Death of a Salesman: Discuss the importance of dreams in the play Essay

In Death of a Salesman, t here argon some(prenominal) types of dreams that ar evident. These be the intrusts and ambitions of the characters, daydreams fantasies and memories and national and cultural dreams, much(prenominal) as the Ameri hindquarters romance. Dreams atomic number 18 a truly in-chief(postnominal) part of the scarper. They do the characters into their actions and pardon their behaviour both in the outgoing and the truly snip that the play is set in. The dreams also affect the modal value that the whole play is buildingd.The play is set in the time after the American Dream had started to fade. This is important, because Americans no long-acting intrustd in it. Willy found it hard to learn that his sons didnt believe in what he had believed all his life. The American Dream stirred all Americans when Willy Loman was younger, and even though Willy fell foul of the system, he was genuinely much affected by it when he was a young man, and it is mollif y with him. The American Dream was an predilectionl, which awarded the longings of hatful who emergencyed to break sweet instal in a developing country, to earn and save their m sensationy and revel a headspring-fixed lifestyle and to work for themselves.The important factors of the American Dream, were having the outmatch of e actually affaire, being successful and popular, having money to sp oddment, and the ideal of rural living nigh(a) to nature, as well as owning your own business. Consumerism was very(prenominal) much link up to this. Advertising was being used for the very first time, on billboards, wire slight and even television. Mass production enab guide wider availability, and salesmen were being used less and less as people bought on credit at nation-wide stores.Some people managed to be successful within this society. Others suffered from increased pressure to succeed and a obtaining of inadequacy and disappointment if they were non earning enough and a re therefrom were unable to buy the outperform of everything. Capitalist society also led to people being laid off when they were no longer fiscally useful, as happens to Willy in the play. These are all very important ideas in Death of a Salesman. Willy suffers from the new society and comes angry when the fridge breaks repeatedly and he can non afford to simply replace it. To Willy it is important that he has the best of everything and it is very important that he is successful and popular and he refers to this several times during the play.Hes samed, further hes non well liked.Willy non only sine qua nons to be the best, he wants to be keeped. His phraseology tells us that he does not think very highly of the psyche that he is talking about. He is quite condescending. The recurrence of consumer technicals in the play, such as the car and fridge, tell us that these things are of spacious grandeur to Willy, because they are part of his social standing. However, these things are not so important to Linda. She is more concerned about Willy and her sons. Material objects do not number to her, she is too worried about Willys happiness.All the male characters in the play are affected by the American Dream and feel the pressure to succeed. Willy and adroit, particularly, strive towards something that would not necessarily ever make them clever in life. thrust questions the American Dream and go toms to rebel against it. He wants a simple life, because he has gainn what the American Dream has done to Willy and he has never settled into anything, because of this. He doesnt want to end up like Willy. punch defies the American Dream in this way, because he doesnt want the objects that make up the lifestyle. The way of life approximately America generally, was very materialistic. People had to be castn to own everything.Each member of the Loman family has contrary hopes and ambitions, which curb swopd from the past into the present. Willy has a lot of hopes and ambitions, most of which are un objectiveistic and are in his imagination. He always had big plans for himself, and in one of his memories, we discriminate him tell expert and hit his main ambition in life.someday Ill start out my own business, and Ill never exhaust to croak menage anymore.Willy is reassuring himself of his dream and that one day it will deduce true, rather than the boys. He talks of the future, and the use of the word someday flat makes us feel that this is a dream. Willy wants to be the best and often expresses this in one of his dreams.Bigger than Uncle Charley.Charley seems to be the one person that Willy wants to beat and he is very competitive towards him. Towards the end of the play, Willy is still trying to tranquillise himself that he is the best.I am not a dime a dozen I am Willy Loman.Willy still desperately wants to succeed and gain the respect of Biff. He uses an familiar phrase, and tries to reassure himself that he is no t simply an everyday phrase or person. He is however, beginning to give up hope and it is sinking in that he is nothing special.Biff has very different dreams to Willy, because he is trying to break the mould that Willy has created for him. Biff did try to do what Willy wanted him to in the beginning, but he loses respect for Willy and his dreams change.I fagged six or seven years after high direct trying to work myself up.Biff did this for Willys sake, to prove himself to Willy. Biff