Title: Death of a Salesman
Author: Arthur Miller
Literary Period: Postmodernism
Genre: Tragedy
By: Jada Pfeiffer, Abby Queen, Charlotte Dungan
Biographical Information on Arthur Miller:
 October 1915 -February 2005
 Born in New York City to middle class, Jewish parents
 1938- graduated from University of Michigan
 Married 3 times, once to Marilyn Monroe
 His family lost everything in the Wall Street crash of 1929
 Has 4 kids, 2 with his first wife and 2 with his third
 His youngest daughter married Daniel Day- Lewis
 He died on the 56th anniversary of the Broadway debut of Death of a Salesman
 Victim of Red Scare and McCarthyism
Historical information about the literary era:
 Post-Modernism Literary Movement
o Marked by the Cold War and Red Scare
o Influenced by the Second World War, Soviet Gulags, McCarthyism, the rise of
consumerism, and the Chinese Cultural Revolution
o Employs ‘Black Humor,’ parody, the grotesque, absurdity, and travesty
o The writing style is generally fragmented and irrational, with a large focus on the
past and the effect of parental failure on the family unit.
Characteristics of the Genre:
 Tragedy:
o Characteristics that make Willy a tragic hero
 Noble status: Willy is seen as noble in the eyes of his family
 Hamartia and hubris: Willy’s flaw is his excessive pride and a self-serving
need to be well-liked. He lacks the introspection to fully understand reality
beyond his own desires and prejudices.
 The fall: Willy’s fall took place not only in Biff’s eyes, but in his failure to
attain the impossible standard of success he place on himself in light of his
brothers African successes.
 Act of the gods: Willy’s mental decline gives the play the element of
outside control and inevitability that makes Willy’s punishment not
wholly deserved.
 Catharsis: The awe, fear, and pity the audience feels provides excuse for
Willy’s actions and overrides his character flaws to give the play a sense
of misfortune instead of outright blame.
o “Tragedy and the Common Man” by Arthur Miller
 “I think the tragic feeling is evoked in us when we are in the presence of a
character who is ready to lay down his life, if need be, to secure one thinghis sense of personal dignity.”


“More important, from this total questioning of what has previously been
unquestioned, we learn. And such a process is not beyond the common
man.”
“The thrust for freedom is the quality in tragedy which exalts. The
revolutionary questioning of the stable environment is what terrifies. In no
way is the common man debarred from such thoughts or such actions.”
Setting:
The play is, for the most part, set in Brooklyn, more specifically, the Loman household. The
house helps show what has changed from the past to the present. In the flashbacks, the house is
presented surrounded by green space, an image of the “American Dream House”. However, in
the present the house has been boxed in by the high rises in a ever-urbanizing world. In the
present, the house is trapped and more fragile much like Willy.
Characters:
1. Willy Loman
a. Role: main character, father of Biff and Happy, husband of Linda
b. Significance: As the tragic hero, Willy Loman spirals out of control, losing touch
with all meaningful relationships to seek out superficiality, materialism, and the
gratification of success and popularity. The decline of his mental faculties and his
subsequent death can be viewed as the decline and death of the American dream
during the reactionary post-war era.
c. Adjectives: delusional, overweening, superficial, intense, irresponsible, selfdeceptive, timid
2. Happy Loman
.
Role: Younger son of Willy, brother of Biff
a.
Significance: Happy is often overlooked by everyone in his family. In the shadows of his
male family members, he compensates for his insecurities by building a confident, successful
facade. Happy represents the compilation of the worst aspects of Willy Loman, showing that
each new generation further perpetuates the death of the American dream. Unlike the reader’s
attitude toward Willy, who still has aspects that make him good, the reader struggles to feel
sympathy for Happy—Foil for Biff
b.
Adjectives: static, the opposite of introspective, rigid, duplicitous, manipulative,
womanizer
3. Linda Loman
.
Role: Wife of Willy, mother to Biff and Happy
a.
Significance: Linda is a direct foil for her husband. She is loyal to a fault, humble, and
responsible. She appears to be one of the few characters who has awareness of time and values
family above success. Her flaw is that she is quick to please others at the expense of herself.
While on the surface her housewife character seems to be quite simple, her codependence
emphasizes the struggles women faced in the patriarchal cult of domesticity rampant in the postdepression lower class America.
b.
