Success, Law, and the Law of Success: Reevaluating "Death of a Salesman's" Treatment of

the American Dream

Author(s): Galia Benziman
Source: South Atlantic Review , Spring, 2005, Vol. 70, No. 2 (Spring, 2005), pp. 20-40
Published by: South Atlantic Modern Language Association

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20064631

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Success, Law, and the Law
of Success: Reevaluating
Death of a Salesman's Treatment
of the American Dream
Galia Benziman
Tel Aviv University

In its emphasis on subjectivity, the tide The Inside of His Head ? the
working name of the play known to us as Death of a Salesman - under
lines the importance of one particular mind and its internal dynamics
for the wider thematic frame of Arthur Miller's play. This wider frame,
however, extends far beyond the individual level; it concerns largely
impersonal issues that have to do with the nature of American socie
ty and its ethos of success. As many critics are aware, the play, first
produced in 1949, was written at the height of the consumer boom
that had followed the recession of the 1930s and the war years. By this
time the American economy had become consumption-oriented
rather than production-oriented, and society was turning more and
more materialistic.1 By positioning the figure of a salesman at the cen
ter of his drama, then, Miller explores some of the effects of these
changing socioeconomic conditions. Through the representation of
this salesman's emotional collapse, the drama voices the playwright's
resentment against the damaging and demeaning power of the
American ethos of consumption and private economic success on the
individuals who uphold and nourish it.
Indeed, a survey of the critical evaluations of Death of a Salesman
reveals that the play has been mostly construed as a powerful, impas
sioned attack on this national ethos, often designated as the 'American
dream.' My claim, on the other hand, is that despite Miller's unmistak
able criticism of the competition, materialism, and selfishness that
characterize the society represented in the play, Death of a Salesman is

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 South Atlantic Review 21

far from renouncing the American dream. Quite the contrary: it

should be read as an appeal to reestablish the American dream as it
should be dreamt, and as it had been dreamt once, before its deterio
ration into an exclusively self-centered ambition for personal profit.
Capitalism, business success, upward social mobility ? all these are not
necessarily such unforgivable social vices in Miller's eyes as many crit
ics have argued. Miller's treatment of these issues oscillates between
the critical and the favorable, and is far more dialectical, and conse
quendy contains many more conservative elements, than is usually
believed.
The major ideological question that the play evokes has to do with
the values of American society as reflected by the salesman's drama.
Why does Willy Loman's attempt to fit himself into the ethos of pro
fessional and financial success fail? Is it Willy's personality that makes
it impossible for him to succeed, or is there something that is inher
endy wrong - socially, morally, psychologically - about the ethos of
success? Indeed, as many critics have argued, Miller represents
American society satirically, and condemns its callous materialism and
engulfing capitalism; and yet, at the same time he does not deny the
idea that material success is vital for an individual's well-being. His play
? as this essay will show ? even nurtures the idea that the ambition to
acquire money may be morally commendable. There is no contradic
tion here: the play constructs the American dream as harmful and
unethical as long as it is based on selfish greed with no consideration
for the good of the larger community. However, the dream is present
ed as attainable, vital, and commendable when it is founded on values
that are broader than just individual gain: social responsibility, moral
sensitivity, generosity, fairness, and integrity.
Before proceeding to examine Death of a Salesman's treatment of the
American dream it is necessary to establish the major components of
this phrase or concept, especially as not all critics who claim that Miller
renounces it supply a definition to this over-determined phrase.
Neither do they suggest how Miller construes it. Accounts of the his
tory of the concept usually refer to its early idealistic signification and
to what is often described as its later deterioration into a mere materi

alistic craving for financial and social upward mobility. In the spirit of

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22 Galia Benziman

the Declaration of Independence, which proclaimed every human

being's right for freedom and for the pursuit of happiness - a right
supposedly lying as the cornerstone of American culture and politics
? the historian James Truslow Adams, writing in 1931, defines the
American dream as an ideal social vision in which "each man and each
woman shall be able to attain ... the fullest stature of which they are
innately capable." According to Adams, who was probably the first to
coin the phrase in his book The Epic of America,2 the American dream
of "a better, richer, and happier life for all our citizens of every rank"
is "the greatest contribution we have made to the thought and welfare
of the world." In a similar note, John M. Gill, trying to explain what
the American dream is in 1975, emphasizes non-materialistic and non
selfish values such as brotherhood, freedom, and democracy, and says
very litde about personal ambition for economic success (p. x).
However, most historians and cultural critics do draw attention to
this latter aspect. In the spirit of William James's remark that the
"exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess SUCCESS ... is our national
disease,"3 the great majority of analyses of the American dream agree
that its initial idealistic, society-oriented and democracy-oriented val
ues have not been preserved as central features of American identity
and aspirations, if they had ever been so central to begin with.
Kenneth S. Lynn, in his 1955 The Dream of Success, claims that the top
value of American society since the middle of the nineteenth century
has been personal success, and that life in America is "a wide-open
race" (3), where the pursuit of money is equated with the pursuit of
happiness, and business success is equated with spiritual grace (7).
Similarly, in The Psychological Politics of the American Dream (1994) Lois
Tyson claims also that the ideal early vision of the American dream
was infused with the materialistic desires of American commodity cul
ture, where the pursuit of happiness or of one's "fullest stature" was
translated into the language of financial success. Socioeconomic status
or upward mobility, according to Tyson, have been "valorized as the
source of spiritual worth" (5), and the essence of this later version of
the dream thus became, succinctly, the fantasy of "rag-to-riches meta
morphosis" (66). And as Jim Cullen argues in his recently published
The American Dream (2003), although the dream may signify various
objectives ? such as religious transformation, political reform, educa

