R. Zaslavsky/Death of a Salesman
Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman: “It comes with the territory”
Dr. Robert Zaslavsky
Introduction
Death of a Salesman (1949)1 is a long way from a play by Shakespeare or Sophocles,
even from a more modern play by Chekhov or Ibsen. The titles of these earlier
playwrights would not be the “Death” of anyone, even if the title person were
presented at the end of his or her life, e.g., Antigone or Hamlet. This alone sets Miller’s
play off as a distinctly contemporary play.
At the risk of oversimplification, one could say that in a classic play, the rule is that
the protagonist’s death and life are mutually justificatory, while in this play, the
protagonist’s death and life are mutually condemnatory. In a classic play, there is an
overarching divine framework within which the action occurs, and death is
transcendental, while in this play, there is no such framework, and death is an absolute
cul-de-sac. In other words, it is not only that Willy is a low man, i.e., a common or
ordinary human, but rather that humans as such are low or lesser than they were in
earlier times. The human condition is no longer characterized by shared values and
community, but rather by alienation and fragmentation.
The landscape that serves as the backdrop for this is a sterile island, fruitless and
unproductive, surrounded by an urban cage of apartment buildings that enclose the
scene of the play, even more oppressively than the walls of Wall Street enclose the
lawyer’s office in Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener.” In a way, Death of a Salesman is a
logical extension of “Bartleby,” except that the human condition has deteriorated from
anorexia to impotent pleonexia. Prison is no longer an external structure like the Tombs,
but rather it is the internal construct of one’s own consciousness.
This notion is supported by a remark that Miller himself made:
The first image that occurred to me which was to result in Death of a
Salesman was of an enormous face the height of the proscenium
arch which would appear and then open up, and we would see the
inside of a man’s head. In fact, The Inside of His Head was the first
title. It was conceived half in [dark] laughter, for the inside of his
head was a mass of contradictions.2
The play, then, presents a subjective world.
1
The text of the play to which references are given is the Viking Press Compass Books edition (NY, 1958).
In that text’s pagination, the setting is on page 10, and the play begins on page 11, concluding on page
139.
2
Arthur Miller, Collected Plays (NY, 1957), Introduction, 23. This work will hereafter be cited CP.
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R. Zaslavsky/Death of a Salesman
In thinking about the play, the first question that one should ask is, “Whose death is
it?” Of course, one answers immediately that it is the death of a salesman (cf. 81). This
answer is doubly significant. First, he is a salesman and not the salesman, i.e., he is only
one of many, not the one and only who makes all the others of his type intelligible.
Second, he is a salesman, not a king or a prince or a queen or a princess. In addition, he is
neither a professional person (say, a doctor or a lawyer) nor a maker (who might be
ennobled and redeemed by what he makes or by labor) nor a manager (who might be a
ruler writ small). He is simply a salesman. The golden rule of salesmanship is to sell
oneself first and then sell the product. One never finds out the product that Willy sells,
which means that his value as a person cannot be judged according to the value (utility,
beauty, etc.) of his product. He is an abstract salesperson, a pure seller, a person who is
seen only as one who sells himself, i.e., a prostitute. As Miller himself said (CP,
Introduction, 28, italics mine):
That I have not the slightest interest in the selling profession is
probably unbelievable to most people, and I very early gave up
trying even to say so. And when asked what Willy was selling,
what was in his bags, I could only reply, “Himself.”
In short, Willy is the contemporary ideal of a self-made person reduced to the essentials,
a person who—without divine guidance or defined social identity—must make and sell
his self in order to achieve the American dream of material success together with the
happiness and life that it is supposed to guarantee. In addition, he is quintessentially “a
road man” (80), a person with no point of origin and no destination, an alienated
existentialist anti-hero whose only gauge of self-worth is the degree to which he is liked,
the degree to which others confer value on him, having no pre-given natural or social
value or identity.
Furthermore, he becomes an orphan in his own family of origin and turns his
children into orphans in their family of origin. He is dysfunctional, a person who can
neither give nor receive love. He is a zero (cf. 126; see also 67).
The emptiness of Willy’s life is no more clearly stated than in the description of the
one person in the play who lives up to, or rather dies up to, the title of the play (81).
That person is Dave Singleman, the eighty-four year old salesman who dies, as he lived,
on the train, on the road (cf. 81). His name, “single-man,” marks him as an isolated man
without family and without friends, a man whose life revolved around hotel rooms and
trains, a man whose pinnacle of success consisted in his ability to make a living without
ever leaving his room. Dave Singleman’s only human contact—at least as he is
described, and if it can be called human—was with transient acquaintances on the train
and disembodied voices on the telephone (cf. 81). In a way, Dave Singleman’s heir
apparent in the play is Howard Wagner, who believes that all of life can be contained in
the disembodies voices on his tape recorder (cf. 76-78).
Indeed, there is something disembodied about the whole play, a pervasive sense of
dream and hallucination, an unconscious or subconscious association of events and
ideas. Past and present flow pregnantly together, explaining and expanding each other.
Furthermore, not only does Willy have a dream—whether wrong or right—but also
Willy is a dream, as life is a dream, a dream through which one wanders with too little
direction or guidance or meaning:
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R. Zaslavsky/Death of a Salesman
I was trying in Salesman . . . to set forth what happens when a man
does not have a grip on the forces of life and has no sense of values
which will lead him to that kind of grip . . . .3
The subtitle of the play is “Certain private conversations.” This suggests that the
dialogic interchanges in the play are private in the extreme, having no public or external
dimension, taking place only in some inner mental world. The whole play, then, is a
kind of psychic projection of Willy’s inner dialogue with himself. Even the apparently
‘objective’ present time events are projections of Willy’s inner world. In some sense, all
the persons in the play must be thought of as aspects of Willy himself in addition to
being independently existing individuals. The transparency of the stage set reinforces
this.
