling salesman who is in his early sixties. He works on commission, so if he doesn’t make a sale, he doesn’t get paid. His job involves driving thousands of miles around the United States every year, trying to sell enough to put food on his family’s table. He wants to get a desk job so he doesn’t have to travel around any more: at 62 years of age, he is tired and worn out.

He is married to Linda. Their son, Biff, is in his thirties and usually unemployed, drifting from one temporary job to another, much to Willy’s displeasure. Willy’s younger son, Happy, has a steady job along and his own home, and is therefore a success by Willy’s standards.

However, Happy, despite his name, isn’t happy with the life he has, and would quite like to give up his job and go and work on a ranch out West. Willy, meanwhile, is similarly dreaming, but in his case of the past, rather than the future: he thinks back to when Biff and Happy were small children and Willy was a success as a salesman.

The Lomans’ neighbour, Charley, offers Willy a job to help make ends meet, but Willy starts to reminisce about his recently deceased brother, Uncle Ben, who was an adventurer (and young Willy’s hero). Linda tells her sons to pay their father some respect, even though he isn’t himself a ‘great man’.

It emerges that Willy has been claiming to work as a salesman but has lately been borrowing money as he can’t actually find work. His plan is to take his own life so his family will receive life insurance money and he will be able, with his death, to do what he cannot do for them while alive: provide for them. Biff agrees reluctantly to go back to his former boss and ask for a job so he can contribute to the family housekeeping.

Meanwhile, Willy asks his boss, Howard, for his desk job and an advance on his next pay packet, but Howard sacks Willy. Willy then goes to Charley and asks for a loan. That night, at dinner, Willy and Biff argue (Biff failed to get his own former job back when his old boss didn’t even recognise him), and it turns out that Biff once walked in on his father with another woman.

Willy goes home, plants some seeds, and then – hearing his brother Ben calling for him to join him – he drives off and kills himself. At his funeral, only the family are present, despite Willy’s prediction that his funeral would be a big affair.

Death of a Salesman : analysis

Miller’s family had been relatively prosperous during the playwright’s childhood, but during the Great Depression of the 1930s, as with many other families, their economic situation became very precarious. This experience had a profound impact on Miller’s political standpoint, and this can be seen in much of his work for the theatre.

Death of a Salesman represented a decisive change of direction for the young playwright. His previous success as a playwright, All My Sons , was a social drama heavily influenced by Henrik Ibsen, but with his next play, Miller wished to attempt something new. The mixture of hard-hitting social realism and dreamlike sequences make Death of a Salesman an innovative and bold break with previous theatre, both by Miller and more widely.

In his essay ‘ Tragedy and the Common Man ’ (1949), which Miller wrote to justify his artistic decision to make an ordinary American man the subject of a theatrical tragedy, Miller argued that the modern world has grown increasingly sceptical, and is less inclined to believe in the idea of heroes.

As a result, they don’t see how tragedy, with its tragic hero, can be relevant to the modern world. Miller argues, on the contrary, that the world is full of heroes. A hero is anybody who is willing to lay down his life in order to secure his ‘sense of personal dignity’. It doesn’t matter what your social status or background is.

Death of a Salesman is an example of this ethos: Loman, who cheated on his wife and lied to his family about his lack of work and his reliance on friends who lent him money, makes his last gesture a tragic but selfless act, which will ensure his family have money to survive when he is gone.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that Miller is somehow endorsing the hero’s final and decisive act. The emphasis should always be on the word ‘tragedy’: Loman’s death is a tragedy brought about partly by his own actions, but also by the desperate straits that he is plunged into through the harsh and unforgiving world of sales, where once he is unable to earn money, he needs some other means of acquiring it so he can put food on the table for his family.

But contrary to what we might expect, there is something positive and even affirmative about tragedy, as Arthur Miller views the art form.

For Miller, in ‘Tragedy and the Common Man’, theatrical tragedy is driven by ‘Man’s total compunction to evaluate himself justly’. In the process of doing this, and attaining his dignity, the tragic hero often loses his life, but there is something affirmative about the events leading up to this final act, because the audience will be driven to evaluate what is wrong with society that it could destroy a man – a man willing to take a moral stand and evaluate himself justly – in the way that it has.

Does Willy Loman deserve to be pushed to take his own life just so his family can pay the bills? No, so there must be something within society that is at fault. Capitalism’s dog-eat-dog attitude is at least partly responsible, since it leads weary and worn-out men like Willy to dream of paying off their mortgage and having enough money, while simultaneously making the achievement of that task as difficult as possible. When a younger and better salesman comes along, men like Willy are almost always doomed.

But by placing this in front of the audience and dramatising it for them, Miller invites his audience to question the wrongs within modern American society. Thus people will gain a greater understanding of what is wrong with society, and will be able to improve it. The hero’s death is individually tragic but collectively offers society hope.

So it may be counter-intuitive to describe a tragedy like Death of a Salesman as ‘optimistic’, but in a sense, this is exactly what it is. Miller takes the classical idea of the tragic flaw, what Aristotle had called the hamartia , and updates this for a modern audience, too: the hero’s tragic flaw is redefined as the hero’s inherent unwillingness to remain passive in the face of what he conceives to be a challenge to his dignity and rightful status in society.

There is something noble in his flaw, even though it will lead to his own destruction. So really, the flaw is not within the individual or hero as much as in society itself.

A key context for Death of a Salesman , like many great works of American literature from the early to mid-twentieth century, is the American Dream: that notion that the United States is a land of opportunity where anyone can make a success of their life and wind up stinking rich. Miller’s weaving of dream sequences in amongst the sordid and unsatisfactory reality of the Lomans’ lives deftly contrasts the American dream with the American reality.

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2 thoughts on “A Summary and Analysis of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman”

This is a very insightful and convincing appreciation. What it misses is any idea that Miller’s being Jewish may have had a hand in helping him to see why the American dream and its popularity-cult needed to be criticized. The word “cult” in “populairty-cult” says it all, because “The Death of a Saleman” is at its core a play about idolatry, the Ol,d Testament theme against which its prophets railed the most.

Willy is portrayed as an idol-worshipper, whereas his friend, Charely, and Charley’s son, Bernard, are both seen as devotees of the “true” God, in whose religion the human being is always endowed with dignity and always seen as an end in himself, never as a means to some other end. The play, in fact, asks a very Jewish question. If the true God and the false god both require sacrifice, how can you ever know which is which? And its tragedy supplies us with Miller’s answer: those who worship idols discover in the end that THEY are the sacrifice!

