Willie realizes that he has failed at certain goals that he has set for him self and constantly lives with the fact of his fathers abandonment and in a frail sign of his own hope for a better life for his sons he raises them to succeed where he did not and to achieve his view the American dream. The goals that Willie has set was to raise a American family and have a successful career later in life he realizes that his first goal had fallen through, by biff not going to college and happy not having a "good" job. Willie realizes that he had failed his second dream when his job does not make that much money and his career begins to decline by him selling less products.
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The seeds of Willie's self destruction in the play can be seen in the very first scene, where Willie is found in a mental stupor, and is privately living a past episode of his life. Upon his arrival at home he gets into a conversation with his wife Linda and reveals two of his main tragic flaws. One of which is the way that he will unknowingly contradict himself in the same conversation. Willie's second major character flaw being his frequent and strange exaggerations of the truth. These can both be seen when Willie exclaims that his son Biff is a worthless lazy bum but then later states that no one is a harder worker than Biff. .
Throughout the play Willie is seen at his job as a traveling salesman, he is at the age of 63 and his wife wants him to obtain a job in the city so he will not have to travel anymore. The head of the company Howard Wagner is the son of one of Willie's deceased friends, and upon Willie's request to have a stationary job, Howard declines. This causes Willie to erupt at Howard stating that he had been promised by Howard's father that Willie would get a non-traveling job with the firm; Howard still declines and upon seeing how unruly Willie's emotional state has become he fires Willie. Willie then goes to the office of his next door neighbor Charley.