The action of the play (excluding the Requiem) takes just over twenty-four hours,
beginning on a Monday evening and ending late at night on the next day (Tuesday). In
the play, there are two main time periods that interact, the present of 1945 and the past
of 1928, in addition to which there are hallucinated interludes. It is useful to have a
schematic guide to the time shifts of the action:
Past: 1928 [Chevrolet] (cf. 19, 34,
36)
Act One (11-69)
Mixed/Hallucination
Present: 1945 [Studebaker] (cf. 73)
Scenes 1 and 2 (Monday evening
of day one: Willy Loman returns
home early):
Scene 1 (12-19)
Scene 2 (19-27)
Scenes 3-6 (the week before the
big game):
Scene 3 (27-32)
Scene 4 (32-33)
Scene 5 (33-39)
[Flashes ahead to the
week after the big game
(stage directions, 37-38)]
[Interlude (38-39)]
Scene 6 (39-41)
Scenes 7 and 8 (Monday evening
of day one continued)
Scene 7 (41) →⎯⎯⎯↓
overlap⎥
Scene 8 (42-44)⎯⎯←
Scene 9 (44-47): alternation of
present (Willy and Charley) →→
and
←←←←←past (Willy and Ben)
[Willy hallucinates while he
plays cards with Charley]
3
Arthur Miller, The Theater Essays of Arthur Miller, edd. Robert A. Martin and Steven R. Centola, revised
and expanded edition (Cambridge, 1996), “Morality and Modern Drama,” 208-209.
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R. Zaslavsky/Death of a Salesman
Scene 10 (47-52): Biff and Happy
in high school
[Willy and Ben and Lomans]
[Ben dies in Africa (45)]
Scene 11 (52-61)
Scene 12 (61-66)
Scene 13 (66-69)
Past: 1928 [Chevrolet]
Act Two (71-136)
Mixed/Hallucination
Present: 1945 [Studebaker]
Scene 1 (71-76): Next day (day
two, morning): Breakfast at the
Loman house
Scene 2 (76-84): Howard
Wagner’s office
Scenes 3 and 4 (the day of the big
game)
Scene 3 (84-87): Ben’s second
visit
Scene 4 (87-90): Lomans and
Bernard leaving for the big
game, with brief visit by
Charley) →→→→→→→→→
→→hallucinatory overlap into ↓
Scene 5→
Scene 9 (109-110): alternation of
present (Frank’s Chop House) →
and
←past (Biff’s high school failure)
Scenes 5 and 6 (Charley’s office)
Scene 5 (90-94): Willy and
Bernard→⎯⎯→⎯⎯→⎯⎯↓
Bernard overlap↓
Scene 6 (94-98): Willy and ↓
Charley⎯⎯ ⎯⎯⎯ ⎯⎯⎯←
Scenes 7 and 8: Frank’s Chop
House (Tuesday evening)
Scene 7 (98-105): Happy and
Biff
Scene 8 (105-109): Happy,
Biff, and Willy
Scene 10 (110-111): Frank’s Chop
House (theft of fountain pen)
Scene 11 (111-114): alternation of
present (Frank’s Chop House:
Willy leaves the table) →
and
←past (Standish Arms hotel in
Boston) ↓
brief overlap of Standish
Arms into scene 12→→
Scene 12 (114-116): Frank’s Chop
House (Happy and Biff leave the
restaurant)
Scene 13 (116-121): Standish
Arms Hotel in Boston
Scene 14 (121-122): Frank’s Chop
House (Willy leaves the
restaurant → seeds)
Scene 15 (122-125): Loman house
(later Tuesday evening)
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R. Zaslavsky/Death of a Salesman
Scene 16 (125-127): Willy
hallucinates himself conversing
with Ben about suicide
Scene 17 (127-133): Loman house
→ lawn (Willy and Biff → with
Linda and Happy)
Scene 18 (133-136): alternation of
hallucination of conversation
with Ben
(continued from Scene 16)
and
continuation of conversation on
lawn from scene 17 →→→→→
Scene 19 (136): car crash
Scene 20 (136): hallucination of
mourners at Willy’s grave
Requiem (137-139)
Act One
The play opens with an extended stage direction, and the guidelines presented here
are extremely important for understanding the action of the play. One must read this
with care in order to reconstruct mentally the mood that Miller sets and the context
within which he intends the action to occur.
The staging is simple, yet flexible. Its visual evocation of the massive city dwarfing
the Loman household and those who inhabit it is powerful. In addition, the lighting and
sound devices employed strengthen the impact of the play by serving four functions: (1)
they are transitional signals; (2) they define persons and places; (3) they convey
subterranean (sometimes ironic) commentary on the action; and (4) they establish
mood.
The play opens with the sound of a flute, “telling of grass and trees and the horizon”
(11). The flute represents the lost world of nature and natural values, the irretrievable
meaning that has gone out of life. It also represents Willy’s father (cf. 48-49), a person
who embodies a truly integrated life: he makes and sells his own product (e.g., flutes),
and he takes his family with him on the road. However, he also abandons his family
when Willy is about four and Ben is about ten (cf. 47): an integrated life cannot be
sustained in the contemporary world.