Miller, like Philip Roth later on, was a Jewish-American inheritor of the Old Testament’s prophetic tradition, a tradition in which Amos, Isaiah, Jeremia en Ezekiel continually used their verbal art to expose Israel’s stinking moral corruption, foreseeing nothing but doom if it continued in irs idolatrous ways. Change ancient Israel to America, change the average Israelite of that time to Willy Loman now: both wind up destroying themsevles for the very same reason: with all the good will in they world, they have no self-knowledge and spend their whole lives worshipping a false god, deluded in the belief that they are worshipping the true one.

Their mistake in both cases only becomes apparent when it is time to offer the sacrifice, but by then, of course, it is always too late!

Perfect analysis, particularly when viewed in regards to recent events, involving American involvement with Israel dogma

Death of a Salesman

Introduction to death of a salesman.

Death of a Salesman a play having “two acts and a requiem” is the masterpiece of Arthur Miller written in 1948 and produced in 1949. The popularity and success of the play demonstrate the strength of its story . The play was adapted for various tableaus, films, and course books across the globe, securing a Pulitzer Prize for Miller. The story of the play revolves around an unfortunate middle-class man who ruins his life, chasing the idea of the American Dream. This unattainable hunt costs him dearly; he seems stuck between fantasy and reality with a resultant loss of his own life. In one of his interviews, Miller mentions that the inspiration for the play is seeing his father struggle during the Depression.

Summary of Death of a Salesman

The play features Willy Lowman, living in New York City with his wife, Linda. Although Willy has worked as a salesman for almost thirty years, yet he has not achieved the real level of success that would allow him to stop tiring himself and afford the household expenditures that swallow his diminishing wages. He constantly compares himself to another salesman, Dave Singleton, who led a successful career and when he died, many people came to bid him farewell.

The play begins when Willy comes home exhausted from a failed trip with his mind full of tensions and worries. He seems sick of daily travels, while Linda, consoles him and suggests that he should ask his boss, Howard Wagner, to get a placement that demands less travel. Willy consents to request his boss the next day. Then, Linda and Willy start talking about their sons Biff and Happy, who are out for a date and are expected to be home soon. Also, she reminds him not to be critical or judgmental toward Biff, but Willy expresses his resentment over Biff’s lazy approach toward life.

Alone in the kitchen, Willy plunges back in time and remembers old times when his sons were young and idealized their father as an upright man. His flashbacks make the readers familiar with his philosophy of success that has derived him to his current unsuccessful state. Compared with his successful neighbor, Charley and his son, Bernard, Willy’s family is more determined and full of the natural charisma required for success. Willy always thought that his son’s rising high school football achievements would offer him university scholarships and make him a successful man. Yet the same neighbor once offered him a job but he refused despite the fact that he used to borrow money from him to cover household expenses and his son Bernard who was kind of a nerd in school, is now a successful lawyer.

Once again Willy drives back in time when he thinks about his brother Ben, who left home at seventeen and made quite a fortune in Alaska and Africa . Willy and Ben’s father abandoned them and Willy compares himself with his successful brother and regrets it. This comparison adds more to his miserable state, making him think that he is not capable of achieving success in life. Disturbed by Willy’s present state, Linda discusses his deteriorating mental state with his sons. She tells them about his failed suicide attempts as well. The boys get chagrined at themselves that they could not bring comfort to their father; Biff immediately decides to join his brother’s sports goods business and he’d go and talk to his old acquaintance for business funding. This idea pleases Willy, who, in turn, gives some incoherent and conflicting advice to his sons.

The next day, Willy goes to his boss, Howard Wagner, to request him for placement close to home. Howard not only refuses his plea but also suspends him from the job. Humiliated and disheartened, Willy turns toward Charley to borrow some money, and this time he encounters Charley’s son, Bernard. Like his father, Bernard has also achieved a respectful status in society, while his own sons are still striving to get settled in life. Stumbling between reality and illusions about success, he heads toward Frank’s Chop House where his sons are waiting for him for dinner.

Soon, Willy arrives and confesses that has been fired but hopes to have some good news from Biff. Biff tells Willy that the meeting with Bill Oliver was a failed attempt. Biff and Willy lock their horn in a disturbing argument that throws Willy backs into the past when young Bernard informs Linda that Biff has failed in a Math test and sets his trip to Boston to meet Willy to resolve this issue since it would be affecting his career. Biff discovers his illegitimate affair, which became Biff’s disillusionment with his father and the values that he taught all his life. After the argument, Biff and Happy leave with two call girls abandoning their father in the restaurant. Once, Willy comes back to his senses asks the waitress the way to a seed shop. Once home, Willy’s disconnection from reality continues as he plants seeds in the middle of the night , hoping to grow a garden. In his distress, he has an imaginary dialogue with his deceased brother who reminds him about a life insurance policy worth $20,000. Willy plans on getting in a car crash so he could at least leave them that money and show how much he cared for his children and wife. Also, how ‘well-liked’ by his friends at the grand funeral.

Back in reality, Willy has a final confrontation with Biff who announces leaving his family for good. After the announcement, Biff goes to his room and cries. Aggrieved by his son’s miserable state, Willy finally decides to commit suicide; he leaves the house and intentionally kills himself in a car accident. Only his family and Charley attend his funeral, sharing their thoughts about his struggling life and tragic end. The play ends with the contrasting opinions of Biff and Happy about their father’s unsuccessful life. Happy decides to stay back and fulfill his father’s ‘American dream’ of becoming successful while Biff plans to leave Brooklyn forever. Linda was confused with the irony of how the house mortgage was finally paid off with no one to live in it.