Adjectives: attentive, forgiving, compassionate, over-looked, long-suffering
4. Biff Loman
.
Role: Older son of Willy, brother of Happy
a.
Significance: Biff represents the good parts of his father, although throughout the play he
struggles to separate his identity from those of his father and brother who lack the introspection
to accept their own shortcomings. Biff is trapped in his father’s delusional reality and
disingenuous American dream. The conflict between Biff and his father represents the conflict
between the true American Dream (moving westward, hard work equals success…) and the
industrialized American Dream (suburbia, popularity and wealth equal success, opportunity at
cost to morality…).
b.
Adjectives: vulnerable, well-liked, detached, resentful, introverted
5. Charley
.
Role: Next-door neighbor and only friend of Willy, father of Bernard
a.
Significance: Charley is a direct foil for Willy. He represents the honest success through
hard work that Willy was never able to grasp. Although Charley is not “well-liked” he is
respected and admired by everyone except Willy, whose pride allows him to feel only petty
jealousy. Charley is a very quiet, unassuming man who has never needed anyone’s approval to
believe in his own value. Charley serves to accentuate Willy’s flaws, especially in his world
view and fathering.
b.
Adjectives: unassuming, diligent, accepting, generous, honest
6. Bernard
.
Role: Son of Charley, friend of Loman sons
a.
Significance: Bernard is a foil to the Loman sons. Although he never had a ostentatious
personality like the Loman sons, he attains success far greater than Willy or his sons—he has a
strong work ethic. Willy never respected Bernard for his quiet, studious ways, often calling him a
“worm” and believing he would fail at life, which serves to show the Willy believes success is
only achieved through the approval of others.
b.
Adjectives: intelligent, industrious, reserved, taciturn, humble
7. Uncle Ben
.
Role: Brother of Willy
a.
Significance: Ben represents everything Willy wishes he could have been. To Willy,
Ben’s success justifies his own grandiose dreams of success and fortune. But unlike Willy, Ben
had the drive and ambition to risk walking into the “dark jungle”. Ben seems to haunt Willy,
which shows Willy’s regret and envy for his brother. Because Willy is an unreliable character,
the reader struggles to separate Willy’s extrapolation of his brother from the real man. Foil for
Willyb.
Adjectives: devious, self-serving, ambitious, adventurous, ambitious
8. The Woman
.
Role: Businesswoman who Willy cheats on Linda with
a.
Significance: The woman represents the great temptation of postmodern consumerism
and idealism experienced by lower class citizens such as Willy in this era, nothing more than a
wild fantasy chased in similar fashion as the American Dream. The woman reveals Willy’s lack
of regard and guiltless manipulation of others for personal gain.
b.
Adjectives: foil for Linda (see Linda above)
Plot Summary:
Willy Loman, a traveling salesman, returns home to Brooklyn early from a sales trip. At the
age of 63, he is working only on commission. On this trip, he has failed to sell anything. His son
Biff, who has been out west for more than a decade, has recently arrived home to figure out a
new direction for his life. Willy does not support Biff’s dreams, but as Biff reveals to his
younger brother Happy he feels most fulfilled by outdoor work.
Alone in his kitchen, Willy remembers a time when his sons looked up to him as a hero.
He contrasts himself and his sons with his next door neighbor Charley, a successful businessman,
and Charley's son Bernard, a serious student. Charley and Bernard, in his view, are not ‘wellliked’ like the Loman men, which Willy believes is the real determinant of success.
While they are playing cards with Charley, Willy begins talking with his dead brother
Ben, who left home at a young age and made a diamond fortune in Africa and Alaska. Charley
offers Willy a job, but Willy refuses out of pride, even though he has been borrowing money
from Charley every week to cover household expenses.
Linda discusses Willy's deteriorating mental state with the boys. She reveals that he has
tried to commit suicide, both in a car crash and by inhaling gas through a rubber hose on the
heater. Biff, angry and defeated, agrees to stay home and borrow money from his previous
employer, Bill Oliver, in order to start a sporting goods business with Happy. Willy is thrilled by
this idea, and gives Biff some conflicting, incoherent advice about how to ask for the loan.
