Death Of A Salesman symbolism

            
             The play death of a salesman can be easily explained as a literary way of detailing the psychological deterioration of the classic middle class working American man. Through the play we see Willie Loman's emotional and mental state deterioration at a startling rate. As is explained in the background detail of Willie, Willie's father leaves Willie and his brother Ben, at a young age, leaving Willie no money to take care of him self, also Willie being of such a young age has no memories of his father. This is the cause for Willie's deep seated fears and feelings of desertion. These fears exacerbate when Ben, Willie's only relative becomes wealthy through a business in Africa. Willie never quite recovers from the pains caused by these earlier experiences, thus his feelings of abandonment increase and he eventually is led to become considerably more disillusioned.
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             Willie feels that he must correct the mistakes that his own father made in his life and try to raise the "ideal family", although this is not specified orally through the text, this notion can be inferred by the way Willie is seen in with his sons, in the flashbacks that he drifts in to, you can see the standard American family , a working class father, a house wife (Linda), The elder, all star athlete son whose tragic flaw is stealing (Biff), and the hard working, ambitious, society serving son, who grew up in the elder famed sons shadow, and is tragically flawed with a love of sex (happy). Willie however seems to be Blind of his sons flaws and instead takes out his own flaws on them. .
             Willie's main purpose in the play is to fulfill the American Dream. The problem with this is that Willie's perception of the American dream had been distorted, and he believes that the American dream is to achieve as many modern comforts as one can, and as long as they are a popular and rounded person than this will be obtained. Completely missing from Willies perception of the American dream is that one must work hard to obtain this ideal, this perception is granted to him from the stories that he has heard about his father striking it rich and about his brother becoming rich.