Characters in Death of a Salesman

Willy Loman : Willy Loman, the main protagonist of the play, is a simple family man and Linda’s husband. He also has a brother, Ben, and two young sons, Happy and Biff. As an aging salesman working in various parts of Europe, he seems to be an ambitious man, full of sales philosophy and hopes for a bright future for his son. In fact, he chases the American dream and aspires to enjoy the bliss of life with his family. Unfortunately, his hard work and lowly income not only weakens his determination but also leads him to suffer from anxiety and stress. His mediocre career, estranged relationship with his son Biff and some past mistakes steal the remaining joy of his life. His constant failures and suffering make him stand at the place where he begins to hallucinate. Unfortunately, his sons never understand the intensity of this pain despite Linda’s efforts to make them understand the traumatic state of their father. These worries force the old man to commit suicide.
Linda Lowman: Willy’s wife and mother of Happy and Biff, Linda is a loving lady as she always shares the worries of her husband, making him believe that one day he will taste the fruits of his untiring efforts. Although she supports him in his dreams of prosperity and success, she knows that it is impossible for him to live a life full of wonders. Despite Willy’s disturbed mental state, she stands by him and even rebukes his son for not living up to his father’s expectations.
Biff Loman: The older son of Linda and Willy Loman, Biff is a good and promising athlete and bright student but he never graduates from school. His life is moving at a smooth pace until he discovers his father’s extramarital relationship and becomes mentally upset. Willy wishes him to become a successful businessman, but he flees to the west, following his instinct to become a business tycoon. Despite trying his luck several times, Biff fails to win the admiration of his father. In the end, he admits that he has been chasing the shadow and wishes to lead a normal life.
Happy Loman: The younger son of the Loman family, Happy works as a manager in a store and seems to be a contented person. However, his father thinks that he has not made the right choice in life. He is shown as a really happy person in life with a single flaw that he is a womanizer. Despite his claim that he does not want girls, he fails to avoid them.
Charley : As a successful businessman living in Willy’s neighborhood, Charley helps Willy often with money for paying bills. Once he offers him a job that Willy refuses, claiming he shares distant views about success in life. Although Willy considers his children more practical and successful, he seems jealous of his social status.
Bernard: The intelligent and successful son of Charley, Bernard is a sober young man with a lot of potentials. Unlike his father, he has achieved success and status in society by becoming a successful lawyer. However, Willy’s jealousy toward their success never lets him praise his success.
Ben Loman: Willy’s late brother, Ben proves a constant reminder to the family due to his role of leaving his family years ago to try his fortune elsewhere. His travels to Africa and Alaska and his story of becoming a millionaire reverberates throughout the play. Although he is talked about like a dead person in the play, his success and prosperous life become a model for Willy to follow. He gets obsessed with his brother’s success that he forgets to accept the bitter reality of his own life.
Howard Wagner: Willy’s boss, Howard is shown as a stout and stern kind of person. As a pragmatic manager, he knows how to apply his principles, and caring only for his own interests, and not the problems of his employees. In fact, he is the epitome of a capitalistic owner, who refuses to understand Willy’s plight and when Willy tries to argue, he instantly sacks him.
The Woman: The Anonymous woman appears less in the play, yet plays a significant role in the storyline. She lives in Boston and works in a company. Unfortunately, the lady becomes the reason for contention between Biff and his father.

Themes in Death of a Salesman

American Dream; American dream stands as the most significant theme of the play as every member of the Loman family yearns for a better life. Willy and his sons try to chase this dream but get nothing except failure and dissatisfaction. However, some of the characters have shown it as an achievable model, as Howard Wagner, who has inherited this alluring dream from his father, while Loman’s neighbors have achieved this dream, showing how to lead a prosperous life. Willy is the only person who longs to have this bliss. Despite working hard, he fails to bring any improvement in the standard of his life. Biff, his son also faces continuous failures, while Happy is also not living up to his father’s expectations. Disheartened by the failures of his sons and his own tiring life, Will tries to see his dream through his brother’s success but gets nothing.
Modernity: During the 1950s, modernism started to alter the structure of society, making noteworthy changes in various professions. People started depending on modern gadgets, spending a fortune, and still vying to have another gadget just hitting the market. Creating a false idea of the American dream, modernity eventually creeps in the Loman’s life as they see their sons succeeding in the world like their neighbor but faces only mental torture when they see them failing. Howard keeps on working on his radio, making it clear that technological development has replaced manpower.
Opportunity: Although everyone strives to succeed, yet material luck finds those who seek better opportunities. Howard has been tolerating Willy because his father appointed him. Otherwise, he knows Willy does not deserve the job anymore. So, when Willy asks for some changes in his job, he fires him without having any compassion. Willy does not understand the reason for this sudden decision; instead of equipping himself with a better professional attitude , Willy gets more frustrated. Howard, on the other hand, gets an opportunity to find a new potential salesman. In the same way, Willy’s son, Happy, finds an opportunity to have a good job, while Biff wanders to seek one.
Family: The theme of family emerges through the Lomans, who never accept the changing shift of time, an attitude that costs them dearly. Willy constantly tries to materialize his dreams yet ends up with a failure. After his failed attempts, he fixes his attention to his sons, thinking they may fulfill his dreams of the ideal life through their careers. Unfortunately, both of them fail him; Biff is directionless, while Happy does not run after dreams. In contrast to Willy’s failed family, Charley and his son have resounding success with money and career, making their family achieve the American dream.
Ideal Personality: The concept of ideal or well-liked personality is another major theme Miller discusses in the play. Willy constantly advises his sons that they must be well-liked. To him, well-liked persons are the demands of industry and market as he has seen it during his career as a salesman. It also transpires to them that an ideal personality wins success as they see it in Charley’s son as well as in Howard, the boss of Willy.
Hallucination: Hallucination also stands as another important theme of the play. Willy Loman’s series of failures and constant sufferings drag him to a place where he cuts himself from the biting reality and begins to hallucinate. His hallucination features his successful brother, Ben, who has used his talents to make a fortune. Although Ben is dead, he appears in the form of hallucinations, a state that drags Willy toward disappointment and further mental torture.
Pride: The play projects this theme through the character of Willy Loman. He is an extremely proud man even though he does not have any reason to be proud as his sons have failed him and he is fired from the job. Despite struggling financially, he constantly praises his ideas of success in business and the little accomplishments of his sons. His pride never lets him consider the real success and efforts of his neighbor, Charley, his neighbor, who helps him overcome his financial difficulties.
Betrayal: Although betrayal is a minor theme of the play, it casts a gloomy shadow on various characters as Willy betrays his wife Linda by having an extramarital affair. Similarly, Biff constantly dodges his father’s dreams and tries to figure out his own ways of living. Linda thinks that Biff is betraying his father by not fulfilling Willy’s desires.
Reality versus Illusion : Reality against illusion is another major theme as Willy constantly dreams to be a successful businessman, and in case, if he fails to win glory, his sons will carry the flag to win success for him. Unfortunately, his desires for amassing wealth are only illusions that do not turn into reality despite his struggle. To his surprise, his sons also go against his dreams.

