The American Dream is the ideal for all Americans to make the most of life. It represents an easy and comfortable life, which makes you independent and your own boss. Historically, the American Dream meant the promise of freedom and opportunity, offering the chance to strike it rich even for those starting from nothing. This is something that ArthurMiller conveys in his work Death of a Salesman. Before the Depression, an optimistic America offered the tantalizing promise of success and wealth. Willy Loman, Miller's main character, suffers from his disenchantment with the American dream, as it disappoints him and his son. In some ways, Willy and his eldest son Biff seem trapped in a transitional period in American history. Willy, now sixty-three, spent much of his career during the Depression and World War II. The promise of success that had captivated him in the optimistic 1920s was dashed by the harsh economic realities of the 1930s. The unprecedented prosperity of the 1950s remained far into the future. Death of a Salesman tells the story of a man facing failure in the success-driven American society and shows the tragic path that ultimately leads to his suicide. Loman is a symbolic icon of failing America; represents those who have striven for success but, in struggling to achieve it, have instead achieved failure in its most bitter form. Arthur Miller's tragic drama is an in-depth portrait of the typical American mind that represents an extreme craving for success and superior status in an otherwise unproductive world. To some extent, then, Death of the Clerk evokes a man's decline into madness and the consequent effect of this... means of paper... useful, I think he even thought that his seeds, his children, are not become the men he would have wanted them to be, so his life is a waste of space in his "garden". Miller's intention, writing about the death of a salesman, a seemingly normal event in twentieth-century society, was to express the playwright's vision of American society and the nature of individuality. Death of a Salesman represents a failing America and the "jagged edges of a shattered dream," but it also demonstrates Miller's belief that "the common man is as fit a subject for tragedy as kings." Online Homework/Death of a Salesman.[2] Craig. M. Garrison.[3] http://www.revision-notes.co.uk/revision/16.html[4] Craig M Garrison[5] Craig M Garrison[6] Tragedy and the common man