The Lomans’ Private Apocalypse in Death of a Salesman

n the book entitled The American Dream. A Short History of an Idea That Shaped a Nation, Jim Cullen focuses on what he considers the six main themes according to which the American Dream is characterized: religious freedom, the quest for equality, the Declaration of Independence, upward mobility, home ownership, and fame and fortune.1 Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman depicts a distorted version of this Dream. The first three of Cullen’s themes do not play a central role in Death of a Salesman. However, the last three, upward mobility, home ownership, and especially fame and fortune, are core “values” for the Lomans, the family at the center of Miller’s drama. In the light of the dream, we understand why the house and car are so important in the play. Even more significant, though, the central character Willy Loman’s approach to life verges on a decayed version of the American Dream, in which talent and hard work are subordinated to fame. This modern delusion, in which a charismatic personality is a necessity, in which physical beauty is