Writing Style of Death of a Salesman

Death of a Salesman shows Miller’s style of writing simple and direct dialogues and presenting down-to-earth real characters. He has used sharp irony and satire to show the poisonous impacts of the American dream upon the middle class. The writer has juxtaposed realism with fantasy at various points in the text to comment on the hollow and unrealistic approach of the people toward the false standards of society. The success of this writing lies in the skillful use of other literary elements, complex characterization , and simple sentence structure though diction at times becomes highly complex, showing the mental state of the Loman family.

Literary Devices in Death of a Salesman

Action: The main action of the play comprises the struggle of Willy Lowman, a salesman by profession. The rising action occurs when Willy is fired from the job, while the falling action occurs when Willy blames himself for the troubles his family is going through.
Allegory : Death of a Salesman shows the use of allegory by presenting the main idea of how the person’s nonadoptive nature creates trouble for himself and the people who belong to him.
Anaphora : The play shows the use of anaphora at different places as give in the below examples, i. Maybe I oughta get stuck into something. Maybe that’s my trouble. I’m like a boy. I’m not married, I’m not in business, I just—I’m like a boy. Are you content, Hap? You’re a success, aren’t you? Are you content? (Act-I) ii. Willy: Where is he? I’ll whip him, I’ll whip him! Linda: And he’d better give back that football, Willy, it’s not nice. Willy: Biff! Where is he? Why is he taking everything? (Act-I) iii. Willy: No, you’re no good, you’re no good for anything. Biff: I am , Dad, I’ll find something else, you understand? (Act-II) These examples show the repetitious use of the phrases “you’re no good”, “only think”, “I’ll whip him”, and “I’m like a boy.”
Allusion : The play shows the use of various allusions as given in the examples below, i. Biff: But you look at your friend….Happy: Yeah, but when he walks into the store the waves part in front of him… I want to walk into the store the way he walks in. (Act-I) ii. Willi: Like a young god, Hercules- something like that. And the sun, the sun all around him. Remember how he waved to me? Right up from the field, with the representatives of three colleges stand by? And the buyers I brought and the cheers when he came out, Loman, Loman, Loman. God Almighty, he’ll be great yet. (Act-I) iii. Willy: That’s why I thank Almighty God you are built like Adonises.” (Act-I) The first example alludes to Moses and the remaining two to Greek gods.
Conflict : There are two types of conflicts in the play, Death of a Salesman. The first one is the external conflict that is going on between Willy Loman and the competitive world around him as well as his own family. Another is the internal conflict of Willy, his fight with the heavy odds of life, and about the troubles of his life how they are going to be resolved.
Climax : The climax of the play, Death of a Salesman, occurs when Willy confronts his distressed son, Biff, for the last time.
Characters: Death of a Salesman presents both static as well as dynamic characters . Willy’s sons Biff, and Happy are dynamic characters as they change their attitude toward life as well as their father. However, the rest of the characters do not see any change in their behavior as they are static characters like Willy Loman, Linda, Charlie, and Bernard.
Irony : The play shows situational irony in the following examples, i. That’s just what I mean. Bernard can get the best marks in school, y’understand, but when he gets out in the business world, y’understand, you are going to be five times ahead of him. That’s why I thank Almighty God you’re both built like Adonises. Because the man who makes an appearance in the business world, the man who creates personal interest, is the man who gets ahead. Be liked and you will never want. (Act-I) ii. CHARLEY (an arm on Bernard’s shoulder) : How do you like this kid? Gonna argue a case in front of the Supreme Court. The irony is clear in the first example through the mention of Adonises and in the second through the mention of the Supreme Court.
Metaphor : Death of a Salesman shows good use of various metaphors besides the extended metaphors of good versus evil such as, i. I am a dime a dozen, and so are you. (Act-II) ii. The world is an oyster, but you don’t crack it open on a mattress. (Act-I) These examples show that characters and the world have been compared to different things to make them feel prominent.
Mood : The Play, Death of a Salesman, shows a melancholic, though it becomes tragic, ironic, and highly satiric at times. Sometimes, it also becomes gloomy when Willy is trapped in the troubles of life
Motif : Most essential motifs of Death of a Salesman are mythic figures, the American West, and the African jungle.
Protagonist : Willy Loman is the protagonist of the play. The text starts with his discontent with his life and ends with his tragic death.
Rhetorical Questions : The play shows the use of rhetorical questions at various places such as, i. CHARLEY: Without pay? What kind of a job is a job without pay? (Act-II) ii. WILLY: What’s the matter with you? I’ve got a job. (Act-II) iii. CHARLEY: Why must everybody like you? Who liked J. P. Morgan? Was he impressive? These examples show the use of rhetorical questions asked by Charley and Willy but they do not need answers. They are self-explanatory.
Theme : A theme is a central idea that the novelist or the writer wants to stress upon. The play, Death of a Salesman, shows the clash between dream and reality, the idea of the American dream and betrayal.
Setting : The setting of the play is Willy Loman’s house, his yard, and other places he visits in Boston and New York.
Tone : The tone of the text is somber, serious, melancholic, and tragic.
Simile : The play shows the use of similes at various places such as, WILLY: Sure. Certain men just don’t get started till later in life. Like Thomas Edison; I think. Or B. F. Goodrich. (Act-I) ii. He’s not to be allowed to fall into his grave like an old dog. (Act-I) iii. Like a young god. Hercules — something like that. (Act-I) These use of “like” in these examples show as things have been compared such as men with Thomas Edison, then Willy with an old dog, and then a person with Hercules.
Symbols : Death of a Salesman presents various symbols such as seeds and diamond symbolize Willy’s hope and the American dream and the rubber horse symbolizes false hopes.

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Essay Samples on Death of a Salesman

A comparative analysis of "fences" and "death of a salesman".

August Wilson's "Fences" and Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman" are two iconic plays that delve into the complexities of human relationships, aspirations, and the pursuit of the American Dream. This essay offers a comparative analysis of these two works, highlighting the similarities and differences...

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Tragedy in "Death of a Salesman": Exploring Willy Loman's Downfall

Arthur Miller's iconic play "Death of a Salesman" is a poignant exploration of tragedy, delving into the life and demise of the central character, Willy Loman. This essay examines the elements of tragedy present in the play, highlighting the tragic flaws, the downfall of the...

"Oedipus Rex" as a Tragedy in Comparison to "Death of a Salesman”

Tragic heroes are literary characters (mainly protagonists) who are always destined for a downfall, suffering, or defeat. Examples of tragic heroes are shown in both “Oedipus Rex” by Sophocles and “Death of a Salesman” by Arthur Miller. Despite the main character’s best efforts, they both...

