What did you personally learn about human behavior from the historical aspects of the play Death of a Salesman and does this play's commentary on...

I learned
first that certain ideas imbedded in
the American Dream can become a temptation that lures
people away from their
best selves. For example, Willy Loman becomes fixated on the idea that he
can
earn easy money from becoming a salesman. He has internalized the idea that wealth
and
income are the measure of a man and has bought into the dream that the
successful businessman is
one who can sit in his hotel room in his velvet
slippers while his orders flood in over the
phone.

This
version of the American Dream, based on the idea that America is
a
resource-rich land of milk and honey, is not readily applicable to the sales world of
the
early twentieth century: in fact, it actually ruins Willy's life. Today,
we face similar
temptations to think we can make easy moneybe it through the
stock market or going to a casino,
but most often this proves to be the road
to disaster.

Willy would have been
much happier in some
sort of gardening vocation than in chasing a false dream, so a second take

away from the play is to be true to oneself and to make career choices based on
this.

The consumerism in the play is expressed in Willy's
lament that the goods he buys break
down just as he has the loans for them
paid off. This is very similar to when people are often
deeply in credit card
debt and can't get out from under. While Willy would not have had easy
access
to a credit card then, the idea of supporting one's lifestyle through buying on credit
is
the same. Consumerism today is supposed to be the key to happiness, but as
with Willy, it most
often does not turn out to provide the satisfaction that
is promised.