talks in past tense, because he is no longer trying to do himself up, to prove himself to Willy. Biff feels without delay, that because he hasnt done what was expected of him, he has wasted his life.Ive always made a point of not wasting my life, and every time I come O.K.here I know that all Ive done is to waste my life.Biff feels that he has wasted his life when he goes home, because Willy makes him feel this way, whereas, in reality, Biff hasnt been able to settle down.Happy happily accepted th e subprogram that Willy created for him, because he was never very ambitious, and it suited him. Happy has been quite successful, and has some(prenominal) of the things he always wanted. However, he has found that not everything is as good as it seems when you dont have it.But then, its what I always wanted. My own apartment,a car, and plenty of women. And still, goddammit,Im lonely.Happy has got what he wanted, but he realises that once you have everything you want its not the same, and if you dont have some one to love, you get lonely. He realises that people are what matters, not objects, yet at the end, he moves out from this again. Happy swears, because he is trying to convey to Biff his point. Happy follows the American Dream and often thinks of him and Biff having a company of their own.The Loman Brothers, heh? Thats what I dream about Biff.Happy wants his own business, as did Willy, but he wants it with Biff. He asks Biff a question, because he wants Biff to reassure him that his dream is the right dream.Linda Loman is a simple character, and is, above all else, loyal to Willy and his hopes and ideas. She appetites only to be happy with what she has, and she wants Willy, Biff and Happy to be prosperous, field of study and entertaind with what they have achieved. She has never fully understood Willy or her sons, and their desire for freedom away from the city bemuses her. She would like to be free from financial worry, and sees her life in the city, not anywhere else. Lindas role is to represent the typical American woman. She is faithful to her husband and stays at home to look after the family. She fits in with the American dream, which is shown in the play.The hopes and ambitions of the characters are not all very realistic. Linda is the realist in the family, and agrees with Willy to keep him happy. The characters all live their lives around their hopes and ambitions. They treat others as if they should have the same hopes and ambitions as them. Some of the dreams of the characters are very important to them, and this is because these dreams are the only way that they can get off their reality. They are unhappy, but these dreams make them happy.Biff significantly changes his dreams and ambitions over time. When he was young, he wanted to be like Willy and see Willy a great deal. When Biff learns that he has flunked at school, he goes to see Willy, who is away on a business trip, and finds him with a young lady. This destroys Biffs moving picture of Willy as his mentor and loving father. Biff never recovers from this, and afterwards, rebels against Willy and all that he has been in Biffs life.The other characters do not change their dreams as significantly. Happy realises that he is stuck in a dead end job, but he cannot escape, and does not wish to do so, because he is comfortable where he is. Linda still has her dreams although she no longer strives to achieve them, because she has realised that her sons now lead their own lives. Willy still wants to be the best, and finds it very hard to accept that he is growing too old for his job.At the end of the play, Willy commits suicide, and at his funeral, Biff saysHe had the wrong dreams. All, all, wrong.Biff assumes that Willy had the wrong dreams, whereas, Willy had the right intentions, he merely aimed too high. Biff is convinced that his dreams are the right way of life, and that Willy was selfish and living under an illusion. Biff uses the word wrong, which leads us into believe that Willys dreams were in fact wrong, although we know that Willy was just a victim of the American Dream.Dreams have a big impact on the structure of the play, as we see Willys dreams and memories acted out forrader us as if they were flashbacks in a film, they are indeed flashbacks in Willys life. Willy is sixty, and as he gets older, he remembers parts of his life in these flashbacks. He is reminiscing back to the past, wishing that he was still there. These fla shbacks are cleverly used to explain present events, such as why Biff no longer respects Willy.The play centres on Willys dreams and fantasies. They are a very important aspect of the play, and because of this, we are warned when one is coming, because the play can be very difficult to understand without these warnings. All of the action takes place in Willys house and yard and in various parts he visits New York and Boston. There are only two acts and no scenes. Scenes are usually used to distinguish between dreams and reality, whereas in Death of a Salesman, milling machine did not want this distinction. Whenever the action is in the present, the actors take measure of the imaginary wall-lines, entering the house only through with(predicate) its door. But, in scenes of the past, these boundaries are broken, and the characters enter or leave by stepping through a wall on the forestage.When Willy is about to have a dream or fantasy, we are made aware of this, when a flute