The Idea Of American Dream In The Death Of a Salesman

The well-known play by Arthur Miller Death of a Salesman is a profound consideration of the conflicts within one family along with connecting them to more generalized American national values. A lot of Americans really believed into the America Dream, which seemed to be both...

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The Imagery In Death Of A Salesman

No matter how hard we try, we cannot change the past. Much of what we have done or experienced relates to our present lives, in either a positive or negative way. In Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, Biff must deal with his experiences with...

Imagery in Literature

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The Downfall Of American Dream In The Play Death Of A Salesman

The play Death of a Salesman can be considered one of the many examples of the 'American Dream' and the hard work to success in American literature. In the play, readers read of the Loman family and the hardships they experience and discuss. Along with...

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The Ruination of a Person with Greed in Willy Loman's Character

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Narcissism: The Key to The Downfall of Willy Loman

There are a variety of reasons that may lead to a characters collapse. For example, Willy Loman has dreams of having a successful fortunate life, but unfortunately he is unsuccessful working as a travelling salesman his whole life. The psychoanalytic theory is noticeable in Willy’s...

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Willy's Character in Death of a Salesman: Living the American Delusion

In the death of a salesman, Willy is portrayed as an interesting character who has dreams to be liked and make money on the basis of being liked. He was a good handyman and would have been happier working in Alaska with his brother. His...

Stealing Never Leads to Success: Analysis of the Protagonist in "Death of a Salesman"

Death of a Salesman, written by Arthur Miller portrays Biff as a main character in the play who tried to work at many different jobs, and failed at each one due to the fact that he stole. Biff steals because from a young age, Biff...

Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman Releases the Pressure to be Perfect

Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman is a cautionary tale of the dangers of blindly conforming to the American Dream and the materialism that goes hand and hand with it. Personally, I benefited greatly from the read. It made me question my pride, my...

Death of A Salesman is a Terrific Play by Artur Miller

A tragedy about the American dream, abandonment and betrayal. Arthur Miller is making a tremendous impact on theatrical history with his play “Death of a Salesman”. It is a remarkable and fulfilling play directed marvelously by Elia Kazan and executed perfectly by the wonderful cast...

The Film Adaptation of Miller’s Death Of A Salesman

Robert Stam, in his essay “Beyond Fidelity: The Dialogics of Adaptation” has explained the concept of converting a single track medium (book) into a multitrack medium (movie) and how now must take into consideration the various facts which revolve around such a task. A written...

Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller - The Unusual Ideas of Willy Loman

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Best topics on Death of a Salesman

1. A Comparative Analysis of “Fences” and “Death of a Salesman”

2. Tragedy in “Death of a Salesman”: Exploring Willy Loman’s Downfall

3. “Oedipus Rex” as a Tragedy in Comparison to “Death of a Salesman”

4. The Idea Of American Dream In The Death Of a Salesman

5. The Imagery In Death Of A Salesman

6. The Downfall Of American Dream In The Play Death Of A Salesman

7. The Ruination of a Person with Greed in Willy Loman’s Character

8. Narcissism: The Key to The Downfall of Willy Loman

9. Willy’s Character in Death of a Salesman: Living the American Delusion

10. Stealing Never Leads to Success: Analysis of the Protagonist in “Death of a Salesman”

11. Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman Releases the Pressure to be Perfect

12. Death of A Salesman is a Terrific Play by Artur Miller

13. The Film Adaptation of Miller’s Death Of A Salesman

14. Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller – The Unusual Ideas of Willy Loman

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107 Death of a Salesman Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

Inside This Article

Arthur Miller's play "Death of a Salesman" is a classic piece of American literature that explores themes of the American Dream, family dynamics, success, and failure. If you are looking for essay topics and examples to write about this iconic play, here are 107 ideas that can inspire you:

The significance of the play's title in relation to the protagonist's demise.
The portrayal of the American Dream in "Death of a Salesman."
The role of the Loman family in the play and its impact on the protagonist.
The symbolism of Willy Loman's car in the play.
The significance of the flute melody throughout the play.
The theme of betrayal in "Death of a Salesman."
The portrayal of women in the play and their impact on the male characters.
The role of dreams and illusions in the play.
The impact of societal expectations on Willy Loman's mental health.
The portrayal of the American working class in the play.
The role of the past in shaping the characters' present circumstances.
The significance of the seeds that Willy plants throughout the play.
The theme of loneliness and isolation in "Death of a Salesman."
The impact of Willy Loman's suicide on the other characters.
The portrayal of masculinity in the play.
The role of the American education system in shaping the characters' dreams.
The theme of guilt and regret in "Death of a Salesman."
The portrayal of the American business world in the play.
The impact of capitalism on the characters' lives in the play.
The theme of disillusionment in "Death of a Salesman."
The portrayal of the American family unit in the play.
The significance of the Charley and Bernard characters in the play.
The portrayal of the American Dream through the character of Ben.
The theme of success and failure in "Death of a Salesman."
The role of the salesman profession in American society.
The portrayal of the father-son relationship in the play.
The significance of the stockings in the play.
The theme of identity and self-discovery in "Death of a Salesman."
The portrayal of the American suburbs in the play.
The impact of consumerism on the characters' lives in the play.
The theme of denial and delusion in "Death of a Salesman."
The portrayal of the American Dream through the character of Willy Loman.
The significance of the flute as a symbol of escape.
The theme of the individual versus society in the play.
The portrayal of the American Dream through the character of Happy.
The impact of Willy Loman's childhood on his adult life.
The significance of the rubber hose in the play.
The theme of the pursuit of happiness in "Death of a Salesman."
The portrayal of the American Dream through the character of Linda.
The impact of Willy Loman's relationship with his sons on their lives.
The significance of the diamond in the play.
The theme of responsibility and duty in "Death of a Salesman."
The portrayal of the American Dream through the character of Biff.
The impact of Willy Loman's affair on his family.
The significance of the recorder in the play.
The theme of the loss of identity in "Death of a Salesman."
The portrayal of the American Dream through the character of Willy's father.
The impact of Willy Loman's job on his mental health.
The significance of the Woman in the play.
The theme of the struggle for success in "Death of a Salesman."
The portrayal of the American Dream through the character of Happy's girlfriends.
The impact of Willy Loman's relationship with his brother on his life.
The significance of the sneakers in the play.
The theme of the search for meaning in "Death of a Salesman."
The portrayal of the American Dream through the character of Willy's neighbor.
The impact of Willy Loman's dreams on his reality.
The significance of the tape recorder in the play.
The theme of the pressure to conform in "Death of a Salesman."
The portrayal of the American Dream through the character of Willy's boss.
The impact of Willy Loman's suicide on the American Dream.
The significance of the rubber pipe in the play.
The theme of the struggle for self-worth in "Death of a Salesman."
The portrayal of the American Dream through the character of Willy's sons.
The impact of Willy Loman's relationship with his father on his life.
The significance of the fountain pen in the play.
The theme of the loss of humanity in "Death of a Salesman."
The portrayal of the American Dream through the character of Willy's friends.
The impact of Willy Loman's delusions on his relationships.
The significance of the seeds in the play.
The theme of the pursuit of perfection in "Death of a Salesman."
The portrayal of the American Dream through the character of Willy's customers.
The impact of Willy Loman's obsession with success on his mental health.
The theme of the struggle for recognition in "Death of a Salesman."
The portrayal of the American Dream through the character of Willy's idols.
The impact of Willy Loman's relationship with his wife on his life.
The significance of the flute in the play.
The theme of the loss of dignity in "Death of a Salesman."
The portrayal of the American Dream through the character of Willy's role models.
The impact of Willy Loman's financial struggles on his mental health.
The theme of the pursuit of material wealth in "Death of a Salesman."
The portrayal of the American Dream through the character of Willy's mentors.
The impact of Willy Loman's relationship with his son on his life.
The theme of the loss of hope in "Death of a Salesman."
The portrayal of the American Dream through the character of Willy's clients.
The impact of Willy Loman's desperation on his relationships.
The theme of the struggle for acceptance in "Death of a Salesman."
The portrayal of the American Dream through the character of Willy's rivals.
The impact of Willy Loman's relationship with his mother on his life.
The theme of the loss of integrity in "Death of a Salesman."
The portrayal of the American Dream through the character of Willy's colleagues.
The impact of Willy Loman's financial failures on his mental health.
The theme of the pursuit of recognition in "Death of a Salesman."
The portrayal of the American Dream through the character of Willy's competitors.
The impact of Willy Loman's relationship with his daughter on his life.
The theme of the loss of self-worth in "Death of a Salesman."
The portrayal of the American Dream through the character of Willy's employers.
The theme of the struggle for independence in "Death of a Salesman."

