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In Death of a Salesman, what do the American West, Alaska, and the African Jungle represent?
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The American West, Alaska, and the African Jungle in Death of a Salesman symbolize Willy Loman's idealized notions of success and adventure, embodied by his brother Ben. These locations represent the opportunity for self-reinvention and wealth through bold individualism. For Willy, they are dream-like symbols of masculine freedom and prosperity, contrasting with his own failures and delusions. While the American West is less significant, Alaska and Africa highlight Willy's unrealistic dreams and lack of true ambition.
In the context of the play, all of these places are associated with Willy Loman's brother, Ben, who is his model for an adventurous, self-made man. Ben could be perceived as a foil for Willy, who has spent his life working for others and living a more conventionally middle-class life. It's possible, too, to regard Willy's obsession with Biff's success as his wish to see his son develop into the man that Ben was. However, in this play, it's difficult to determine where Willy's fantasies end and reality begins. Given what we know about Willy's delusional character, it's difficult to know for certain that Ben really was the man that Willy conjures in his recollections.
However, the places that Willy associates with Ben--the American West, Alaska, and the African jungle--are all places that, in the literary and historical imaginations, conjure up associations of imperial conquest and ruthless individualism. These are...
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places that specifically represent the ability of white men to reinvent themselves and to find their fortunes at the expense of non-white people. Of course, I'm providing a critical reading based on postcolonial theory, but the audience would barely understand Ben's character if not for the historical antecedents that I've just mentioned. These places also represent a kind of masculine freedom, due to the senses that any white man could profit from the material wealth that existed in these places and he could be free from the structures placed on him by marriage and domesticity. This is possibly important, too, in relation to what we learn about Willy's extramarital affair, remembered through Biff.
Alaska and the African Jungle both represent the same concept in Death of a Salesman. Willy associates these places with his brother, Ben, a self-made man who achieves his success in the wild.
Ben is Willy's model for success and significant achievement. When Willy imagines what success looks like, he pictures his brother. Notions of personal greatness and truly vast potential for personal gain play into Willy's view on the exotic places where his brother grew rich.
Importantly, Willy maintains a strictly romantic (and vague) notion of how his brother actually gained his wealth in Alaska and Africa. In his imagination, Willy repeats his last visit with Ben.
Ben remarks: "William, when I walked into the jungle, I was seventeen. When I walked out I was twenty-one. And, by God, I was rich!"
The setting for Ben's adventures are so foreign to Willy that they are dream-like. Alaska and Africa belong to the same vaguely defined dream that Ben does, for Willy, and so represent an adventurous way of life marked by boldness and easy money.
Part of Willy's fixation on success, these places function as yet another reminder for the audience that Willy only dreams of success and does not actually strive for it. He resents his failure, but his ideas of success are as vague as his image of the wilds of Africa and Alaska.
The American West is not a strong symbol in Death of a Salesman. Biff returns from his time on a ranch in the west, but that place, for Biff, is not related to success and stands instead as a failure.