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 South Atlantic Review 23

tional attainment, sexual expression - it is more often defined in terms

of money. In the contemporary United States, says Cullen, "one could
almost believe this is the only definition" (7).
Miller's critics have tended to follow these descriptions of the
American dream, seeing it as a social and political idealism turned to
personal craving for profit. The best example is probably Harold
Clurman's 1958 essay "The Success Dream on the American Stage,"
where he discusses what he sees as the "original" American dream, the
one that has envisioned "a land of freedom with opportunity and
equality for all," and its later distortion into the dream of business suc
cess. The latter, too, has deteriorated: instead of the original premise
that success is the fruit of "enterprise, courage and hard work," in the
reality of Death of A Salesman, says Clurman, we have salesmanship
instead, and salesmanship is "implied on some element of fraud"
(213). In other words, the materialism of American society has led to
the development of a problematically selfish, materialistic, and suc
cess-oriented ethics. Matthew C. Roudan?'s 1997 essay on Miller's play
states, on the other hand, that private financial success ? a central
theme in this text ? was an organic feature of the American dream
from its outset, side by side with more spiritual ideals.4
The bottom line of all these analyses is that by the middle of the
twentieth century, when Miller was writing Death of a Salesman, the
American dream has become a deeply dualistic concept, an intersec
tion of sociopolitical idealism and personal materialism. As J. Derek
Harrison and Alan Barker Shaw point out, these two sides of the
dream were contradictory: there was a conflict between the profit
motive and the desire for individual enhancement on the one hand,
and the idealistic concern for the nature of American society and its
democratic values on the other.5 My claim is that this conflict, so pow
erful in shaping American social and private identity, lies at the heart
of Miller's play; and that the text suggests a way of fusing the two sup
posedly contrasted systems of value together. Side by side with his
denunciation of the selfish ethics of individuals and society under cap
italism, Miller does construct a model of material and professional
success that manages to uphold ethical and social values. This positive
potential of the American dream is embodied in the seemingly minor

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 24 Galia Benziman

characters of Charley and his son, who function as analogical contrasts

for Willy and his sons. The unselfish, generous, socially responsible
stance that the former father and son manifest is congruent with the
professional and financial achievements of both of them. As much as
Willy's occupation denotes the American loss of values and society's
submersion in a flawed ethics of consumerism, salesmanship, and
fraud (because a salesman does not produce anything but merely per
suades people to buy),6 so does the profession of Charley's son
Bernard - being a man of law - supply a contrast that epitomizes the
other side of American identity, that which upholds the liberal values
of human rights, equality, democracy. That such values may still be
preserved in American society, despite the harmful impact of capital
ism, is what the presence of Charley and Bernard in the play seems to
suggest. The success of Charley, and even more so, that of his son, is
envisioned by the playwright as no less American than Willy's failure.
In my analysis I will follow Lois Tyson's suggestion to read the per
sonal and the social in Miller's play as intrinsically intertwined. Unlike
the majority of critics of Death of A Salesman, who focus either on the
personal and psychological dimension of the play or on its social, anti
capitalist theme, Tyson argues - on the basis of the Althusserian
notion of ideology - for the inseparateness of the political and the
psychological in Miller's play.7 According to Tyson's reading, it is
through an examination of the interaction between Miller's construc
tion of individual psychology and his representation of American
social ideology that we may realize his complex treatment of the
dream of success.
Despite Miller's own later assertions regarding the representative
ness of his protagonist, to whom he refers as an embodiment of the
conflicts of American society,8 I suggest that Willy Loman's subjectiv
ity is accentuated and elaborated in the play to a degree that makes
such assertions too reductive. It is only through an analysis of Miller's
particular characters - Willy being the chief but not the only one of
them - that we may sense the potentially diverse effects that the con
ditions, values, and aspirations of American society may have. Such an
analysis reveals that there is more than one model of American sue