These essay topics and examples should provide you with a wide range of ideas to explore and analyze in your essay about "Death of a Salesman." Remember to choose a topic that interests you and aligns with your own thoughts and opinions to make your essay both engaging and persuasive.

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Death of a Salesman Conflict Analysis

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Published: Mar 14, 2024

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Related Essays on Death of a Salesman

The American Dream is a prominent theme in Arthur Miller's play, Death of a Salesman. The concept of the American Dream originated in the early twentieth century, as many immigrants came to America in search of economic [...]

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Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, Essay Example

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Introduction

Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman is typically considered a quintessential American drama. Its realistic examination of how an average man pursues simple ambitions, and how these pursuits go to defining all the relationships in his family, is both stark and full of dimension, for Miller understands the primal connection between the working-class man and his job. The play is very much about success, or the lack thereof, but the core of the work lies in the ways multiple and frustrated dreams reverberate within all the members of the family. In Miller’s eyes, the play focuses on questions of who wields power, and who should wield power in such situations. As will be discussed, there is no single answer. However, in investigating the two viewpoints on this subject Miller believes to be at war within the play, a better knowledge of what power itself means in the context of the “American dream” may be had. Ultimately, as will be noted, the twin viewpoints of Death of a Salesman go beyond the importance of achieving commercial success and a contrasting disregard of it, because both are integral to living. Then, both views also, and more tellingly, reflect the inevitable power struggle in the hyper-masculine realm of father/son relationships.

The Views as Seen by Miller

Based upon Miller’s conjecture in regard to his own play, the two viewpoints central to Death of a Salesman may be identified with two of the principle characters, Willy Loman and his oldest son, Biff. Willy, although never successful in his long career as a salesman, represents a potently working-class ethic of achievement as being paramount. In Willy’s eyes, and apart from his own failures, there is nothing more affirming to a man, or more justifiably sought after, than doing well at work and being recognized for it. This relates to the political component Miller also refers to, in that this success is, in Willy’s eyes, dependent upon being liked. In this view, power comes to the man who works hard for it, and who consequently earns the right to wield it. Plainly within the play is the character’s fundamental belief that this is the proper order of things, and he cannot conceive of ambitions outside of this ideology.

In contrast, Biff is clearly disenchanted with his father’s viewpoint, which serves to define his own. He is uninterested in the kind of achievement his father values, for it is meaningless to him. It is likely that this view is at least partially generated by the boy’s lifelong observance of how seeking power in this way has brought his father nothing but frustration and disillusionment. Then, given Biff’s traumatic witnessing of his father’s adultery, it is also probable that he sees this ambition as inherently corrupt, or false. If a viewpoint may be defined as belonging to Biff, it is that happiness and fulfillment must be found outside of traditional, American work ethic pursuits. In a sense, Biff is an ancestor of the “hippie” movement that would emerge decades after Miller wrote his play. Materialism is suspect and pointless, in his eyes. Consequently, “power” as seen by his father is worthless. This translates, then, to a viewpoint that dismisses the processes of power that Willy so esteems, such as being well-liked and commanding the respect of peers.

Miller questions what the world would be like, then, if either viewpoint were adopted as the prevailing one. He refers to this debate as spiritual and psychological, as well as political, and he is certainly entitled to make the inquiry. Nonetheless, as will be explored, it seems that Miller is too concerned with surface manifestations of struggles with far deeper meaning. Power, as he indicates, is an elusive and variable thing, and one often defined only by the circumstances in which it is created. More exactly, “power” in the context of his play is more symbolic than real, and it is what it symbolizes that has the real meaning. To that end, it is necessary to look more closely at what generates these symbols of power within the two men, and why each clings to his own.

In examining the twin viewpoints of the play, one factor immediately demands attention: they are completely dependent upon one another, in order to exist at all. As noted, Biff’s views on the unimportance of worldly success are reactive. He is continually subject to Willy’s ideology, and his instincts instinctively rise up against it the more he is exposed to it. It is interesting to speculate, in fact, on what Biff’s views of life and power would be, were he not so a victim of his father’s. Conversely, the more Biff resists his views, the more Willy feels the need to reassert them. It is bad enough that Willy can barely hold onto his ideology in the face of the failures his own life has created, in terms of business; the dismissal of it by his own son, then, demands an aggressive response. Beyond this, there is also a more simple agenda fueling his viewpoint. As he believes happiness can only be had through it, he wants badly for his son to have this, despite his own inability to achieve it.

