The pursuit of the American dream can inspire ambition. It can transform a person and make them motivated and hardworking, with high standards and morality. Or it can demolish a person, almost to the point of driving them mad, the result of the wild and desperate pursuit of the dream. This is what happens to Biff, Happy and Willy Loman in Arthur Miller's book, Death of a Salesman. In the play, Willy Loman is a traveling salesman whose main ambition in life is wealth and success, neither of which he achieves. Corrupted by their father, Biff and Happy also fail to succeed. Biff can't find a stable, well-paying job even though he's 30, and he hates the business world, preferring to live on a farm in California. Happy, on the other hand, has a stable and fairly well-paid job, but still suffers from a void and a sense of loss, a void which he fills by sleeping with numerous women, some of whom are even married or engaged. Thus, Miller uses motifs, such as deception, theft, and hallucination, to show the pathology these three characters suffer from as a result of the American dream. Miller's use of lies throughout the book reveals the madness that results from pursuing the American dream. Happy usually lies to others and to himself because he can't face reality and wants to appear better than he is. When he is at a restaurant with Biff, Happy tries to impress a girl by saying that "at West Point, [people] called him] Happy" and that he sells champagne (Miller 102). He tries to get her attention by talking about money and he hopes it will be more attractive if he pretends he is rich and successful. The American dream is all about money, which Happy lacks, so he pursues his dream in his own way – pretending he's rich because he knows he never will be. When Willy enters the restaurant, excited to learn of Biff's meeting with Oliver, Happy encourages his brother to lie, saying "[Biff] told [Oliver] about my idea in Florida" (108). Once again, Happy thinks he won't be worth anything in his father's eyes without money. Therefore, he tries to mask his and Biff's failure through deception, in order to cover up the fact that he has not achieved wealth. Happy learns this behavior as a young boy from Willy, who urges Happy to "be careful around these girls, don't make any promises"." (27).