In Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, Willy Loman, a salesman, has to confront failure in the success driven society of America. In his conquest for the American Dream, Willy faces frustration, disappointment, and failure, all of which eventually lead to his suicide. Willy represents those who have strived for success, but in doing so, have instead achieved failure in its most bitter form.
Willy grew up believing that being "well-liked" was the key to being successful. He stressed popularity over hard work and risk-taking over perseverance to his family. He was proud when the neighborhood boys came over to see the athletic abilities of his oldest son Biff. It is at the same time that he turns his nose up and his neighbor Bernard, who spends too much time on schoolwork to worry about being popular. While Biff turns out to be a failure as an adult, Bernard, on the other, turns out to be a successful lawyer. Willy does not realize from the way that situation played, that popularity is not everything. Willy believes that Bernard has better luck than Biff.
Happy, Willy's younger son, and least favored of the two, has lived in the shadow if Biff all of his life. He compensates by nurturing his relentless sex drive and professional ambition. Happy represents Willy's sense of self-importance, ambition, and blind servitude to societal expectations. He works as an assistant to an assistant buyer in a department store and presents himself as supremely important. Although Happy is considerably more successful than Biff, Willy still believes that Biff is merely getting a late start in life. .
Willy lives out much of his life through illusions from the past. He uses the "better days" of the past when he felt like he had a sense of self worth to occupy his time in the present, where is has turned out to be a failure. However, what Willy does not realize is that through the illusions, he is distancing himself from his family and just making the situation worse.