As the curtain rises, the surrounding apartment buildings dominate the scene,
bathed in angry orange light, against which the sky blue light that isolates the Loman
house seems fragile and ephemeral (11).
The physical setting is dream-like, and the transparency of the setting strengthens
the impression that we are watching a hallucinatory illusion, a reverie taking place in
Willy Loman’s head (11).
Finally, Miller formulates the guidelines for the stage movements of the persons in
the play (11-12). When one is in present time, the persons treat the imaginary wall-lines
as solid and actual, but when the past intrudes, the persons step through the wall-lines
as though the lines do not exist.
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R. Zaslavsky/Death of a Salesman
Scene One
Willy is described as entering, “carrying two large sample cases” (12), cases that
represent the burden of his life and the dualities that characterize his life. The two
sample cases that Willy carries represent not only the two sons whom he has brought
into the world, but also the matched and opposing sets of psychic qualities that the two
sons represent. The whole play is built around pairs of conflicting tendencies in Willy’s
soul, conflicting tendencies that are represented by pairs of individuals: Biff and Happy,
Linda and the woman in the hotel, Jenny and Stanley, Bernard and Biff, Miss Forsythe
and Letta (in the restaurant), Willy and Charley, Willy and his father, Willy and Ben,
Charley and Howard, Willy and Dave Singleman, and so forth.
Willy is just over sixty years old (12), precisely sixty-three, as one finds out later (see
57). Willy’s brother Ben is later said to be also in his sixties, and since Ben is appreciably
older than Willy, one is led to assume that Ben is near the end of his sixties, about six
years older than Willy.
Willy is visibly exhausted (12), which means that he is both physically tired from his
trip and spiritually used up or burned out or washed up.
Willy’s wife Linda possesses a façade of joviality that masks the “iron repression”
(12) that enables her to maintain control, to suppress her aspirations, and to maintain
her loyalty to Willy in the face of his irrational, unpredictable, and contradictory
behavior. Willy’s erratic behavior and the “word-sigh” that is his first utterance define
the arc described by the pendulum swing of Willy’s moods: he swings back and forth
between frustration and anger, between the sigh and the shout. Linda has rationalized
the situation to the point at which Willy’s cruelty is seen as the faded expression of his
aspirations, aspirations that she shares with him, but that her dysfunctionality makes
her as incapable of pursuing as his dysfunctionality makes him impotent to achieve.
As the conversation begins, the flute fades away (12-13). Willy is tired and numb
(13). Willy, the quintessential road man, cannot stay on the road any longer: he keeps
going off the road. However, even when he keeps going off the road, he does not doubt
that the road is the right place for him to be. He feels homeless, without a place or
haven to which he can return, and he feels goalless, i.e., he has no particular place to go.
In other words, on the road, he is nowhere; off the road, he is no one. Linda’s life is
devoted to low-level security, without risk, without excitement, without pain. She is a
drudge, washing and waxing and mending. Even when she encourages Willy to stay in
New York, it is more for the sake of safety and subsistence than for leading a fuller life.
It will later emerge that both Biff and Happy, each in his own way, have assimilated
the Loman tendency to be on the road, Biff as a drifter (an unsuccessful version of
Willy’s father and his brother Ben) and Happy as a traveling salesman (much like the
traveling salesman of the old jokes). They both suffer by comparison to Bernard whose
education has taken him to a successful profession. However, even Bernard cannot take
full satisfaction from his accomplishments: for him, as for the play as a whole, Biff’s
failure represents the ultimate failure of human life as such. Biff’s failure is rooted in
Willy’s failure, which in turn is rooted in Willy’s feelings of isolated orphanhood. As
Willy himself says later (51)
Dad left when I was such a baby and I never had a chance to talk to
him and I still feel—kind of temporary about myself.
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Willy lacks the basic security and trust about his place in life that would enable him to
overcome his need to fail, a failure that at least psychologically justifies his being
abandoned. Even though Willy equates his failure with Biff’s failure, even though he
might trace Biff’s failure to a hotel room in 1928, it goes back much farther than that, as
Biff’s propensity—even from childhood—for cheating and stealing shows, and as
Happy’s attitude toward women shows. Indeed, Happy—who has not been free from
stealing himself—describes his own relationships with women exactly as Biff would
describe his kleptomania (cf. 25, 50).
However, for Willy, it can all be traced back to the hotel in Boston. That is why he is
obsessed with New England. Willy says, “I’m the New England man. I’m vital in New
England” (14). Yet the viewers of the play know that he is not. Rather, his fixation on
New England is a fixation on his failure, on the day when Biff saw the sham and
hypocrisy and weakness of Willy’s life. Nevertheless, as fixated as Willy is on the scene
of his shame, his fixation in no way leads him to recognize the falseness of his life. His
doom is that he is dominated by the past without ever learning from it. He will die no
less secure in his illusory view of himself and Biff than he always has been. He will sell
his death as he has sold his life.
To return to the initial conversation between Willy and Linda (12-14), in that
conversation, one sees Willy vacillating between frustrated exhaustion and petty anger.
When Linda inquires about what has happened, Willy denies that anything has
happened, and then turns on her, only to collapse back into his fatigue.
