Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman is a play about the modern hero Willy Loman. The play shows his dreams of false hopes and outrageously high expectations for himself and his children. The play shows a vast amount of learning experiences that characters in the play undergo. Willy Loman tries to teach his sons that to be well liked is the core of success, Happy Loman learns through experience that his desires may be wrong and has brought him loneliness, and Biff Loman learns that his father's dreams aren't his dreams.
Willy Loman always stressed to himself and to his two boys, Happy and Biff, that being well liked is the most important thing in life. He feels that if people like you, you will be successful and prosperous. He felt that this was the truth and tried to pass on his attained knowledge onto his sons. In his first flashback, Willy says to Biff and Happy, ".the man who makes an appearance in the business world, the man who creates personal interest, is the man who gets ahead. Be liked and you will never want."" (p. 33) Biff and Happy believe their father because they held a tremendous amount of respect and love for him at that time. .
As Happy's life went on, he found himself lonely, even with all of his possessions and accomplishments. All of the things that he had strived for in life brought him no happiness, but lonesomeness. He told Biff, " it's what I always wanted. My own apartment, a car, and plenty of women. And still, goddammit, I'm lonely."" (p. 23) Happy sees his mistakes his life, but doesn't understand why they happened. They can most likely be traced back to Willy's teachings. .
Finally, Biff realizes what he is meant to do in his life. He learns that his father's way of life is not that of his own. Even when Biff tries to please his father by trying to go into business with Happy, he doesn't succeed because he doesn't want to succeed in that line of work.
