

Willy had an affair over 15 years earlier than the real time within the play, and Miller focuses on the affair and its aftermath to reveal how individuals can be defined by a single event and their subsequent attempts to disguise or eradicate the event.

Miller uses the Loman family - Willy, Linda, Biff, and Happy - to construct a self-perpetuating cycle of denial, contradiction, and order versus disorder.

The play concludes with Willy's suicide and subsequent funeral. The play is a montage of memories, dreams, confrontations, and arguments, all of which make up the last 24 hours of Willy Loman's life. Arthur Miller's play Death of a Salesman addresses loss of identity and a man's inability to accept change within himself and society.