This factor of the viewpoints as actually generating one another is, ironically, reflective of the element Miller sees as central to both: power. The bulk of Death of a Salesman is, in fact, a power struggle, and it is one fought over life philosophies. Here, then, it is further seen that power is created by the people and circumstances requiring it. Were there no dispute over viewpoints in the Loman household, there would be no need to challenge, and consequently assert individual power to make a claim. As Willy and Biff collide, the duel for dominance of viewpoint actually promotes something of Willy’s own ideology, because such contests are only won through the values he most prizes: tenacity, and a will to succeed. If Willy were to “win” this power struggle, however, it would be meaningless because Biff’s views inherently place no value on such victories. Thus, the power conflict between the two men can only serve to reflect the contrasting point of view, no matter who most dominates the battle.

This goes to what may be the most primal element in Miller’s play, and one that very much explains the individual viewpoints of Willy and Biff: that they are father and son. It is important to examine this, particularly as Miller questions which viewpoint may be best for the world at large. The reality is that he tapped into a conflict so basic to humanity, and so based upon senior and junior views of what matters in life, that the question he asks is submerged. In other words, it is not about which point of view would be better for the world, but about whether or not these combative differences are not inherent in the nature of man. It may be that the question Miller poses is pointless, because the tides of humanity rely on these alternating, and largely masculine, clashes of will.

Viewed in this light, Willy’s ideology is absolutely in accord with what would be expected of a man in his circumstances and of his age. He has experience of the world, and this experience has forged in him a conviction that nothing is as valued in that world as popularity and success. It is probable that his own failures have reinforced this conviction, rather than weakened it; had Willy been truly successful in his work, he would have been so within the sphere of “rightness” he prizes as to be relatively unaware of it. Unsuccessful, he stands outside, as it were, and bitterly sees more clearly the immense need to do well and be liked by all.

Two other factors greatly go to creating Willy’s viewpoint. The first is that, however it happens, he is incapable of imagining success other than in terms of social and commercial gain. This may be generational; Willy, based on the play’s timing, had to have been a product of the Great Depression, and the severity of those times would likely mark a man in this manner. Simply, when it is crucial to provide in a material way for the family, there is little to no concern over emotional or spiritual needs, or achievements. Life levels, in a sense, and Willy, for decades a pawn in the machinery of the business world, can only see through that lens. Then, there is the potent matter of his being a father. It is ordinary for fathers to want for their sons what they themselves have pursued, and what they have come to see as being the most valuable attainments in life. Willy wants happiness for his son in the only way he can conceive of happiness, which is through conquest. Not necessarily incidentally, there is probably a motive in Willy going to a masculine imperative. Real men go after success and are liked by everyone, and it is important that his son be a real man, for both their sakes. Consequently, Willy’s viewpoint, while skewed by bad experiences, is still that of the father, or the man who knows life, and who knows how hard and unforgiving it is.

Conversely, Biff is the boy, or son, who rejects, and he can do this by virtue of the son’s place in the relationship and in the world. More precisely, Biff is not of the world, so he is not driven to meet its standards. He has had some unfortunate dealings in business already, but these have been both new and likely entered into with no enthusiasm by him. Here, again, the viewpoints of the men are strengthened by their own efforts to support them. As Willy unceasingly throws himself into the world, he validates his view of it in the action. Biff, unimpressed with commercial achievement, cannot effectively give himself to this arena, which then enhances his own views of its unimportance. As noted earlier, Biff is the “hippie”, or the one who keeps his eye more on emotional and spiritual affairs, and he may do this, in a sense, because he is obligated to as a son. That is to say, no matter the nature of a father’s viewpoint, it is ordinary for a son to automatically challenge it, in the power struggle between father and son as old as time. That Biff rejects his father’s materialism is merely a reflection of the typical substance of these duels in the America of Miller’s setting.

Going back to Miller’s question, then, there is no answer because any must be too reflective of a deeper, human conflict to serve as an answer. It is not a case of one viewpoint as being more beneficial for the world because, first of all, no single viewpoint may be. A single-minded drive to be liked and successful is empty without a core of emotional well-being and a commitment to the deeper issues of living. Similarly, a complete disregard for success and popularity is not a practical way to live in a structured society, and is by no means a guarantee of personal fulfillment, the necessities of securing survival aside. Then, these are viewpoints that are validated only by working in concert, and in that process the real meaning of power becomes more clear. If “power” is to be sought after to be wielded, it is worthwhile only when it is a power expressive of an expanded viewpoint. There is the power of success and the power of an independent spirit, but neither has meaning if the other, concerned party does not recognize it. This recognition, and subsequent appreciation, can only come when the power is based upon a full understanding of the potential value of both points of view. Ironically, then, it is no longer power in an authoritative sense, but power as a representation of the greater understanding.

In discussing his Death of a Salesman , Arthur Miller ponders which of the two, principle ideologies is most beneficial to the world. He wonders about Willy’s pragmatism and determination to do well, and Biff’s defiant unconcern with such an ambition. What Miller ignores in his question is the primal foundation he himself presents, which is that of the eternal and hyper-masculine conflict in place between a father and son. He also disregards the inescapable reality that no, single viewpoint serves the world well. The two viewpoints in Death of a Salesman transcend simple evaluations of the importance of achieving commercial success, and a contrasting dismissal of it, because they are only valid when exercised as one. Moreover, they resist ranking because they reflect the inevitable power struggle in the hyper-masculine realm of father/son relationships.

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Death of a Salesman Essay Topics & Samples

As a Pulitzer Prize winner, Death of a Salesman deserves some attention, which is most likely the reason why you were asked to write an essay about it. Even though Arthur Miller wrote it in the middle of the twentieth century, the play is still relevant.

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This Custom-Writing.org article aims to help you if you have questions or are looking for a decent Death of a Salesman essay topic or have to choose between many variants.

The first section of it contains a list of ideas that might help you write a great essay.
The second one contains Death of a Salesman essay samples that you are welcome to use for inspiration.
💡 Essay Topics
✒️ Essay Samples

💡 Death of a Salesman: Essay Topics

Miller addresses various themes, such as the American dream and betrayal, incorporated into family life. To write a killer essay on Death of a Salesman , you should first study all aspects of the play. So you don’t forget to read through our analysis of the main characters and themes !

Now you are all set up to pick a topic from the list below.