The next morning, at Linda's urging, Willy goes to his boss Howard Wagner and asks for
a job in the New York office. Though Willy has been with the company longer than Howard has
been alive, Howard refuses Willy's request. Willy continues to beg Howard, with increasing
urgency, until Howard suspends Willy from work. Willy, humiliated, goes to borrow money
from Charley at his office. There he encounters Bernard, who is now a successful lawyer, on his
way to argue a case before the Supreme Court.
Biff confesses to Happy that Oliver gave him the cold shoulder when he tried to ask for
the loan, and he responded by stealing Oliver's pen. Happy advises him to lie to Willy in order to
keep his hope alive. Willy sits down at the table and guilts Biff with news of his lost job. Biff
and Willy argue, as distressing memories from the past overwhelm Willy. Willy recalls the end
of his relationship with Biff, when Biff found Willy in a hotel room with The Woman, and
became so disillusioned about his former hero that he abandoned his dreams for college and
following in Willy's footsteps.
When Biff and Happy return home, Linda is furious at them for abandoning their father.
Biff, ashamed of his behavior, finds Willy in the back yard. He is trying to plant seeds in the
middle of the night, and conversing with the ghost of his brother Ben about a plan to leave his
family with $20,000 in life insurance money. Biff announces that he is finally going to be true to
himself, that neither he nor Willy will ever be great men, and that Willy should accept this and
give up his distorted version of the American Dream. Biff is moved to tears at the end of this
argument, which deepens Willy's resolve to kill himself out of love for his son and family. He
drives away to his death.
Only his family, Charley, and Bernard attend Willy's funeral. Biff is adamant that Willy
died for nothing, while Charley eulogizes Willy as a salesman who, by necessity, had nothing to
trade on but his dreams. Linda says goodbye to Willy, telling him that the house has been paid
off—that they are finally free of their obligations—but now there will be nobody to live in it.
Significance of the Opening Scene:
1. Flute plays in the background. Music represents the presence of Willy in the scene. When
the music is loud, Willy is lucid. The quieter the music is, the farther away from reality
Willy is.
2. Willy and Linda’s relationship is in turmoil. Linda is paranoid for Willy’s safety (but
unwilling to offer Willy help). In his struggle, he takes his frustration out on his wife
throughout the play. He has a very skewed definition of success that leads to
unreasonable expectations for himself that alienate him from his family.
3. Willy gets home early from a tiring day at work and tells Linda he keeps dozing off while
driving. He has already gotten into an accident and has repeatedly come close to a
second. This foreshadows Willy’s eventual decline and death. Traveling often represents
success, and the fact that he cannot remain awake to do so shows that he is struggling to
find success.
Significance of the Closing Scene:
1. Linda says Willy was only happy when he was working with his hands. This is important
because Willy always mocked Biff for his farmer occupation, but Willy would have been
happier out in nature than as a suburban businessman.
2. Willy killed himself in his car as foreshadowed in the opening scene. He made the
ultimate sacrifice for his family, leaving the reader in awe and able to view Willy in a
different light than the beginning of the play.
3. Willy expected his funeral to be a big event, but instead hardly anyone showed up. He
wanted to die the “death of a salesman” with thousands of other salesmen and customers
at his funeral. This shows that in Willy’s pursuit of success and fame he lost the
relationships that held any significant value.
4. Willy killed himself because he had no employment and couldn’t afford his bills. Willy
was hoping his life insurance would let Biff or Happy be more successful than he ever
was, but only Biff realizes the true meaning of success. Happy is content in pursuing his
father’s definition of success, having learned nothing from his father’s lonely and empty
life.
Author’s Style:
1. Flashbacks
a.
Flashbacks provide the reader with glimpses into the pasts of the characters, to allow the
reader to understand the psychological reasons for the relationships and actions of the characters.
Without flashbacks, the play would lose its cathartic underpinnings and the struggle with time
that Willy faces. The erratic nature of the flashbacks serve to emphasize Willy’s loss of control
over past and present.
Example: Willy’s flashback to when Biff discovered his adultery. This flashback gives
psychological purpose to Biff’s strained relationship with his father and the alienation Biff
experiences due to this untold truth. Willy fights remembering this flashback, but ultimately
loses, showing his complete loss of control over time and his own mind. (1959)
2. Imaginary Scenes
.
Imaginary scenes are what truly give Willy’s character a tragic quality. The pity the
reader feels at Willy’s obvious loss of lucidity in these scenes enables the reader to overlook his
flaws.