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 South Atlantic Review 25

cess delineated in this play, and that there is a possibility to regard the
American dream here as moral, legitimate, and even worthy. The
model that Willy tries to follow (and that most critics discuss as exclu
sive) tends to be based on self-centered ambition and on deficient
moral codes, whereas the second model retains ethical values, generos
ity, and personal integrity side by side with its capitalist orientation.
Only through an examination of the individual traits of Miller's
characters can we realize that Willy's failure is not merely the result of
his surrender to the materialism and consumerism of his society. His
self-destruction originates, to no lesser degree, in certain mental mech
anisms that characterize him, the dominant among them being his
delusory mode of thinking, whose inevitable clash with the environ
ment is detrimental. Operating upon a different set of personality
traits, the same social conditions may produce different effects. A link
is drawn, in Death of A Salesman, between a realistic, practical, rational
way of thinking, typified as moral and generous, and the kind of suc
cess achieved by Charley and Bernard, shown to be legitimate and wor
thy. On the other hand, a delusory, myth-seeking pattern of thinking
is associated with a vision of success that is selfish and unethical, the
kind of success that Willy admires and that his big brother, Ben,
embodies. Since the focalizer in Miller's play, that is, the agent whose
perspective and interpretation of events filters the main events for us,
is the protagonist, an examination of his way of perceiving himself
and his environment must precede our interpretation of the success
models offered in this play.
Willy is a man who loses his grip on reality, hopelessly trapped and
entangled in his own delusion. "What the hell is goin' on in your
head?," a question addressed to him by Charley (96), might have been
raised by any other character in the play at any given moment,
although it is significant that it is repeatedly the practical-minded, rea
sonable Charley who asks. The disintegration of Willy's mind is artic
ulated via the constandy increasing gap between the "inside of his
head" and what is represented as objective reality. Not to think realis
tically, in this play, is a personal failure, no less grave than bankruptcy.
The two failures that Willy experiences - the mental and the econom

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26 Galia Benziman

ic - are staged by Miller as intrinsically related to each other on the ide

ological and psychological level: it is pardy due to his economic break
down that Willy becomes increasingly irrational, and pardy due to his
irrationality that he fails in business. Both failures make his life worth
less, painful, and unjustifiable in his own eyes. That an American fail
ure such as himself is not fit to survive is not only a truism in the pro
tagonist's own eyes; it is suggested to the reader or spectator from the
start, as the tide informs us that the salesman-protagonist must die.
This is why, as John Gassner apdy puts it, the paramount question that
we are forced to ask, when we watch the play or read it, is not the usual
"What is going to happen next?" but rather '"What is really the mat
ter and why?' - a question that points to basic realities" (237).
Death of a Salesman portrays in detail the final stages of Willy's col
lapse. When we meet him he is already mentally broken down and is
contemplating suicide. At the root of this collapse lies his self-delu
sion. However, this private drama is intermingled with broad social
forces. Willy's stream of consciousness, presented as reality on stage,
indicates the extent to which he has been brainwashed by the materi
alistic and competitive values of his social and professional environ
ment, as well as by his own choice of the particular role model that he
admires, his brother Ben. The disintegration of Willy's mind, as private
as this process may seem, is represented as the result not only of his
own mental constitution, but also of his embracing of some of the
dominant values, aspirations, and dreams of his society. It is the inter
action between Willy's personal traits and the social forces which act
upon him that complicates his attempt to attain the American dream.
Willy's entrapment in his own subjectivity, shown in the refusal to
look reality in the face and see himself and others for what they are, is
not only a sign of mental instability but also an indication of moral
deterioration. Miller shows us that as a result of his being immersed in
his own denials, projections, and fantasies, his protagonist has become
blind and deaf to the needs of his wife, children, and friends. His bent
for delusion is portrayed as harmful not only for him as an individual
but for his family and community at large.
As early in the play as the stage directions of Act One, even before

