International Journal on Science and Technology

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The American Dream, Identity, and Tragic Failure in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman: A Critical Study

Author(s) Dr. Ashok B. Yawale
Country India
Abstract Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman examines the human cost of a culture that converts success into a public performance and personal worth into a market value. This paper studies the relationship among the American Dream, identity, and tragic failure in the play. It argues that Willy Loman's downfall does not arise from economic disappointment alone. His tragedy develops because he has internalized a narrow creed in which attractiveness, popularity, and commercial recognition determine whether a life has meaning. Unable to separate his human identity from his occupational image, Willy treats evidence of failure as an assault upon the self. His memories, exaggerations, and imagined conversations therefore become defensive structures through which he tries to preserve an increasingly unstable identity. The paper also examines Biff's movement toward self-knowledge, Happy's repetition of his father's illusion, Linda's emotional labour, and the play's dramatic form. Miller's broken chronology allows past and present to coexist, revealing how private memory is shaped by social ideology. Although economic institutions and competitive values intensify Willy's suffering, the play does not remove his moral responsibility. His betrayal of Linda, emotional pressure upon his sons, and final conversion of death into an imagined business transaction demonstrate the destructive consequences of his choices. Willy remains tragic because his distorted aspirations grow from recognizable human needs for dignity, love, and belonging. The play finally proposes that freedom begins when identity is released from commercial measurement and grounded in truthful self-recognition.
Keywords Arthur Miller, American Dream, identity, tragedy, Willy Loman, Death of a Salesman
Field Sociology > Linguistic / Literature
Published In Volume 9, Issue 3, July-September 2018
Published On 2018-09-17
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Crossref DOI prefix of IJSAT is 10.71097/IJSAT

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