out self-fulfilment, it has become perverted by materialistic concerns so that it is now a dream of financial success; exterior wealth measures a persons success. Miller seems to appreciate the original idea of the American Dream as he shows through Willys flashbacks of good times, that the past was golden, as he himself describes. It is how people interpret the idea of the American Dream now; that if people live by it there is a natural order in favour of them succeeding; that is essentially the problem. This view that society has, makes it seem that success is easy to achieve, and so there is disgrace in failure and people feel there is a need to succeed. Such pressures that the individual can feel, due to societys laws, can have tragic results. Millers demonstration of this is through Willy, who ultimately finds himself a victim of such pressures of the American Dream. His downfall derives from both his personal failure in relation to his values and from the values themselves. He shows, through the way in which he lives and dies, the latent self-destructiveness of a society in which false advertising corrodes not only business lives, but also personal relationships.Willy believes he must be professionally and financially successful, have a secure family life and have strong friendships. Due to societys pressures, he tries to be the person that he thinks other people want him to be: for his customers, the dignified drummer; for his sons, the firm yet indulgent and all-protective father; for his wife, the ever-dependable breadwinner,-Blooms. He feels he must sell himself, must respond to the demands of others and must make an impression in order to be well-liked, and therefore, successful. However, when he realises that he cannot do all this and has not achieved what he had hoped for, he no longer has the ability to battle against these pressures, and is finally destroyed by his commitment to them: he thinks as he has not achieved his ...