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 South Atlantic Review 27

the characters make their first appearance, we encounter two conflict

ing modes of referring to the world. The scene described offers a clash
between what is shown to be fantasy and what is represented as
belonging to reality. "A melody is heard, played upon a flute. It is small
and fine, telling of grass and trees and the horizon" (11). But as we
simultaneously watch Willy's house, "[w]e are aware of towering, angu
lar shapes behind it, surrounding it on all sides. ... [T]he surrounding
area shows an angry glow of orange.... [W]e see a solid vault of apart
ment houses around the small, fragile-seeming home" (ibid). The visu
al outdoes the auditory: the tension between the romantic, distant,
dreamy tale told by the flute, and the grim one told by the urban
scenery, will be fully developed throughout the play. Only when the
protagonist and his internalization of the American dream become
familiar to us, will it also become clearer why Miller adds here, in his
stage directions, that "[a]n air of dream clings to the place, a dream ris
ing out of reality" (ibid).
Willy's growing delusion, disintegration, perhaps insanity, involve an
increasing adherence to inner voices and selective deafness to external
ones. He manifests a rejection of reality as perceived by the senses and
comprehended by reason in favor of inner fixations, beliefs and fan
tasies. As several critics have maintained, the psychological function of
the delusion, for Willy, is to avoid pain, to "repair the frustrations and
humiliations of everyday life with which the common man is so famil
iar, and of which he is so frightened that he tries to glide over them"
(Schneider 251). But not only the refuge from pain involves a negation
of reality; pain itself, as Miller puts it in "Tragedy and the Common
Man," originates in such negation, which leads to the "disaster inher
ent in being torn away from our chosen image of what and who we
are in this world." In other words, the escape from reality regarding
"who we are," when confronted with the reality that we try to deny, is
the pain that we want to glide over (145). The wish to avoid fear and
pain is central to Willy's character, but these disturbing feelings are
caused by his trying to believe that he is not who he is. It is easy to feel
empathy towards him, and yet it is evident that the extent to which he
sticks to his inner story is destructive. It is ironic that Willy's attempt

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28 Galia Benziman

to "glide over" reality does not help him in avoiding pain, but rather
succeeds in driving him out of his mind.
One way in which Miller shows us that Willy favors his own subjec
tivity over what is constructed in the text as 'objective reality,' is by
characterizing him as repeatedly contradicting himself. Here we can
also see how his immersion in delusion is connected both to his denial

of his failure to fulfill the dream of professional and material success,

and to another failure, of which he is unaware but which is far more
destructive: his inability to be genuinely interested in other people.
"The trouble is he's lazy, goddammit!," Willy says about his son Biff,
who does not stand up to his expectations, and adds, for emphasis,
"Biff is a lazy bum." That does not prevent him from voicing, four
sentences later, the following notion: "Biff Loman is lost. [...] And
such a hard worker. There's one thing about Biff - he's not lazy" (16).
This direct (and typical) inconsistency can be explained thus: first,
Willy feels annoyed and disappointed with Biff's unemployment and
general lack of direction, mirroring to him his own malfunction as a
breadwinner and a father. He therefore accuses him of being lazy -
one of the greatest vices of the American ideal of hard work. Soon
enough, however, the clash between this accusation and Willy's need
to see himself (and his son, subsumed in the father's own self-image)
as a success story makes him switch to an attitude of admiring senti
mentality. The 'facts' change accordingly. Biff can be either a "lazy
bum" or a "hard worker," regardless of the facts. His qualities depend
solely on the inner story that goes on inside the father's head at the
moment. This reveals Willy's way of denying facts in favor of self
deceit; but it also shows us his failure in seeing other people, primari
ly members of his own family, as they really are, to observe their own
point of view, their needs, shortcomings, and difficulties, and to real
ize his own part in their predicament. Biff, who is the favored son, is
paradoxically the most neglected by his father just because of the cru
cial part that he happens to play in the latter's internal, subjective, self
deceiving drama.
Another example of Willy's inconsistency is the way in which he
tries to hold back from his wife - but primarily from himself - the

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 South Atlantic Review 29

grim truth about his small earnings. "I did five hundred gross in
Providence and seven hundred gross in Boston," he declares. But
immediately he goes on to say that he did only "about a hundred and
eight gross in Providence. Well, no - it came to - roughly two hundred
gross on the whole trip" (35). Changing his mind so rapidly about con
crete data such as a trip's earnings does not cause him any unease. It is
evident that Linda is already used to such inconsistent, hence unreli
able, reports. The excuse that he gives for the miserable results - that
three of the stores were half closed for inventory - is followed by the
retrospectively optimistic and evidently groundless assertion:
"Otherwise I woulda broke records" (ibid 35).
Willy's inconsistency is repeatedly demonstrated by his reaction (or,
rather, lack of reaction) to what other people say to him. Whenever he
wishes to avoid unpleasant facts he just denies, disregards, or distorts
them. Again, this practice results in a complete loss of the ability to
relate to other people. The most striking example is the scene at the
restaurant, in which Willy manages to avoid the painful, humiliating
(because true) story that Biff has to tell him about the meeting with
Bill Oliver. Willy does not listen, changes the subject whenever Biff is
about to come to the point, and even says explicidy, in response to
Biff's "Let's hold on to facts tonight" (107), "don't give me a lecture
about facts and aspects. I am not interested. Now what've you got to
say to me?" (107). Eventually, he is under the false impression that
Oliver embraced Biff and that the two are about to have another meet

ing the next day ? a story far more agreeable and flattering to Willy,
as Biff's father, than the facts: namely, that Biff's petition for employ
ment was insultingly denied.
As much as he fails to hear what is said to him, Willy also hears
many things that are not really said, coming from characters who are
not really there. The climax of this mechanism is, of course, Willy's
visions: his reliving scenes from his past and his entering into dia
logues with people who are no longer there. The form of the play -
that is, the fact that Willy's past is presented on stage - emphasizes the
extent to which memories have become palpably real for him. And
even before figures from the past are presented, Willy is seen

