"Death of a Salesman is not set during the Depression but
it bears its mark, as does Willy Loman, a sixty-three-year-old salesman, who stands baffled by his failure. Certainly in memory, he returns to that period, as if personal and national
fate were somehow intertwined, while in spirit, according
to Miller, he also reaches back to the more expansive and
confident, if empty, 1920s, when, according to a president
of the United States, the business of America was business. And since he inhabits ‘‘the greatest country in the world,’’
a world of Manifest Destiny, where can the fault lie but in
himself? If personal meaning, in this cheerleader society,
lies in success, then failure must threaten identity itself. No
wonder Willy shouts out his name. He is listening for an
echo. No wonder he searches desperately back through his
life for evidence of the moment he took a wrong path; no
wonder he looks to the next generation to give him back that life by achieving what had slipped so unaccountably
through his own fingers. "
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