.
Example: The scene where Ben visits Willy while Willy and Charley are playing cards
gives Willy a haunted quality that instills remorse in the reader for Willy’s forgone relationships
and lost potential. (1925)
3. Colloquial Diction
.
Arthur Miller employs colloquial diction, a style not seen in many plays of the era. His
use of unadorned dialogue between characters not only solidifies his characters’ lower class
status, but enabled Miller to target the post-depression poverty stricken members of society. It
gave his play relatability and credibility unlike any of the era. Miller’s novel use of language also
serves to show a shifting American tradition.
.
Example: Biff says, “I’m mixed up very bad. Maybe I ought get married. Maybe I ought
get stuck into something”(1914). This colloquial diction reflects the poignant sincerity and
unassuming frankness of the working class America.
4. Unreliable Characters
.
The way Miller wrote his characters does not allow the reader to trust any one character
completely in order to understand the plot. Each character has such a warped reality that no one
reality is the actual reality. The reader must pick out the truths, but in doing so the notion of truth
becomes subjective. Like Edgar Allen Poe, Miller employs unreliable characters to show a loss
of control in each character and each character’s psychological compensations as a result(
Linda’s codependence, Willy’s hallucinations, Happy’s duplicity…).
.
Example: When Biff’s realizes that his life is a lie and he never was a salesman for Bill
Oliver, the reader is able to see how unreliable Willy Loman is not only to the reader but to Biff
as well, whose head was filled with a standard for himself that was so impossible that he never
had a chance at finding the kind of success his father expected of him. “Who was it, Pop?
Whoever said I was a salesman with Oliver” (1956).
Symbols:
1. Linda’s Stockings- The stockings represent Willy’s sacrificed relationships and inability
to grasp the differentiation between providing for and loving his family. In addition, they
represent Willy’s guilt over his infidelity and the destruction of his relationship with Biff.
2. Garden- Willy focuses on a garden outside his house that he has grown. Willy spends a
lot of time nourishing the garden because it brings him joy to work with his hands. He
wants to leave something good behind. The garden represents Willy’s final attempt to
provide for his family, but his ultimate failure that leaves him “worth more dead than
alive”.
3. Tennis Racket- While Willy is talking to Bernard in Charley’s office, Willy notices a
tennis racket. This tennis racket irony of Bernard’s success and Willy’s son’s failures.
Bernard was always a nerd and was mocked by Willy as a failure. Willy’s sons were
always the athletic ones, but Bernard’s success extended far beyond that of Willy or his
sons. Willy struggles to grasp Bernard’s success because Bernard has never fit in with
Willy’s definition of success.
4. Diamonds- The diamonds that Ben returned with from Africa represent what Willy views
of success. Willy is very jealous of Ben because of this fortune, but could never find the
courage to risk anything in his life. The diamonds represent Willy’s chronic tardiness of
mind and his inability to find the insight into his own flaws.
5. Faraway Places/Cars/Trains: These symbols represent success, and in particular, Willy’s
inability to obtain success. While the successful people in the play travel on trains and
cars to faraway places (i.e. Ben in Africa and Bernard to the Supreme Court), Willy has
never traveled beyond New England and has very little control over vehicles. Ironically, a
car is the weapon of his demise.
Quotes:
1. “Funny, y’know? After all the highways, and the trains, and the appointments, and the
years, you end up worth more dead than alive” (1951).
Willy has no self-worth at this point. He cannot live with the realization that he is truly not liked
and his only friend is Charley, a man he depends on to keep his family supported. This is
possibly the lowest point Willy falls, when he realizes he has never been of value to his family
and has deluded himself and his sons into failure. This quote really shows the cathartic qualities
of Miller’s tragedy.
2. “Does it take more guts to stand here the rest of my life ringing up a zero?” (1966).
.
This quote is a holds potent and resonating pathos. It is impossible for the the reader to
not feel empathy and pity at Willy’s situation. In this quote, the reader is truly able to recognize
that Willy is not completely at fault. While his character flaws did not help the situation, it is the
situation that led him down this path. The broken tone associated with “ringing up a zero” really
shows just how hopeless Willy has become and gives justification for his later actions.
3. “What am I doing in an office making a contemptuous, begging fool of myself, when all I
want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am! Why can’t I say that,
Willy? (1969).
