Death of a Dreamer: Revised

1970. Choose a character from a novel or play of recognized literary merit and write an essay in which you (a) briefly describe the standards of the fictional society in which the character exists and (b) show how the character is affected by and responds to those standards. In your essay do not merely summarize the plot.

Willy Loman may have died the death of a salesman, but he also died the death of a dreamer. In Death of a Salesman, Willy, who originally would've liked nothing more than to work with his own two hands, is instead thrown into the dreams of others by societal standards. 

As his son, Biff, comments, there was more of Willy in the front stoop than in anything Willy ever sold. In this, Biff reveals that Willy's passion is truly in carpentry. Willy is constantly fixing the roof, the chairs, the porch, etc. He's never happier than when he's outside working, like Biff. However, society's influence comes in the form of Willy's brother Ben and in the vault of apartments that trap the Lomans in the city. Ben started out like Willy: he went away chasing a dream. But unlike Willy, Ben "came out rich." Suddenly, Ben is the New American ideal: rich and very materialistic. Willy, who regrets not having gone with Ben, attempts to follow in his footsteps by becoming rich. Through the city and the dreams or apartments that surround him, Willy conceives that social connections are the key to success rather than hard work. It's an idea reaffirmed by the old, pajama-clad salesman that stands as the symbol of Willy's ideal and society's dream. The apartments are like others' dreams; they crowd out Willy's own and overshadow the garden of opportunity, preventing it from growing. While Willy attempts to save and cultivate it, it simply will not grow. Willy, like his house, is crumbling under the weight of societal values, and has turned to materialism: the salesman. The salesman is Willy's only hope of success, and through that, recognition and the opportunity of throwing off the shadow of his brother and of society.

Willy shares his old dream with Biff, who likewise dreams of working on a farm in the West, the real garden of opportunity. But as society has shaped Willy, he has grown more and more opposed to Biff working out West. He has gone from asserting Biff's need to "find himself" to asserting Biff's need to settle, get a job, and most importantly, make money. There it is: society has changed Willy from a strong worker with a hands-on dream to a materialistic, power-hungry and money-loving prisoner of society. Perhaps Willy's opposition to Biff is simply that Biff is too old to be finding himself, as Willy points out in the novel. But maybe it's simply that Willy, who ultimately is unable to accept any form of reality, can't stand seeing Biff head down the path that Willy never got the chance to go down himself. He is afraid of Biff finding success in an area that Willy himself never could.

The society Willy Loman lives in is one of uncompromising fortitude. It kills the slightest ray of sunshine, shadows the smallest bud of green. He has been trapped into societal standards and forced into others' ideals and dreams, crumbling under the weight of it all. And unlike his son, Biff, or Biff's friend Bernard, who both in their own ways continue to chase individual happiness, Willy has relented to it. He continues to travel, reminding himself of what could have been, and what isn't. The fact is, the problem isn't that Willy isn't "well-liked." It's that Willy, like the rest of society, is too busy with the success and the material and the denied dreaming that they don't realize what's right in front of them: the opportunity to accomplish that dream, and to die not just a dreamer, but a fighter.