Abstract and Key Words

Abstract：The play Death of a Salesman is Arthur Miller's masterpiece. The play tells us a story about a salesman named Willy Loman, whose painful sufferings in the last 24 hours of his life. In order to achieve his “American Dream”, the old salesman Willy spent all his life selling goods, and finally committed suicide in despair. The Death of Willy Loman represents the disillusionment of the "American dream". Willy's distorted personality is the direct reason for his tragic fate, while his superstition and blind obedience to “American dream” is the basic reason, which determines the inevitability of the disillusionment of “American Dream”. This paper tries to probe into the embodiment of the “American Dream” in this play and analyze the reasons for its disillusionment, thus to point out the truth of “American Dream”.
 
Key words: Death of a Salesman, American Dream, disillusionment

摘要：戏剧《推销员之死》是阿瑟•米勒的代表作。这部戏剧讲述了一位名叫威
利•洛曼的推销员在他生命最后24小时的痛苦经历。威利为了实现他的“美国梦”，把自己的一生都倾注到推销商品的事业上,最后在绝望中自杀了。威利•洛曼的死亡代表了其“美国梦”的幻灭。威利扭曲的性格是造成其悲剧命运的直接原因,而其对“美国梦”的盲从和迷信则是其失败的根本原因,从而决定了其“美国梦”幻灭的必然性。本文旨在探究“美国梦”在这部戏剧中的体现及其幻灭的原因，以揭示出“美国梦”的本质。

关键词：《推销员之死》，美国梦，幻灭

1. Introduction
1.1 Introduction of Arthur Miller
Arthur Miller was born in New York in 1915. He is regarded as one of American most famous playwrights of the twentieth century. Miller was concerned about the society and the values that it held and he was mainly writing for the middle-class audience. In his lifetime, he created a number of great works, including All My Sons(1947), which brought him immediate fame; Death of a Salesman(1949), which is the author's masterpiece; The Crucible (1953); A View from the Bridge(1957); The Price(1968)and many others. Among them, Death of a Salesman was seen by most of the critics as the most successful one and for which Miller won Pulitzer Prize. In his writing and in his role in public life, Miller articulates his profound political and moral convictions. He wrote plays on broad social themes and put a special emphasis on depicting the inner thoughts of individuals and their conflicts with the morality of their society. Miller once said he thought theater could change the world.