Adams clearly states that the American Dream can turn into a reality for anyone, irrespective of status or community, provided that the individual attains the full level his or her personal achievement which is duly acknowledged by society. a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain the full stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognised by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position” (Kiser). The American Dream is best described by the man who invented the phrase – James Truslow Adams – in his book The Epics of America: “The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.

While depicting Willy as one striving to emulate in his own life his country’s suffusion with capital materialism fuelled by the post World War II economy, Miller criticises such materialism for camouflaging the personal factual reality and moral concept of the original American Dream by not only depicting various events in the story that show the realistic state of affairs, but also in Linda Loman portrays a character who, in totally contrast to her husband, is down-to-earth and very realistic about life and the way it should be lived. In pursuance of the novel’s primary theme – reality versus illusion in relation to the American Dream – Miller creates contrasting characters of Willy Loman and his wife Linda in order to show the two main but contrasting mindsets of people during those days in their response to the American Dream. In Miller’s play that is totally woven around the American Dream, the Lomans live in Brooklyn, a busy suburb of New York City. America is enjoying a postwar economic boom, but the World War has caused a shake-up in American society, changing the way people view business, leisure, themselves, and others, making the American way of life very different from what was projected as the ‘American Dream’ by the Founding Fathers of the country.

The events of Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman take place in 1949, four years after the Second World War has come to an end.

1949 death of a salesman