The dream, the truthThis article will be an analytical and interpretive essay on the death of a salesman (1949), the most profound work of the author and playwright Arthur Miller (1915-2005). Death of a Salesman won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama the year it premiered and has been performed more than seven hundred times. This analysis will focus on Willy Loman, the central character of the play, but also on the play as a whole. This will show that Arthur Miller's criticisms of American society are still relevant today. That he wasn't just making a statement about the corporate social structure that was failing those who served it, or about how the American dream in which these agencies perpetuate themselves was dying. He declared that the American dream never existed. Miller's interpretations on these topics were not only true of the changing world at the time the play was created, but also resonated eerily true to the present day. According to the LIT Student Edition Cultural Context, “At the time Death of a Salesman was written in 1949, the United States was experiencing the greatest economic expansion in its history. After World War II, soldiers returned home and women left the factories where they worked while men went off to fight. More and more consumer goods were manufactured and produced and as a result businesses were consolidated, large impersonal corporations took over family businesses. The foot soldiers of these companies were the traveling salesmen who moved from town to town and covered vast territories in a ceaseless effort to produce sales” (LIT.ED 606). Miller showed us how these "impersonal corporations" didn't care about the middle of paper... supplies to cover their living expenses. As dysfunctional and backward as all of this may seem, there is one more thing we have left out of this equation. And it is this element of the structure that reveals the truly fraudulent nature of the system itself, the application of interest. "It doesn't matter if you want to believe it or not, we are all slaves, we are not free, we do not live in a free nation and that's what Arthur Miller knew, that's what he wanted express through Death of a Salesman. Through Willy, he wanted to show us that like most of us, Willy also believed in the American dream, that's why he worked his whole life, that's why we choose to go to work or to school. university to become a teacher or student. But just like Willy, we are being manipulated into believing something that is a lie, a fairy tale, something that is as fictional as Willy himself..