plays a melody. This is an ironical reference to Willys father, who played the flute and travelled the country, with his family in his wagon, change flutes he made on the way. The light dims on the stage, and the dreams are tended to(p) by appropriate music, to help the audience to discover what frame of learning ability the dream is in. When Willy is with the woman, raw, sensuous music is playing in the background, to set the scene.The flashbacks that we see clarify what is happening in real time. Without them, we would be unsure of what is happening. The return of seeing them is that instead of raritying what is going to happen next, we begin to wonder what has happened in the past to make the Loman family like they are. We particularly wonder this before we find out that Biff caught Willy with the woman. Before we see this flashback, we are very uncertain of what caused Biff to lose all respect for Willy, although we have an idea from conversations near the beginning of the play.Lind a It seems theres a woman (she takes a breath as)Biff (sharply but contained) What woman?Linda (simultaneously) and this womanBiff is patently very worried about Linda finding out about something, although at this stage, we are unsure what it is yet.Willy is getting older, and he really doesnt want to. As he gets older, he reminisces back to the past, wishing it was still then. Willys flashbacks reveal to us how the characters relationships with each other have changed over time. We therefore see them differently in real time, because we see things that they have done, and it changes our perception of them. When we find out that Willy slept with a woman when he was on a business trip in Boston, we change our inspect of him. Before, we viewed him as lonely, getting old, and reminiscing about the old times. When we found out that he slept with the woman, we just see a man who is desperate to be successful, although he is too old to ever be successful. He slept with the woman to su percharge his sales, because he cannot accept that he will never be successful.Willy brought up his sons to believe that they were the best and that they could have anything that they ever wanted. Willys flashbacks mainly show the boys when they were younger, because Willy knew that they both respected him and looked up to him as their mentor in life. Biff and Happy are both very confident because Willy brought them up to believe in themselves.When Biff steals a football, in one of Willys dreams, Willy mechanically jumps to his defence. Because of this attitude, Biff and Happy strive to be the best they can in life and are delusional about how successful they are to please Willy, although all of them know that they are misleading each other. In real time, Biff is trying to tell Willy that he went to jail when he was away for three months. Biff gets very angry, because he has realised that they cannot accept the truth, and he no longer wants to live his life as a lie.When we do see e vents that happened in the past, we have to bear in mind that we see them as Willy remembers them. Willy is getting quite old, and has been delusional for his life. Willy never saw events very accurately, because he always wants the best for himself and his sons. He distorts events and often exaggerates or wholly invents them. In Willys first dream, everything seems to be perfect because Willy wants to think that his sons respected him and missed him when he went on business trips. He also recalls that he felt guilty, when he saw Linda mending stockings, because he cannot give her new ones, but he gave the woman that he slept with new ones. In Willys second dream, he is recollecting when Biff discovered him with the woman. He remembers this properly, because it was an awful thing to happen to him. He was shocked and distressed, which helped him to remember events correctly.Willy often remembers things as he would have liked them to happen. He wants to be the best, respected and suc cessful. This is reflected in his dreams, because he remembers things as he wishes they had happened. Willy is still being delusional about his life, because he cannot accept the truth. Willy has trouble accepting that he wasnt successful and does not have the chance to ever be successful, because he is too old, and his life is over.Dreams are important in the play for many different reasons. The dreams in the play convey different ideas about the characters. We see the characters in real time and can only truly understand them when we see past events. We see how the American Dream affects the characters, how their hopes and ambitions affect them and how past events affect them through flashbacks. Miller is trying to make a point that we live in a society that encourages us to have dreams that are well beyond our means, and are unachievable, rather than realistic dreams.All of the characters in the play have been affected by their dreams and the dreams of others. Without dreams, hu man life would be awful, because we all direct something to aim for, but our aims need to be realistic. Arthur Miller has effectively shown how our dreams can get out of hand, and do the people around us, as well as ourselves, more damage than good. The American Dream affected one generation a lot, until it was seen by the next generation that it was merely an ideal. Arthur Millers father immigrated to America, and soon found that the land of opportunity was not all it seemed.