Symbolism in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman Arthur Miller's masterwork, Death of a Salesman, a drama stocked with compelling characters and accessible themes, interweaves the dramatic with the poetic to transform ordinary material into extraordinary theater. Symbolism, the chief poetic device Miller uses to deepen the setting, action, and expectation in Death of a Salesman, lends plain objects suggestion or significance.
The symbols are appropriately common for a play based on the scuffed hopes and illusions about the American dream of material success in the mind of a worn-out salesman whose unsuccess governs the plot. Even with his last quixotic act, Willy Loman attempts to sell himself for justification of a life and family left in emotional and moral debris. The illusions of unmerited wealth prove corrupting and contagious, and the harder he tries to transfer his hollowness to his son Biff, the more he alienates him. Biff recognizes the way to emptiness in a household, he says, where "no one ever told the truth for ten minutes" ( ).
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