Willy says that he is “tired to the death” (13). He means not only what one
ordinarily means when one speaks of being dead tired, but also that death is his next
step, the only way out of his existential exhaustion. His drive toward this death is
manifested in his recent string of car accidents, accidents that Linda implies are his own
fault. However, in what is typical behavior for Linda, she offers Willy excuses for what
has been happening: the steering, his glasses, his overactive mind (13). She cannot bring
Willy—or herself—to see the emptiness of their lives. She cannot take the initiative to
revitalize their dreary existence.
In response to her comment about his glasses, Willy says, “I see everything” (13).
Sadly, the plain truth is that he sees nothing, that he is blind to the truth of his situation,
blind to his own dilemma and its effect on those around him.
As Linda takes off Willy’s shoes (14), she seems more like a servant than a wife.
Willy responds in what is as close to a thank you as he ever comes: “These goddam arch
supports are killing me” (14). This is an instance—one of many—in which a naturalistic
utterance contains layers of hidden subtextual meaning. In Willy’s case, whatever
supports he has used to maintain himself throughout life are now revealing themselves
as the very opposite of supports, so that what he has used to prop himself up in life is
actually killing him. In other words, Willy’s life has consisted of using things to raise
himself in his own eyes that actually are razing his life out from under him. His face
saving rationalizations are indeed sapping the life blood from him, to such an extent
that his every step in life has led him inexorably to a death in life, and that in turn has
culminated in the death wish that impels Willy to drive himself off the road.
Even when Linda urges Willy to find a way to take himself off the sales road at his
age, she softens his age by saying, “you’re sixty years old” (14). Later, when she talks to
Biff and Happy (57), she will place his age solidly in the sixties, at sixty-three. She
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invariably shrinks in Willy’s presence from confronting him with the unvarnished
truth.
Then Willy reminisces about his former boss, “old man Wagner” (14), whom he
describes as a “prince…a masterful man” (14). This is the first in a series of references to
royalty, power, and greatness that punctuate the play. For example, Linda later says—
in an oddly deflating way—that Willy is not great, yet he is important: “A small man
can be just as exhausted as a great man” (56). This is a long way from saying that a
small man can be just as much a representative of human life as, say, Hamlet can.
Willy himself is obsessed with Biff’s greatness, even comparing Biff to Hercules (6768). Biff, who can be as delusional as his father, in turn later, in the Chop House,
describes Willy as “a prince” (114).
Then, when Linda expresses her pleasure at having the boys back in the house
again, Willy responds (15):
Work a lifetime to pay off a house. You finally own it, and there’s
nobody to live in it.
In the Requiem, Linda will make almost the same remark (139):
I made the last payment on the house today. Today, dear. And
there’ll be nobody home.
Of course, what neither of them realizes is that no one lives in this house and no one
ever will live in this house precisely because no one ever has lived in it. The lack of
genuine human contact and love has long since made this house a sterile wasteland, a
psychological desert.
Biff just has arrived on the morning train, shortly before Willy left to go on the road
to New England (15). In the conversation that follows between Willy and Linda (15-16),
one can see precisely how psychologically crippled Willy is. When he sees his thirtyfour-year old son (whom he has not seen for a long time), instead of welcoming him
home with love, he attacks him, criticizes him. Willy does not—will not—realize that he
has acted in this way. To Willy, he simply has asked Biff if he is making any money. He
does not see how this is an implicit attack against Biff’s worth as a human being. Willy’s
insensitivity is so pervasive and deep that it is almost a reflex action in him. Therefore,
he wants to know if Biff apologized after Willy left, and he has failed to be even dimly
aware that Biff, as Linda says, “was crestfallen” because of his own father’s failure to
reach out to him and embrace him as worthwhile, regardless of his lack of material
success. After all, children spontaneously admire their parents, sons admire their
fathers, and any suggestion that the parent diminishes the child’s worth is devastating
to the child, robbing the child of the solid base of security that might enable the child to
take the risks that are required for the child to carve out its own identity, risks that the
child can take only because of the home to which it can return to revitalize itself for the
trials that it must endure in the outside world. If the parent conveys to the child a sense
that the child is a failure, the child is likely to live up (or down) to that image, feeling
psychological failure even where the child does achieve material success. This is the
lesson of Edwin Arlington Robinson’s “Richard Cory.”
When the parent calls the child “a lazy bum” (16), even if—a moment later—the
parent declares vehemently that “he’s not lazy,” what the child is likely to hear and
internalize is the negative. This is precisely what Willy has done to Biff, attacking him
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for his strengths (e.g., his desire truly to find himself) and praising him for his
weaknesses and failings (e.g., cheating, stealing). Willy’s legacy to his sons is not a
matrix of healthy values with a strong sense of self-identity, but rather is a
contradictory tangle of self-illusion and hypocrisy. For such a child, the world is
indeed—as Ben’s remarks suggest—a jungle, but this is a jungle from which no one
emerges rich.
In addition, Willy’s responses to Biff are pathetically inappropriate. Willy’s
suggested solution to Biff’s current crisis is (16): “I’ll get him a job selling. He could be
big in no time.” Willy never indicates that he has any interest in finding out what Biff
might want or what might be good for Biff as a unique individual.
When Willy and Linda turn to discussing the house in which they live (17-18), one
sees how claustrophobic life is in the Loman household. The house is boxed in by the
towering apartment buildings in the background, there is no fresh air that can circulate
in the home, and the neighborhood smells foul. This physically boxed in—and stifling—
environment is a reflection of the boxed in paralysis that dominates the entire Loman
family. Therefore, no matter how much the Lomans may complain about the
unhealthiness of their outer environment, their home life within that environment is
what is truly unhealthy. Their home’s atmosphere would be stifling, even if the air
outside were clean and pure.