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30 Galia Benziman

"smilpng] broadly at a kitchen chair" (28), or "addressing - physically

- a point offstage" (ibid). In other words, for him imaginary dialogues
are not imaginary at all.
But what is the function of Willy's distortions of reality? Besides
the need to glide over the fear and pain involved in the encounter with
the grim facts, there is also another side to Willy's delusions. His delu
sory mode of thinking goes, generally speaking, in two opposite direc
tions: one is the attempt to beautify reality and create a gratifying self
image that will be compatible with his dream of success as a father, a
businessman, a breadwinner. The other and opposing dynamics is the
paranoid exaggeration of reality's unpleasant aspects, which exposes
Willy's fundamental sense of inferiority. As in the example quoted
above, where Biff turns from being labeled a "lazy bum" to being
respectfully referred to by his father as a "hard worker," Willy's unbal
anced perception of reality wavers between impulses of megalomania
on the one hand and a sense of personal inadequacy on the other.
Again, as much as Biff in his father's eyes may be either a miserable
failure or a tremendous success, so there is no middle state for Willy
himself, no gray area between these two black and white regions of
failure or success. This dichotomy has to do with the tremendous pres
sure to live up to the demands of what Willy construes as the
American dream: if you are not a "great success," you are worth noth
ing.
And so, we can see that Willy's distorted, exaggerated, overwrought
perception of reality leads towards two distinct self-perceptions,
which, although opposed, are strongly linked. "I'm vital in New
England," he brags (14) just when we learn that he hardly manages to
sell anything and is about to lose his job. "I have friends. I can park my
car in any street in New England, and the cops protect it like their
own" (31), he tells his admiring young sons in a recalled scene from
the past, and adds: "I never have to wait in line to see a buyer. Willy
Loman is here!' That's all they have to know" (33). He also reports that
he has "knocked 'em cold in Providence, slaughtered 'em in Boston"
(ibid). The list of his pompous declarations ends with his pathetically
megalomaniac fantasy about his own funeral. "Ben, that funeral will be

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 South Atlantic Review 31

massive! They'll come from Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, New

Hampshire!... [T]hat boy [Biff] will be thunder-struck, Ben, because he
never realized ? I am known! ... He's in for a shock, that boy!" (126).
Willy's aspiration to prove his great professional and social standing is
exposed as utterly deluded time and again, and more than ever at his
funeral, with the complete absence of any customers or business asso
ciates whatsoever. In between these instances of self-aggrandizing
bragging, Willy's sense of worthiessness is exposed whenever the gap
between fantasy and reality is too great to be disregarded. In such
cases, his inferiority complex comes to the fore, with some touches of
paranoia:

Oh, I'll knock 'em dead next week. I'll go to Hartford.

You know, the trouble is, Linda, People don't seem to
take to me. ... I know it when I walk in. They seem to
laugh at me. [...] Other men -1 don't know - they do it
easier. I don't know why - I can't stop myself - I talk
too much. [...] I'm fat. I'm very - foolish to look at,
Linda. ... Christmas time I happened to be calling on F.
H. Stewarts, and a salesman I know, as I was going in to
see the buyer I heard him say something about walrus.
And I ? I cracked him right across the face (36-37).

Willy's over-confidence originates in delusion, whereas his lack of

confidence marks his moments of awareness to external reality. Gerald
Weales talks about Willy's "continuing self-delusion and ... occasional
self-awareness," the latter being, according to Weales, those passages
in which Willy feels vulnerable, inferior, and mocked (357). And yet,
both states of mind reflect a subjective, internal dynamics independ
ent of the way Willy's society actually treats him. His megalomania and
sense of inferiority both expose his egocentricity and absorption in
himself. He is certain that he is at the center of attention, either as
everybody's favorite or as everybody's laughingstock. My claim is that
even at such moments when he feels inferior, Willy's self-image is dis
torted and involves no self-awareness. This reading goes along with
Weales' own observation in the same essay that Willy's occasional self

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 32 Galia Benziman

awareness, i.e. his unflattering self-observations, serves the same pur

pose as his delusion ? the purpose of saving him the trouble of deal
ing with reality on a serious level.
But what is it that lies at the core of all these fictions? What is the

content of the delusion that underlies Willy's life? First and foremost,
Willy's self-deception has to do with success ? economical and mate
rial, but also social and emotional. As much as he wants to make
money he wishes to be appreciated, well-liked, admired. These aspira
tions involve both himself and Biff (and to a lesser extent also the
younger son Happy, although Biff is clearly Willy's favorite). These
hopes are as far from the truth as can be imagined: Willy is unsuccess
ful to the extent that he cannot make a living and has to be supported
by others, and eventually loses his job; he is unpopular to the extent
that almost nobody attends his funeral; and as a father he witnesses his
young sons turn into dropouts, good-for-nothing failures, who are full
of hostility against him.
In Miller's introduction to his Collected Plays he defines the "law"
that killed Willy as the law of success. It is the

law which says that a failure in society and in business

has no right to live. Unlike the law against incest, the law
of success is not administered by statute or church, but
is very nearly as powerful in its grip upon men. ...
[W]hile it is a law, it is by no means a wholly agreeable
one even as it is slavishly obeyed, for to fail is no longer
to belong to society (169).

