More Links and Notes on Death of A Salesman

http://www.academypublication.com/issues/past/jltr/vol02/02/08.pdf


http://www.uh.edu/honors/Programs-Minors/honors-and-the-schools/houston-teachers-institute/curriculum-units/pdfs/2004/eye-on-american-playwrights/lutz-04-playwrights.pdf

Act One:

Materialism over all=American dream?

            If you are making money—you should be happy.

Consumerism=buying the American dream.

Salesman symbolic of selling America. What products come to mind when thinking of “selling America”?

            -“Work a lifetime to pay off a house. You finally own it, and there’s nobody to live in it” (4)

Willy builds his life on denial as a way of dealing with his disappointments. In other words, he lies to himself. Why does he do this? Why do we do it? He adjusts his memories to serve his present needs.

            “Some people accomplish something” (5).

            “I don’t know what the future is. I don’t know what I am supposed to want”

When something does not work today, having hope that tomorrow will be better is a must.

To be “well liked” was what Willy thought was the key to life. This is not true.

            “Be well liked and you’ll never want” (21)

The past is holy. Nostalgia.

We are all responsible and a product of our actions.

Betrayal is as much a part of Willy’s history as his drive for success.

“WILLY [noticing her mending]: What’s that?

LINDA: Just mending my stockings. They’re so expensive!

WILLY [angrily, taking them from her]: I won’t have you mending stockings in this house! Now throw them out!”

Their house is surrounded by tall buildings. A symbol for how society is changing but Willy refuses to see he must adapt.

“WILLY: There’s more people! That’s what’s ruining this country! The competition is maddening! Smell the stink from that apartment house! And the one on the other side… How can they whip cheese?”

“WILLY: The street is lined with cars. There’s not a breath of fresh air in the neighborhood. The grass don’t grow anymore, you can’t raise a carrot in the backyard. They should’ve had a law against apartment houses. Remember those two beautiful elm trees out there? When I and Biff hung the swing between them?”

Willy contradicts himself: Biff is lazy and not lazy, the car and fridge are reliable and junk.

Biff is not doing as well Willy thinks (20).

“WILLY: Biff Loman is lost. In the greatest country in the world a young man with such—personal attractiveness, gets lost. And such a hard worker. There’s one thing about Biff— he’s not lazy”

Act Two:

Linda is not treated fairly by Willy. She is always trying to prop him up and he usually yells at her. Nevermind the fact that he cheats on her.

Willy is symbolic of a man who failed by the standard they chose to live by.

Willy never finds out who he is. He kills himself because he was not as well liked as he tought. He lost his own game.

Before leaving for work Willy reminds Linda that today is the last payment on the house. He also plans to buy seeds for the plant in the yard.

Will gets fired because he was not able to keep up with the changes in the workplace. Thus his theory that being well liked is all you need proves false. What is needed is the ability to do your job better than anyone else.

Ben comes by and brags about going to Alaska (symbolic of America reaching even further west). Ben leaves, but Willy shouts after him that he will make it in New York – another empty and pathetic self-delusion.

Charley asks Willy: “When are you going to grow up?” Successful people in his life see him as naïve.

Willy asks Charley for money and offers him a job, but Willy insists that he has a job, even though he has just been fired. When Willy admits that he has been fired Charley repeats his offer, but Willy says he cannot work for Charley. As Willy is about to leave he says that it is ironic that a man is worth more dead than alive, and he confesses that Charley is his only friend.

Biff says that he wants to confront his father with his life’s failure, but Happy suggests that he should tell Willy something nice rather than the truth.

           

This is a snapshot of how Biff and Happy differ in their views on life and Willy.

Willy meets the two the boys and he is so intent on his own vision of how Oliver (the guy that does not give Biff the job and Biff steals the pen from) remembered Biff and puts his arm around his shoulder. Biff, with tears in his eyes, eventually cries that he cannot talk to Willy.

            His two sons have been given a view of what their father really is.

There is a flashback to Biff failing Math and Willy does not want to acknowledge that truth. Biff tries to make his father see that he is no good, and has been a failure all his life. The girls return, Willy leaves for the bathroom and the boys leave with the two girls.

           

            In many ways Biff is more honest about who he is than Willy ever was. For Biff

lying to himself about who he is, is worthless.

Perhaps the climax of the play or at the very least, a very important confrontation between Biff and Willy (and a clash of what Willy’s life really has come down to) is the scene in the men’s room when Willy has yet another flashback. The flashback is of Biff catching him having an affair with the woman in Boston and “the stockings” make an appearance.

Biff had no personal values of his own, he totally relied on his father’s set of values, and when he sees his father for what he really is, his world collapses. This scene brings together previous hints, like Linda mending her stockings, and the woman’s laughter. Willy’s world is crumbling around him and he has nothing to leave his sons. (“I don’t have a thing in the ground.”) So in desperation he wants to plant some seeds, which is his last effort to leave something behind.

           

Linda is waiting for the boys when they come home later that night. They bring her flowers, but she is furious about how they have treated their father. (“You would not treat a stranger that way.”) Happy tries the old lie again, that they had a good time, but Biff wants no more of that. He agrees with his mother that he is bad, and that he wants to talk to his father. Then they hear Willy talking to himself outside while he is planting seeds in the garden.

Willy is desperate for respect and acknowledgement from Biff, and thinks that with so much money in his pocket Biff will become something magnificent. He is obviously planning suicide, because he sees his life as finished; being laid off at his age and with his ambitions he sees no other option.

Biff tells his father what a failure he is, and that he is no longer bringing home any prizes. Willy goes on about Biff’s greatness, and Biff breaks down in frustration. He sobs on his father’s shoulder, “burn that phony dream”.