When Linda suggests that they use the car to air out their life by taking a drive in the
country the following weekend, she adds that they even can open the car windshield
(18). Willy corrects her—forgetting what he had said earlier (14) when he described his
accident now by confusing the current year and Biff’s senior year in high school—and
says that car windshields no longer open, and of course he denies having opened the
windshield, as he had stated earlier. At this moment, Willy auditorily hallucinates the
music of the flute, and it frightens him (18). This suggests that the open windshield is
symbolically an open window into the past, and the past frightens Willy. It frightens
him both because it is painful in itself and because it forces on him an
acknowledgement of the failure of the present.
Scene Two
The stage direction that introduces the second scene—which shifts to the room of the
Loman sons as they overhear the end of the conversation that ends the first scene—
provides some essential information about Biff and Happy. Since it has already been
established that Biff is thirty-four-years old (16, 22), since one is now told that Biff is two
years older than Happy (19), one knows that Happy is thirty-two-years old. In addition,
one sees that Biff has inherited his father’s exhaustion: he is already “worn” out, lost,
and unsuccessful. Happy, on the other hand, is more conventionally successful, and he
too is well built, but in a way that exudes sexuality. Therefore, although Biff has been
defeated by the incident in the hotel room, Happy—although unaware of it—has made
what it represents the principle of his life. Furthermore, they are both—although in
different ways—“lost.” Biff is visibly lost, while Happy is superficially triumphant or
victorious. However, Happy’s triumph or victory is hollow.
Happy sees Biff’s defeat. He sees that Biff is “sour on Dad” (20) and that he has lost
“the old confidence” (21). This phrase (“the old confidence”) will recur in the play, but
whether Biff ever truly had it is an open question. In addition, although Happy sees the
defeat, he does not see its meaning, i.e., he does not see its origin in Willy’s inability to
love his children unqualifiedly, as a parent should. However, Biff has some sense of it,
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as he indicates by saying, “I can’t get near him” (21). He even tries to explain Willy’s
failure to Happy (21-22), but he cannot bring himself to do it, merely saying that he
himself should not be blamed for Willy’s malaise.
Then Biff recalls his life as a drifter, rhapsodizing about the land of—but expressing
his conflicted feelings about the life that he led in—the Midwest and Southwest, in
opposition to the emptiness of the East, to which he turns as a sanctuary, only to be
frustrated and paralyzed (22-23). Happy sees Biff as an idealistic poet (23), an
impractical dreamer. Biff knows that his apparent idealism is a mirage masking his
inner confusion, his feeling that he has never matured. As he says, “I’m like a boy”
(23).” Biff, for his part, sees that Happy has the external trappings of what would be
considered success. Happy indeed does have a steady job. He earns a living, rents his
own apartment, owns a car, and is narrowly successful with women. Happy should live
up to his name and be “happy” (cf. 24). However, when Biff asks him if he is happy
(“content”), Happy’s response is, “Hell, no!” (23) Biff and Happy—each in his own
way—are “lonely” (23).
Biff and Happy extol their own physical qualities, as though athleticism alone
should be a guarantee of success (23-24). Biff fixates on the success that they could
achieve in the wide-open spaces of the West if they were together, while Happy
bemoans the compromises that he has to make for what he has (24). The sad truth is that
both are deluded about who they are and what they want. Biff offers the rationalization
for their mutual dissatisfaction and failure by saying, “Hap, the trouble is we weren’t
brought up to grub for money.” (24) Of course, that is precisely what they were brought
up to do, as Happy’s response makes clear. Happy is risk-averse, and he will not take a
chance unless a payoff is guaranteed. As he says, “what can you make out there?” (24)
Therefore, he refuses Biff’s offer—however unrealistic it is—and he promises to accept
it only after he “can make the grade” (24) where he is. In this way, Happy responds to
Biff, as Willy once responded to Ben about Alaska. In so doing, he shows that he is truly
Willy’s son, and he reinforces the analogy by relishing the opportunities that he now
has for womanizing, however meaningless he finds these opportunities for sexual
conquest (24-25). He even has preyed upon the fiancée of one of his superiors at work,
and he justifies his behavior, as he justifies his having taken bribes, mixing ego
aggrandizement and self-loathing: “I hate myself for it. Because I don’t want the girl,
and still, I take it and—I love it!” (25)4 This might be what Biff would say about his
kleptomania.5
Now Biff envisions a way out of his current dilemma, a way that will turn out to be
pure fantasy (25-26). He will appeal to his former employer, Bill Oliver, an employer
whose company Biff quit, and he now claims that Oliver—who has become
wonderfully successful and important (“very big”)—said to him when he quit, “Biff, if
you ever need anything, come to me.” (26) He hopes that Oliver will lend him the
money that will enable him to buy a ranch out West. Happy mindlessly indulges Biff’s
fantasy, asserting of Oliver that “he’d back you.” Happy’s confidence is based on his
assumption, “You’re well liked, Biff.” (26) This assumption is revealing because it
shows how much Happy has assimilated even the language of his father, and he does
4
One could substitute the word “bribe” for the word “girl” here, and the statement would be equally
correct.
5
For Biff, substitute the word “balls” or “fountain pen” for “girl.” One might add parenthetically that if
one were psychiatrically inclined—in a Freudian way—one might see the theft of a cylinder that ejects
liquid and of balls as a dark hint at Biff’s feelings of castration for which the objects stolen compensate
him. That he stole other things too does not blunt this suggestion.
