Time is an inescapable aspect of our daily lives, which we live by, by being in certain places at certain times. For most of us, it is easy to live in the present, taking in the day's activities and looking to the future. In the story Death of a Salesman, the Loman family is not like the majority of society, living in the present, but living in the past and in illusions. Willy Loman is an old businessman close to the end of his career. The biggest problem for the Loman family was his efforts to bring his wife and two sons down with him as he struggles to make ends meet. He is an ignorant and stubborn man that believes that both he and his family are something that they are not. His pursuit of the "American Dream" throughout his life leads him to live completely in the past through flashbacks he has and dreams that are unfulfilled. Throughout the story, time is important to developing the play's theme and characters by showing the downfalls of Willy and how they affect his family and eventually, lead to his death.
Willy Loman has been a businessman his whole life and has never known anything else in his life. Willy does not have Alzheimer's disease or any other health related problem, but we know there is something very wrong with him. In the opening scene of the play, he must turn around his car because he can't remember where he was going. Nor did he recall what he was doing and could not remember the past five minutes. "I"m tellin" ya, I absolutely forgot I was driving. If I"d've gone the other way over the white line I might've killed somebody" (Miller 1316). From the beginning the audience is brought into these flashbacks that Willy has, because they tell us how his current mental condition has developed. In Willy's earlier years, he was a very proud father and wanted nothing but the best for his boys. His eldest son, Biff, was a star football player and had several scholarship offers.
