An analysis of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman and The Price When people accept an ideal to live by it can be a glorious thing and noble unless they become so obsessed with the ideal that it becomes a yolk and they fail to realize their dream. This is especially true of two characters in Arthur Miller's comedies Death of a Salesman and The Price. In these two plays Miller portrays two lower-middle-class men, Willie Loman and Victor Franz respectively, who each live by an ideal that is ultimately self-destructive. Willie lived to pursue the American dream rather than live the American dream and Victor lived to serve and be dignified rather than live a noble and dignified life. They have pursued their ideal instead of living it and are therefore unable to succeed. Willie Loman, in Death of a Salesman, lived his life in pursuit of the American dream. Traditionally the American dream meant opportunity and freedom for all, and Willie believed it. However, hard work couldn't earn him everything he wanted or thought he deserved. Willy judged himself and those around him based on material accumulation, as required by capitalism and the Protestant work ethic. Ethics requires accumulation and work as signs of favor in the eyes of God. So to please God and himself he had to accumulate wealth and objects. The consumer-oriented society in which Willy lives will not allow him to live the American dream. Willy is fascinated by the accumulation of things. His desire for possessions causes him to desire objects he neither needed nor could afford. Willy thinks he has to buy his wife a new refrigerator and new socks, even though she is happy with what they have. As he tries to live the American dream, he reveres those who have managed to do so, such as Thomas Edison, BF Goodrich, and Ben, his successful brother. He also punished those who did not work toward that ideal or did not achieve it, such as Biff, his son, and, above all, himself. The extreme to which he followed the dream led to disillusionment and a loss of sense of reality. Willy created a reality for himself in which he "knocked them down in Providence" and "butchered them in Boston." (p.33) The end result of his disillusionment is his suicide. It is ironic that he dies for his ideals even though they are misunderstood.