10
R. Zaslavsky/Death of a Salesman
not fail to add that Biff will have “any babe you want” (26). Suddenly, Biff momentarily
comes down to earth. He indicates that he quit because he thought that Oliver was
going to fire him because he “stole that carton of basketballs.” (26) This dash of cold
water on the fantasy fades quickly. Both brothers create a fiction to suppress the reality.
Happy says, “Oh, he probably forgot that long ago. It’s almost ten years . . . . Anyway,
he didn’t really fire you.” Biff ratifies the fantasy by saying, “I know he thought the
world of me” (26).
As they prepare for bed, the two sons overhear Willy downstairs hallucinating a
conversation with Biff that took place when Biff was in high school (an hallucination
that will continue in the next scene). Biff’s last words before drifting off into sleep are an
indictment of Willy: “That selfish, stupid . . .” (27)
Scene Three
As Biff and Happy fall asleep, the apartment buildings fade away and are replaced
by leaves (27). This sets the scene for Willy’s first major past hallucination. The leaves
are one of the signifiers that one is entering into the past. This opening of the portal to
the past is underscored when Willy “speaks through the wall” (28) of the house.
In his hallucination or recollection of Biff’s senior year in high school, Willy is
admonishing Biff for allowing himself to be diverted from his schooling by his pursuit
of girls (27-28). Willy’s failure here is that he cannot help treating his admonishment as
something of a joke and indicating that he actually takes pride in Biff’s burgeoning
sexuality. In addition, what he means to encourage in school is Biff’s athletic activities,
especially his play on the football team.
Biff and Happy are doing their obligatory chore of washing the car (a Chevrolet, as
one knows), and Willy is approvingly offering them advice on how to do the job right
(28). Then he reminds the boys that he and they will need to prune one of the trees on
the property. The Loman neighborhood of 1928 is decidedly suburban and green, in
sharp contrast to the grimy asphalt urban neighborhood of 1945.
Willy asks the boys to come into the house because he has “a surprise” for them (28).
When they enter, Happy is carrying the car washing paraphernalia, but Biff is carrying
a football. When Happy asks Willy where the surprise is, Willy tells him that it is in the
back seat of the car.6 Happy goes to fetch the gift from the car (offstage), and Biff calls
out to him to say what the gift is. Happy joyously announces (from offstage) that it is an
autographed punching bag, something—as Biff says—that both boys wanted,
something that Willy now says is “the finest thing for the timing” (29).
This is a gift whose meaning goes beyond its literal purpose: it is at least a doubleedged sword. Not only is a punching bag a practice tool for improving one’s reflexes,
but also it is a device for discharging one’s anger, an appropriate item to bring into a
household that is rife with anger. In addition, a punching bag is a metaphor for a
person who is abused by another, and hence it is an appropriate expression of Willy’s
persona: he treats all those around him as punching bags on whom he vents his rage.
When it is clear that the punching bag is primarily for Biff, Happy makes a forlorn
attempt to be noticed. He says, “I’m losing weight, you notice, Pop?” (29) He will repeat
this remark again and again (cf. 33, 50).
6
It is odd that the boys did not notice the object on the seat of the car while they were washing it. Perhaps
they were not being as attentive to doing the chore well as Willy’s praise of them earlier indicated, i.e.,
perhaps they were playing around as much as doing the work.
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R. Zaslavsky/Death of a Salesman
Furthermore, the reference to timing is important. Willy has no sense of timing or of
time. The major representative of timing and time in the play is Ben, who is constantly
consulting his watch and talking about time.
In addition, one sees that Biff has borrowed—his euphemism for “stolen”—a
football from the high school locker room. Far from berating Biff for the theft, Willy acts
as a supportive co-conspirator, rationalizing the theft as justified in the service of Biff’s
need to practice. Not only that, but Willy asserts that Biff actually will be praised for
stealing: “Coach’ll probably congratulate you on your initiative” (30).
Willy’s delusional mental state in this regard, as in so many others, will be revealed
later, when he says (41):
What is he stealing? He’s giving it back, isn’t he? Why is he
stealing? What did I tell him? I never in my life told him anything
but decent things.
This shows how false and self-serving Willy’s vision of events is. This emerges even in
the earlier conversation here, when he says, “Someday I’ll have my own business” (30).
Willy never will—and never could—have his own business: Willy is no Uncle Charley.
Indeed, it is precisely Uncle Charley’s success that Willy denigrates, even though
Willy will come to depend on that success (and the generosity of Charley) for his
livelihood. In denigrating Charley, Willy invokes his favorite principle, the principle of
likeability (30):
Charley is not—liked. He’s liked, but he’s not—well liked.
Later, Charley will tell Willy how false that principle is (97):
Why must everybody like you? Who liked J. P. Morgan? Was he
impressive? In a Turkish bath he’d look like a butcher. But with his
pockets on he was very well liked. Now listen, Willy, I know you
don’t like me, and nobody can say I’m in love with you, but I’ll give
you a job because—just for the hell of it, put it that way.
In addition, Charley puts his money where his mouth and heart are. Charley is
balanced and humane, successful and comfortable enough with himself, outwardly
hard-hearted but inwardly generous. It is his inner generosity that has enabled Bernard
to develop as well as he has. Charley is the incarnation of common human decency.