The social law of success, involuntarily broken but ever admired by

Willy, is the major factor of his self-delusion, because he cannot afford
to admit that he and his children can "no longer belong to society." He
therefore invests immense energies in the attempt to deny this disap
pointment. The dream of success is exposed in its darker side, the side
of failure, through Willy's story. Willy's preoccupation with American
sports and gadgets, which George Ross links to the character's
Jewishness, exposes an ongoing effort on Willy's part to become
something that he is not. Whether or not this desire has anything to

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 South Atlantic Review 33

do with his being Jewish, it does seem to originate in his lack of con
fidence about his identity as an American. To apply this to what Miller
says in his introduction about the law of success, Willy aspires to be
American in the social sense, i.e., to become an emblematic part of his
society.
The play associates Willy and his exceedingly subjective, delusory,
and self-centered mode of thinking ? which, as I have shown, prevents
him from seeing or hearing other people - with the selfish and cor
rupted formation of the American dream. The other formation of the
dream, on the other hand - grounded on responsibility and unselfish
ness - is associated in the text with a realistic, sober mode of thinking,
of which Willy is incapable. And if indeed it is possible, in Death of A
Salesman, to fulfill the American dream and still retain one's humanity
and social values, then to Willy's failures we should add his inability to
manifest moral sensibility.
Miller's dialectical attitude to the American dream is exposed most
clearly in his treatment of two successful characters who represent the
two opposing sides of the American dream: Ben and Charley (Bernard
being, as shown later, a derivative of his father). Both Ben and Charley
are financially successful, and both invite Willy to enter their business
es. Charley belongs to the "real" world of the play; Ben ? being dead
for years ? exists only in memory and fantasy. Both serve to expose
Willy's delusion and shortcomings. As members of a slighdy older
generation, the two may serve as father figures or mental guides for
Willy. However, he feels admiration for Ben and contempt for Charley.
The two are represented as contrasted at almost every level. The fact
that Ben is dead, and that his appearance in the play is staged only as
a hallucination, goes along with his characterization as an elusive, dis
tant, and intangible figure. His presence in Willy's life is defined by
absence. The two brief visits remembered and enacted by Willy, the
younger brother, are rare occasions in an ongoing absence of many
years. In Willy's life it is rather Charley, his neighbor, who is always
there. He lives next door, pops in for a game of cards, and on his first
appearance is wearing "a robe over pajamas, slippers on his feet" (42).
His presence is felt to the extent that Willy asks him, in a burst of hos

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34 Galia Benziman

tility, "What do you keep comin' in here for?" (43). Charley's outfit is
juxtaposed with Ben's, the latter described "carrying a valise and an
umbrella, ... [with] an aura of far places about him" (44). Ben's valise
and umbrella, unlike Charley's pajamas and slippers, indicate that the
former belongs elsewhere; that he is a man of travel; that he is not
here to stay. As soon as he arrives he says, "I only have a few minutes"
(45), and does not respond to Willy's request, uttered "longingly,"
"Can't you stay a few days? You're just what I need" (51).
The visible, physical presence of Charley as opposed to Ben's
absence has to do with their other features: Ben is a fantastic figure not
only because he is presented as existing mainly in Willy's memories,
but because his life experience (or rhetoric) shows him to be a roman
tic, almost mythical hero: "[W]hen I was seventeen I walked into the
jungle, and when I was twenty-one I walked out. He laughs. And by
God I was rich" (48). From Willy's point of view, his older brother has
always had legendary characteristics. His last childhood memory of
Ben envisions him "walking away down some open road," and Ben
augments the mythic aura suggested by the description by saying "I
was going to find father in Alaska" (ibid). As befits a legendary figure,
Ben associates himself with exotic places, places that are also conquer
able and exploitable ? Africa, Alaska, the jungle. And the jungle, Ben
tells Willy, "is dark but full of diamonds" (134).
Charley's part in the play, on the other hand, is that of a practical,
rational friend. His business is successful; his son is a thriving lawyer
on his way to the Supreme Court. Charley's material, capitalist success
is underlined, but is rendered in different terms than those applied to
Ben. We see Charley counting money and are told elsewhere that he
sits with his accountant, but we never hear him talk about diamonds.
Unlike Ben, he is not a big talker and does not try to tell tall tales about
himself. When Willy, surprised by Bernard's impressive professional
and financial success, exclaims: "The Supreme Court! And he didn't
even mention it!," Charley replies plainly: "He don't have to - he's
gonna do it" (95). The contrast in style and in ways of thinking
between Charley and Ben is shown again when Willy expresses his
regret at not having followed Ben to Alaska years ago, because had he
done so, he states, "everything would've been totally different." To this

