d his family will be rewarded with a good life. However, Miller clearly suggests that the socioeconomic system which has shaped Willy's aspirations is also the force which prevents him from fulfilling those aspirations. Miller, therefore, employs a sociological version of naturalism. Willy believes he is free to make decisions and pursue goals which society will allow him to achieve because that is what he has taught by that society. However, society has deceived him because in the naturalistic framework of the play he is not the recipient of society's rewards but rather the victim of its false promises.
The question of the play, then, considering Miller's sympathy for Willy and his family, is whether Miller holds out any hope for changing that socioeconomic system which has crushed Willy. Miller leaves no doubt whatsoever that Willy himself has learned nothing from his experience. Whatever recognition he might have won of his helpless predicament, Willy is shown at the end of the play to still be under the spell of the dream which has driven him his whole adult life, the dream that the individual can indeed triumph. This is demonstrated in his exhortation to his son. It is telling that Willy frames this exhortation in the metaphor of the American sport of football, where the individual with talent and hard work can emerge victorious:
I always knew one way or another we were gonna make it, Biff and I! . . . Now when you kick off, boy, I want a seventy-yard boot, and get right down the field under the ball, and when you hit, hit low and hard, because it's important, boy. . . . There's all kinds of important people in the stands, and the first thing you know . . . [suddenly realizing he is alone] Ben! Ben, where do I . . . ? . . . Ben, how do I . . . ? (108).
Willy may realize he is alone, a basic naturalistic situation, but he still does not comprehend how he came to be alone, especially when he saw himself as the head of a ...