In Arthur Miller’s play, entitled Death of a Salesman, Miller utilizes symbols and motifs to explore the manner in which the common man displays qualities of a tragic hero. In Death of a Salesman, Miller intricately examines American life and consumerism. In creating Willy Loman – the protagonist of the play – Miller wrote a destructively insecure anti-hero. Willy is often shown to be obsessed with the concept of the “American Dream,” a recurring motif in the play. This concept is something that
In “Death of a Salesman” by Arthur Miller, he uses symbols and motifs that are recurring symbolic elements that create the theme in the story. Miller uses many symbolic items throughout the play that have meaning outside of what he is saying. Motifs are structures or literary devices that develop and inform the text’s major themes of the stories. Willy uses the mythic figures of adonis and hercules to describes his sons, Happy and Biff. He believes his son are the definition of “personal attractiveness”
If one were to ask, “define the ‘American Dream’ ”, not one definition can sum up this traditionalistic belief. Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman”, depicts conflicts within the Loman family, while addressing larger affairs regarding American culture, more specifically Willy Loman’s blind view of the American Dream. Miller not only broadcasts the cost of blind belief in the American Dream but places ‘charges’ on America with a false advertisement to its people, that which is constructed around