As Miller said (CP, Introduction)
The most decent man in Death of a Salesman is a capitalist (Charley)
whose aims are not different from Willy Loman’s. The great
difference between them is that Charley is not a fanatic. Equally,
however, he has learned how to live without . . . frenzy . . . which
Willy chases to his end. And even as Willy’s sons are unhappy
men, Charley’s boy, Bernard, works hard, attends to his studies,
and attains a worthwhile objective. These people are all of the same
class, the same background, the same neighborhood.
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The presence of Charley in the play shows why Willy is only a salesman, and not the
salesman. Charley too is a salesman. However, Charley does not sell himself, because
he realizes that to sell oneself is to reduce oneself to an inhuman commodity. Indeed,
one of the ironies of the play is that Charley presents himself as a cynic, but he is filled
with compassion and humane feeling, while Willy presents himself as an idealist, but
he behaves in a low, crude, empty, and inhumane way.
Willy promises Biff and Happy that he will take them on the road with him to New
England that summer. Of course, he has no genuine intention of taking them along. He
probably has made this promise before, and failed to deliver on it. Therefore, seeing Biff
“practicing passing the ball” (31), Willy changes the subject, and asks Biff if he is
nervous about the upcoming big game and about how he is treated at school now that
he has been made captain of the football team (31). Happy characteristically sees only
the trail of girls that Biff now has “behind him everytime the classes change” (32). Then
Biff promises Willy that during the game, he will score a special touchdown for him,
and that he will signal Willy by taking off his helmet. Willy’s response is, “Oh, wait’ll I
tell them in Boston!” (32) This shows that he will not be taking Biff along to tell his own
story of his own accomplishments.
Scene Four
In the stage direction, Bernard’s entrance “in knickers” (32) is followed by a
description of Bernard.
First, Bernard “is younger than Biff” (32). This indicates that Bernard is an excellent
student: since he is in the same grade in school as Biff, he must have skipped at least
one grade. Both Biff and Bernard need to study for the rigorous New York State Regents
Examinations, and Biff is in danger of failing mathematics, and hence of not graduating
on time (32). There is no indication that Biff has failed in school before. Indeed, part of
Bernard’s admiration for Biff—even if Biff is a football hero—must be Biff’s being
generally a good student. Biff’s failure in senior mathematics seems to be caused by the
class’s being the last class of the day when his mind is presumably on the football
practice to which he must go immediately afterward (cf. 118).
Second, Bernard is “earnest and loyal” (32), i.e., he is a reliable and good friend. This
contrasts strongly with the Lomans, not one of whom is capable of genuine loyalty and
friendship.
Third, he is “worried” (32). This is an indication that he is concerned about Biff and
Biff’s future, since Biff is what must be the cause of his worry. After all, Bernard has
little to worry about with regard to himself and his own future.
When Bernard enters, Willy again shows his insensitivity and hypocrisy. He calls
the well-meaning Bernard “anemic” (32, 33), and he means this as a judgment of
Bernard’s character, not his health. In addition, he calls him a “pest” (33), as though his
behavior in the service of helping Biff is unwarranted ‘pestering.’7 Given all Bernard’s
positive qualities, qualities that he has to some extent inherited and learned from his
father, Willy’s treatment of him is self-serving bullying.
When Bernard leaves, “the Lomans laugh” at him (33). Then Willy and Biff
denigrate Bernard in the same words that Willy had used to denigrate Charley (33; cf.
30):
7
Later (40), Willy will add insult to injury by calling Bernard “a worm.”
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R. Zaslavsky/Death of a Salesman
WILLY: Bernard is not well liked, is he?
BIFF: He’s liked, but he’s not well liked.
Biff shows here linguistically that he is indeed a chip off the old block, however much
he may complain about his father later. Happy, who is a dim satellite of this pair, can do
no more than weakly lend support to their comments, eventually trying to gain
attention by announcing again that he has lost weight (33; cf. 39, 116).
In the course of this conversation, Willy cannot help inflating his prowess as a
salesman, blustering about how successful he is. The observer of the action (whether
watcher in the theater or reader of the text) knows how fallacious this boasting is (cf. 3435).
Scene Five
In the course of the scene, as in all scenes of the past, the persons in the play walk
through the wall-lines (33, 35).
Linda enters, carrying a load of laundry (33), which gives her the appearance of a
drudge, however much more energy she has in 1928 than she will have in 1945.
Linda’s first concern is how well the car (a Chevrolet) performed on Willy’s sales
trip. Willy’s reply is, “Chevrolet, Linda, is the greatest car ever built.” (34) Then Willy
chides the boys for not helping their mother to carry the laundry.
Then Linda tells Biff that a large group of his friends, presumably his teammates, are
waiting for him in the cellar. Biff replies, “Ah, when Pop comes home they can wait!”
(34) At this moment in his life, Biff is devoted to his father, a devotion that will shatter
against the brutal reality of his father’s infidelity and hypocrisy in the summer to come.
Then, when Willy begins to boast about his success on the sales trip from which he
just has returned, Linda asks him to slow down so that she can figure out concretely
(with pencil and paper) how much he earned (34-35). Willy begins by claiming
outlandishly that he has sold twelve hundred gross in New England (five hundred in
Providence, and seven hundred in Boston) (35). When push comes to shove, he admits
that it is actually two hundred gross, which reduces the commission that Linda initially
had calculated (“Two hundred and twelve dollars”) by almost two-thirds to “seventy
dollars and some pennies”).8 Nevertheless, she reassures him with the comment,
“That’s very good” (35).