Analyze the main symbols of the play. There are multiple hidden symbols that Miller uses to represent one idea or another. The interpretation depends on you. There are no wrong answers. However, to set a direction, we recommend looking at such a symbol as the stockings. It is quite an obvious hint on the theme of betrayal.
How is Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman as a father? Willy Loman, the main character in Death of a Salesman , is far from being the employee of the month. But as a father, he is also supposed to be a role model to his two sons. However, we can see that Biff and Happy have developed their personalities according to their dad’s behavior.
Can Willy Loman be considered a hero? Loman tries to solve the problems which are too big for him. He cannot possibly overcome capitalism and becomes its victim. Analyze Willy’s last act and see whether it can be genuinely regarded as a good deed or it is a desperate attempt to get rid of a problem.
Discuss the theme of the American Dream in Death of a Salesman . Is it Willy’s fault that he failed his family? Think about how our ambitions shape the course of our lives and write an essay reflecting on it in relation to the play. Discuss the fate of the salesman as the embodiment of the American dream.
How reasonable was Willy’s despair in the final scenes? Look through all the details you can find about the Loman family and analyze their social and financial state. Try to write an objective opinion on whether Willy’s suicide was the only option for them. What might have caused him to exaggerate the problems they were having?
Discuss the statement “Be liked, and you will never want” from Death of a Salesman . This prompt is related to Willy’s life philosophy, which he passes on to his sons. Are there any reasons to claim that it doesn’t work? Why? Maybe reflect on the same idea circulating in modern society.
What is the meaning of Arthur Miller’s play? We suggest you answer the question, “What is the main message of Death of a Salesman ?” Rereading our analysis of the main themes and characters should give you some ideas! However, remember to focus on ONE idea and present persuasive arguments.
Analyze Willy Loman’s career choice. What do you think about Willy’s decision to go into the sales business? Was it the right choice? Find the evidence in the play? Think about how different his life and life of his family could be if he had chosen a different occupation, which fits his natural abilities.
Illusions and realistic dreams as Willy Loman’s coping mechanism. Look at Death of a Salesman as a tragedy and the story about the main character’s inner fight. Write about how he retreats into the memories to escape real-life problems. Does it have anything to do with his failure to understand his ambitions?
Discuss the reason for Willy’s rejection of Charley’s job offer . Loman keeps turning down his friend’s job offer, and it seems to be annoying him more and more every time. But what is the reason? He might have been more well-off if he accepted it. Is it about his pride or social values?

✒️ Death of a Salesman: Essay Samples

Below you’ll find a collection of Death of a Salesman essay examples. You are welcome to use them for inspiration!

“Death of a Salesman” by Arthur Miller
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Is the American dream attainable? What makes someone a successful person? How does your image of yourself shape your life? Arthur Miller’s play is a tragic but true-to-life illustration of these philosophical questions without definitive answers. This Death of a Salesman Study Guide will help you understand the author’s intention...

Looking for a summary of Death of a Salesman? This article by Custom-Writing.org experts contains everything you might need for your studies or essay: Death of a Salesman’s synopsis, a plot infographic, Death of a Salesman’s short summary, and detailed descriptions of the events in the play act by act....

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Death of a Salesman Essay Examples

Analysis of willy loman’s perception of reality and illusion.

Until one is ready to face reality, living in an illusive world, will lead their life to be misleading and full of misery. An example of this is found in the character Willy Loman, a distressed, who is unable to recognize the truth of his...

Death of a Salesman': American Dream and Moderm Tradegy

Researching the topic 'Death of a Salesman' essay: american dream and moderm tradegy' we let's get acquainted with the concept of tragedy and its varieties and also analyses Arthur Miller's ‘Death of a Salesman as a modern, social tragedy and the concept of the American...

Plot Summary of Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller

The “Death of a Salesman” by Arthur Miller tells a sad story of Willy Loman and his family. Throughout the story the family live in denial. The denial of some serious matters erodes the foundation of the family. The family is unable to truly communicate...

"The Death of the Sales Man" Vs "The Great Gatsby" Contrasting to the American Dream

The authentic interpretation of the American dream attributes to have a prosperous and an exceptional life with open and fair opportunities. Additionally, in both the novels; The Death of a Salesman and The Great Gatsby, allude to a completely different understanding of the American dream...

The Tragic Hero in Death of a Salesman

The tragic actionist death of Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman causes suffering to others. Arthur Miller’s 1949 play showcases the mental instability of a man with a failing dream. Due to this his wife and kids are left baffled and appalled. Although his...

Analysis of 'Death of a Salesman' and 'Great Gatsby'

Death of a Salesman, written by Arthur Miller in 1949, is a novel that focuses on the family life and how they have been affected by the society as far as destiny of an individual is in this case concerned. On the other hand Great...

Death of a Salesman: the Forgotten Plant, Lost to the Passage of Time

Throughout the duration of the play, the whole concept of “placing a seed where grass/plants will no longer grow” has been presented rather often. Whether the concept was brought up as a reality check for Willy, or a reminder of purpose to Biff and Happy,...

Sense of Guilt in "Death of a Salesman" and "Crime and Punishment"

According to Sigmund Freud, 'to represent the sense of guilt as the most important problem in the development of civilization and to show that the price we pay for our advance in civilization is a loss of happiness through the heightening of the sense of...

The Use of Symbols Arthur Miller’s the Death of a Salesman

The use of symbols as literary elements has told the world’s stories in clearer, better depicted, and more real ways than perhaps any other literary medium ever before. We study them, learn the meanings that they foreshadow, and sit back in awe at how they...

the Theme of Misunderstandings in Death of a Salesman

Anytime a party misunderstands or misconstrues the words or actions of another, it has the potential to create conflict. Poor communication is frustrating no matter the setting but especially when it occurs within the family or with close friends it can easily have detrimental long...

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About Death of a Salesman

February 10, 1949

Arthur Miller

Willy Loman, Linda Loman, Biff Loman, Happy Loman, Ben Loman, Bernard, Charley, The Woman, Howard

Mythic figures, the American West, Alaska, the African jungle, Seed, diamonds, Linda’s and The Woman’s stockings, the rubber hose

Tragedy, Reality and illusion, The American Dream, the anatomy of truth

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105 Death of a Salesman Essay Topics & Examples

Death of a Salesman

Death of a Salesman: Introduction

Historical Context of Death of a Salesman

Extra Credit for Death of a Salesman

Literary Theory and Criticism

Analysis of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman

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Death of a Salesman Essay Topics & Samples

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