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 South Atlantic Review 35

dreamy wishful-diinking Charley laconically, and unromantically, com

ments : "Go on, you'd froze to death up there" (45).
Both Charley and Ben offer Willy a job, and yet there is a difference
in the feeling behind the offer. Ben, although a brother, does not seem
genuinely willing to give Willy anything. The model of success that he
represents - heroic, manly, colonialistic - is also extremely self-seek
ing, and is removed from society not only geographically, but emotion
ally as well. He is represented throughout as cold and insensitive to
other people, inattentive to his brother's plight, showing very litde
interest in him ("And good luck with your - what do you do?" [50]),
and responding impatiently to Willy's hesitations whether or not to
accept his offer and move to Alaska. Ben seems almost devoid of feel
ing: when Willy lets him know about their mother's death, he says:
"That's too bad. Fine specimen of a lady, Mother" (46). Before he
leaves he manages to bestow on Biff the essence of his moral princi
ples: "Never fight fair with a stranger, boy. You'll never get out of the
jungle that way" (49). His ethics, then, is based on the laws of the jun
gle, echoing Miller's definition of the law of success: only the strong
survive, and no protection is offered to the weak.
Unlike Ben, Charley, the down-to-earth realist whose success is
measured in materialist, capitalist terms ("The only thing you got in
this world is what you can sell," he says typically [97]), consistendy
shows humaneness, compassion, responsibility, and friendliness
towards Willy. Whereas Ben does not give Willy anything but dreams
to feed on, and does not even mention him in his will, Charley keeps
supporting the failing salesman financially without even being
thanked. As much as Willy is attentive to the presence of the absent
brother, so is he blind to the proximity of the reliable neighbor, and
fails to see him as a possible model to follow, far more feasible and
valuable than the one he adopts. In the stage directions it is stated that
in everything that Charley says, despite what he says, "there is pity"
(42). He seems to care genuinely about Willy and his predicament, and
despite the latter's repeated refusals keeps offering him a job - "fifty
dollars a week. And I won't send you on the road" (96) - and keeps
giving him money. It should be stressed that Charley is no socialist, no
leftist - quite the contrary. In terms of his views and way of life he is

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36 Galia Benziman

an ordinary American capitalist who never questions the system as a

whole, and is yet presented by the playwright as humane, moral, and
generous.
Charley's son follows in his father's footsteps and behaves very gen
erously towards young Biff ever since their school days: he gives him
the answers in math, helps him with his studies, and, like his father, is
consistent in doing so despite the fact that he is never thanked.
However, when his generosity toward his friend clashes with the law,
he adheres to the latter: in a state exam, Bernard tells the concerned
Willy, he will not cheat. Bernard, even as a young boy and before he
has become a man of law, is shown to be attentive to and respectful of
the moral codes that underlie what he perceives as a just, civilized soci
ety. This is sharply contrasted to Willy's sons: not only are Biff and
Happy incapable of sharing what is theirs with others, but they are
busy taking ? literally stealing ? from others: a suit, a fountain pen, an
executive's fianc?e (for Happy, at least, a woman is just a piece of
property), and fabricated pieces of autobiography intended to impress.
All these "articles" are emblems of the world of business of which
they are no part. Biff and Happy are vainly trying to become, or pre
tend to have become, what their father desperately wishes them to be,
and so they steal the identity of others. An early scene - one of Willy's
recollections ? illustrates sharply the distinction between the moral
legacy that Willy and Charley pass on to their children as far as the law
is concerned. The young Biff and Happy have been stealing some
building materials from a construction site. Charley, and then Bernard,
tell Willy to stop this; but Willy is proud, laughing it off with "I got a
couple of fearless characters there." To be fearless, after all, is to be
adventurous and heroic like Ben. Charley, appalled, responds: "Willy,
the jails are full of fearless characters" (50). The importance of keep
ing the law, for characters such as Charley and Bernard, is a sign of
their recognition that each member of society should strive to keep it
in order for the best interest of the community and the individual. The
Lomans' disparagement of the law, on the other hand, goes in the
direction of Ben's romantically individualistic jungle ethics, which dis
regards any democratic state law. It is a selfish drive for self-indulgence
that ignores any higher principles and any social responsibility. In the

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 South Atlantic Review 37

case of Willy, the play shows us, the chief harm is inflicted upon the
individual himself.

