"Its theme comes across with blinding clairity How does...

This quote reminds me of the Glengarry Glen
Ross quote by Blake (Alec Baldwin's character) in the
movie:

We're
adding a little something to this month's sales contest. As you all know, first prize is
a Cadillac Eldorado. Anybody want to see second prize? 
[Holds up
prize] Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're
fired.

How's that for
respect?  Failure is not an option in the uber-macho dog-eat-dog world of sales.  It's
Social Darwinism at its cruelest: kill or be killed.  Sell or be
fired.

This quote is aprapos to the themes Death
of a Salesman.  America was founded and predicated on dreams, most of which
have become myth in the 20th century.  The "self-made" man of days gone by--of
Rockefeller and Carnegie--are tall tales in the regulated world of 1940s Wall Street.
 Gone are the days of smooth-talking salesmen and iron-fisted barons who can manipulate
consumers and sidestep government regulations.  Present are the anti-trust legislation
and the competitiveness of the post-war business
world.

Willy Loman is symbolic of his name.  He is the low
man on the socio-economic totem pole of the sales world.  He dreams of the days he could
rely on charm to make commissions, but he realizes that the present conditions dictate,
"what have you done for me lately?"  Age and senility are catching up with him, and he
knows the sales jobs are for young up-and-comers who will work longer hours and be more
aggressive than him.  If short, his tragic flaw is a gnawing sense of failure and a fear
that society will deem him unnecessary if it catches up with
him.

One critic says:

readability="17">

According to an article on the play
in Modern World Drama, Willy is "a rounded and psychologically
motivated individual" who "embodies the stupidity, immorality, self-delusion, and
failure of middle-class values." While his self-delusion is his primary flaw, this
characteristic is not necessarily tragic since Willy neither fights against it nor
attempts to turn it toward good. Dennis Welland in his book, Miller: The
Playwright summarized this view, critiquing critics who believe that "Willy
Loman's sense of personal dignity was too precariously based to give him heroic
stature." Although he is ordinary and his life in some ways tragic, he also chooses his
fate. The article in Modern World Drama confirmed that
"considerable disputation has centered on the play's qualification as genuine tragedy,
as opposed to social
drama."

AND

readability="18">

According to conventional standards, Biff, the
older son of Willy and Linda, is the clearest failure. Despite the fact that he had been
viewed as a gifted athlete and a boy with a potentially great future, Biff has been
unable as an adult to succeed or even persevere at any professional challenge. Before
the play opens, he had been living out west, drifting from one low-paying cowboy job to
another, experiencing neither financial nor social stability. Back in New York, he is
staying with his parents but seems particularly aimless, although he does gesture toward
re-establishing some business contacts. Although one could speculate that the Loman
family dynamics in general have influenced Biff toward ineffectuality, as the play
progresses readers understand that one specific biographical moment (and his willingness
to keep this moment secret) provides the key to his puzzling
failure.