"When the twentieth century is history and American drama viewed in perspective, the plays of Arthur Miller will undoubtedly be preserved in the annals of dramatic literature." Miller's eminence as a dramatist is primarily based on four plays he wrote in early in his career. The four plays are All My Sons (1947), Death of a Salesman (1949), The Crucible (1953), and A View from the Bridge (1955). Insisting that the individual is doomed to frustration when he once gains his consciousness of his own identity. Although his later works are considered inferior to his earlier masterpieces, Miller remains among the most important influential dramatist to be born in the United States since World War II. Critics praise his effective use of vernacular, moral insight and strong sense of social responsibility. Miller's major achievement is Death of a Salesman in 1949. It won the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for drama and the 1949 New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for best play of the year. It was cited as one of the finest plays by a contempory dramatist (Miller, Arthur page 1). Miller synthesizes elements from social and psychological realism to depict the individual's search for identity within a society, especially in Death of a Salesman (World Literature Criticism page 2359).
             Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman relates the story of Willy Loman, a down-on-his luck traveling salesman. In order to cope with the failures in life, he retreats to the past while loosing touch with reality. He tries reliving the good times but keeps coming up against things that went wrong. His family tries to help him by lying about their prospects, but when Loman looses his job, after a lifetime with the same company, he becomes desperate. His depression is consumed by the guilt he feels from the past infidelity that which has estranged him from his older son, Biff. Instead of accepting that his life been a failure, an...