As an adult, Bernard's professional success is not capitalistic or

materialistic but rather ethical, social, and ideological, being a man of
justice arguing a case in front of the Supreme Court of the United
States. We remain ignorant as to the content of this "case," in the same
way that we are never told what kind of merchandise it is that Willy is
selling. These two occupations operate in the play symbolically, signi
fying two opposing ways of fulfilling one's ideals. Both occupations
are inherendy American, one being concerned with justice and human
rights, the other with consumerism, merchandise, selling (which
implies fraud), and profit; one supplying social and economic standing
while preserving ethical values, the other, when successful, affording
economic and social triumph but implying a moral failure. This is also
why another role model adopted by Willy, the one of the elder and
successful salesman Dave Singleman, is not a commendable one with
in this play.
Willy's attitude to Ben on the one hand and Charley on the other is
in line with his inclination for delusion and escape. He follows dreams,
and therefore his admiration for Ben is enormous. He is afraid of real

ity, and that is why he rejects Charley and despises him. Thus, he thinks
of Ben as of "the only man ... who [knows] the answers" (45), while
Charley, in Willy's mouth, receives the unflattering appellation "igno
ramus" (47). The fact that Willy does not accept his brother's offer to
move to Alaska can be accounted for by his need to preserve the
dream as such, and not jeopardize it by too close a contact with reali
ty. His rejection of Charley's job offer, on the other hand, is a result of
a refusal to admit that he has failed. Accepting this offer would mean
to acknowledge that the fantasy that he can "make it" will never be
realized. Willy rejects the model that Charley and Bernard represent
and chooses to cling to the impractical, delusory, and selfish one
offered by his brother. This is what ruins him.
Willy tries to have a garden where there can be no garden; he tries
to bring up sons that are supposed to be "magnificent," but poisons
their lives with his grand expectations on the one hand, and his

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38 Galia Benziman

degrading sense of inferiority on the other. Their fate will be deter

mined by their response to the road paved by their father, the road that
leads to fantasy, delusion and self-destruction. The ending of the play
shows the ironically named Happy as the true heir of his father's
romantic fables and self-deception: "I'm gonna show you and every
body else that Willy Loman did not die in vain. He had a good dream.
It's the only dream you can have ? to come out number-one man. He
fought it out here, and this is where I'm gonna win it for him" (138
9). Biff, on the other hand, gradually seems to break free from the suf
focating delusions on which he has been raised. He denounces his
father as "a fake" (58), realizes "what a ridiculous lie" his own life has
been (104), exclaims that no one has ever "told the truth for ten min
utes in this house" (131), and, finally, in an extremely truthful, straight
forward, unflattering eulogy, declares upon his father's grave: "He had
the wrong dreams. All, all, wrong.... He never knew who he was." And
he adds: "I know who I am" (138). Unlike his father, who traded his
individuality for an unfulfilled mirage of selfish success, Biff's search
for selfhood gives him an opening for a better life founded on integri
ty rather than on self-deceit. Willy's dreams were, perhaps, wrong; but
a different kind of a dream for success still remains, for Miller and his
characters, a key to a meaningful American life.

Notes

^ee, for example, Michael Spindler (6) and Thomas Greenfield (7),
who describe these changes. Greenfield also talks about the growing
alienation from work in the United States at this period, and connects
this to the transition from self-employment to hired work. Such
changes were instrumental in turning salesmanship into a very popu
lar profession, and one that was emblematic of the period.
2For more on the origin of the phrase see Cullen, p. 4.
3In a letter to H. G Wells, September 11, 1906.
4To establish this claim Roudan? cites Benjamin Franklin's 1757
essay on how to achieve salvation, "The Way to Wealth," which com
bines economic and spiritual achievements into one harmonious ideal
and, he says, has attracted the common working man for that very rea

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 Sou th A tlan tic Review 39

son (60). On "The Way to Wealth" see also Harrison and Shaw, p. 57.
5See Harrison and Shaw, p. 57.
6For the association of salesmanship with fraud and the debilitating
effect of the ideology of salesmanship, see, for instance, Clurman
(213) and Spindler (205-206). This flawed ethics renders inappropriate
the success model represented by the old salesman, Dave Singleman,
whom Willy admires.
7For more on the theoretical inseparateness of the individual and
the social, the psychological and the political, and on the inclination of
Miller's critics to deal with only one side of these dual, intertwined
concepts, see Tyson pp. 1-3 and 63.
8In the introduction to his Collected Plays Miller underlines Willy's
representativeness and states that "the assumption was that everyone
knew Willy Loman." In "Death of a Salesman ? A Symposium" (quot
ed in Spindler, p. 211) he maintains that Willy is an embodiment of
some of the "most terrible conflicts running through the streets of
America today."

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Imagination (1955). Westport: Greenwood Press, 1972.

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