.
This quote emphasizes Willy’s unintentional manipulation of his sons, by projecting all
of his unanswered dreams onto his sons in an impossible-to-achieve manner. Biff is one of the
few people in this play who is gifted with the introspection to see beyond his father’s desires and
his own flaws. He is not a victim of industrial urbania like his father. Throughout the play Biff
struggles to find an identity in the shadow of his father’s, showing the theme of identity crisis
rampant in the play.
4. “Pop, I’m nothing! I’m nothing, Pop. Can’t you understand that? There’s no spite in it
anymore. I’m just what I am, that’s all.” (1969).
.
This quote emphasizes the difference between Willy and his son Biff. Biff understands
that in the grand scheme of life he is nothing. The American Dream was never about making a
name for oneself. It was about working hard for the opportunities one was given and finding
happiness in the success of oneself and one’s family. Biff understands this. He has no
disillusions about fame and fortune like his father. Willy will never understand his inherent
smallness and can never passively accept that he is never going to be all that her wants, because
his hubris has a powerful hold on him.
5. “The jungle is dark, but full of diamonds, Willy” (1970).
.
This quote represents the struggle between nature and suburbia, and underneath, the
struggle between risk and safety. Unlike his brother, Willy never had the courage to brave the
danger of the jungle. He was more content deluding himself in the light of day and never risking
anything meaningful. The true American Dream requires risk and sacrifice, an ideal Willy could
never fully give himself over too.
Themes:
1. Death/redefining of the American Dream
Before the Industrial Revolution, the American Dream was about owning land, selfsustaining, and family. It was about acquiring opportunity through one’s own sweat and
blood. Willy is symbolic of the fate of the American Dream. While Willy used to value
working with his hands, somewhere along the line he became trapped in the materialism and
consumerism that started to invade America. Superficiality and greed replace his family
values, leaving him nothing but an arrogant shell of a man desperate to be “well-liked”. The
decline of Willy’s character can be viewed as the decline of the moral strength and iconic
ideals of American Dream, and its shift to something far inferior. Big question: What is
success?
2. Loss of Family Ideals
Miller emphasizes the perpetuation of the negative character traits of his generation into the
next, further destroying the American Dream. Willy’s sons represent all his worst traits and
more: deceit, kleptomania, the need to be well-liked, and womanizing. As a result, his sons
have no direction or loyalty. They hopelessly pursue their father’s grand ideal of easy success
to an empty, lonely American Dream. Only Biff sees through the mirage that is Willy’s
ideals, but Miller still makes his point about the moral degradation of the American progeny.
3. Betrayal
Numerous characters betray each other in this play. Willy betrays his marriage values to
Linda with his adultery and refusal to be more than a indifferent provider. Happy and Linda
betray Willy by leaving him alone to deal with his mental decline alone. Willy betrays Biff
by deluding him into an impossible dream of success that can never withstand the
shortcoming of reality. The betrayal within the family serves to show the lack of cohesion
within America, following the depression and leading up the Red Scare. The Red Scare was a
time of absolute betrayal between American citizens.
Topics for Discussion
1. How does the play deal with the motifs of nature and suburbia?
The urban settings represent the shift from true American ideals to those of superficiality and
consumerism, while nature represents the true success Willy has yearned for after seeing the
success of his brother in Africa, but is too afraid to reach for. His sales job can be viewed as
him “selling” his dream and settling for his false American Dream in suburbia.
2. To what extent is Willy at fault for his actions?
The fact that Miller involves an outside force, namely Willy’s mental decline/dysfunction, is
what truly makes Willy a tragic hero. Without the loss of control, there would be no cathartic
quality and no remorse. This outside force depletes Willy’s culpability in the reader’s eye.
Much like other Grecian tragic heroes, the fall of Willy can only partly be attributed to his
own hamartia and the other part of the blame falls on the “gods”.
3. Willy lacks the traditional nobility of a tragic hero, so where does his nobility lie?
Willy’s nobility lies in the expectations of his family. His sons see him as no less than a king
because Willy has inflated their vision of him into something grandiose. Even Linda views
Willy as a man who can do no wrong, when he has no love or compassion for anyone but
himself. Relationships, like clay in his hands, are to be manipulated and then expended, but
his family cannot see beyond his facade. He also willingly sacrifices himself for his family.