Death of a Salesman

I think this is my second Miller play.  I have read "The Crucible" several times, but I think one this has a whole lot more artistic stage directions and changes in chronology.  Of course, the horribly depressing nature of this story is pretty much summed up in the title, but Miller really does hit on the futile aspects of what we consider as the "American Dream".  Willy has lived his whole life on hope, despite all that has gone on around him.  All he wants is the whole world for his family and he is determined to get it through the modern world of business, despite how horrible this world treats him.   When the reality of his life; the home choked by the city (ruining his garden that he can never plant), the shrinking pay, the lost job, the lost friends, the failures of his sports hero sons, conflicts against that hope to the greatest degree ever in his life, he simply cracks and loses all hold on reality.  He lives in the past, which is the only world he handle, until eventually his delusions convince him to commit suicide.  His brother Charley, says at his funeral:

"Nobody dast blame this man.  You don't understand: Willy was a salesman.  And for a salesman, there is no rock bottom to the life.  He don't put a bolt to a nut, he don't tell you the law or give you medicine.  He's a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine.  And when they start not smiling back - that's an earthquake.  And when you get yourself a couple of spots in your hat, and you're finished.  Nobody dast blame this man.  A salesman is got to dream, boy.  It comes with the territory."

That shoeshine and smile ultimately fail him.  This story tells us what is horribly wrong with the modern American Dream, but I have been trying to figure out what Miller is saying should be the "right" path, or the good American Dream.  I wonder if Biff (who is a ranch hand out west) and Willy's brother Ben (who tried to go to Alaska and went to Africa and became rich with a diamond mine, or at least he did in Willy's imagination) serve as the alternate to the world of appointments and groveling for nothingness that Willy's world revolves around.  At Willy's funeral, Biff repeats "He had the wrong dreams.  He never knew who he was."  Maybe  Miller is saying that our dream should be one of recklessness, of chances, of bronco riding and diamond mining, of starting for Alaska and ending up in Africa.