However, they now must face figuring up what their debts are that must be paid out
of that seventy plus dollars. When the debts are enumerated (35-36), the total comes to
about a hundred twenty dollars, almost fifty dollars more than Willy made. Hence,
even in 1928, which Willy later presents as some kind of financial golden age in their
lives (cf. 82), Willy is already having trouble making enough money to pay the bills.
In addition, when Linda listed a repair to the car’s carburetor as one of the bills to be
paid, Willy responded, “That goddam Chevrolet, they ought to prohibit the
manufacture of that car!” (36) This is the same car whose virtues he had mere moments
before been extolling (cf. 34). Willy is incapable of saying anything that does not speak
to his ego’s needs of the moment, and he is blind to the contradictions that pervade
even his most casual utterances.
8
The financial mathematics here is obscure.
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R. Zaslavsky/Death of a Salesman
Indeed, in a single speech, Willy first boasts that he will make more money the
following week because he “is very well liked in Hartford” (36), and then—in the very
next sentence—he excuses his lack of sales success by saying, “Linda, people don’t seem
to take to me” (36). Willy is a mass of confusion and self-contradiction.
Then Willy—in his hallucinated recollection—seems to be on the verge of seeing
how hollow he is (36-37). He tells Linda that his clients laugh at him. Linda tries to give
him support by denying the truth of this observation, even going so far as to praise him
as a wage earner, even though the earned wage for which she praises him has already
been shown to be inadequate to meet their needs. Willy rebuts her desperate attempt to
prop him up by asserting that he works longer and harder than others do, yet he makes
less money than they do (37). He admits, “I talk too much” (37), contrasting himself in
this respect with Charley (Bernard’s father) who speaks little and yet is respected. Linda
continues trying to reassure him, but he goes on to say that he jokes too much, adding
that he is fat.9 Linda’s final comments are that she thinks that Willy is handsome and
that their sons idolize him.
Behind Linda’s remarks, one hears the laughter of a woman, laughter that one is
initially led to think is laughter at Willy. At the same time—as one discovers
momentarily (cf. 39)—Linda is laughing affectionately as she speaks. Then Willy tells
Linda that when he is “on the road” (38), he thinks only of her. As if to underscore the
lie that this is, the woman’s laughter in the background becomes louder as Willy’s mind
now drifts into recalling his encounter with this woman the week after the big game
(i.e., the week after his conversation with Linda). As Willy continues speaking to Linda,
the laughing woman appears more clearly out of the shadows, and Willy’s
hallucination momentarily shifts toward her and away from Linda.
The woman’s first comment reveals that she and Willy are having an affair, and that
the affair has been going on for some time (38). His paramour finds him amusing, not
laughable. When she says, “I’ll put you through to the buyers” (39), one sees that at
least initially Willy seduced her in order to exploit her. However, the affair—if not an
outright threat to Willy’s marriage—has become something more. Finally, the woman
thanks Willy for the stockings that he has given her.
Just as the memory of the laughter of Linda prompted the memory of the laughter of
Willy’s paramour, so now the memory of the mention of stockings rebounds into the
previous week’s conversation, during which stockings are also at issue.
Scene Six
The conversation between Willy and Linda that was interrupted by Willy’s flash
forward memory now continues. The hallucinated later memory explains why Willy
suddenly becomes angry that Linda is mending stockings. This is not only Willy’s
reaction to a visible manifestation of his household’s neediness, but also it is an
expression of the guilt that he feels about his affair (within which he manages to afford
to buy stockings for his paramour) (39; cf. 121).
Bernard enters hurriedly, asking where Biff is (39). His concern is that if Biff does
not study with him, Biff will fail his Regents examinations. Willy’s response is telling.
He tries to browbeat Bernard into cheating on the exam: “You’ll give him the answers!”
(40) When Bernard is shocked at the seriousness of this suggestion, Willy does an about
9
This comment by Willy about his weight adds irony to Happy’s harping on his loss of weight.
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R. Zaslavsky/Death of a Salesman
face and threatens to “whip” Biff, something that he repeats and then repeats again a
moment later (cf. 121). When Linda interposes that Biff has to return the football
(without actually saying that he stole it), Willy wonders why Biff is “taking everything”
(40).
Now Linda expresses her concern about Biff’s mistreatment of the girls whom he
dates and about his “driving the car without a license” (40). Willy barely can keep
separated the conversation of the moment and the echo of his New England paramour’s
laughter that hovers over him. When he says again that he will whip Biff, he is speaking
to Linda, but when he says, “Shut up” (40), he is speaking to the hallucinated laughter,
although it seems to be addressed to Linda, and Bernard takes it as directed at him.
Willy orders Bernard out of the house, but Bernard—still concerned about Biff,
despite Biff’s faults—says that Biff will fail mathematics if he does not study. When
Linda agrees with the departed Bernard, Willy responds hysterically, “There’s nothing
the matter with him!” (40) Then Willy turns his venom on Bernard, who is only trying
to help, and describes him to Linda as a “worm” (40), as opposed to Biff, who has
“spirit, personality” (40).
Willy’s lashing out like this makes Linda burst into tears, and she is so upset that she
cannot stay in the room. With her departure as Willy is speaking, the past recedes from
Willy’s mind, and—as the disappearance of the leaves and the appearance of apartment
buildings indicates—Willy alone in the present (1945) finishes the speech that he has
been recalling from the past. The scene culminates with Willy’s delusional remark—to
which reference was made above (cf. page 12)—“I never in my life told him anything
but decent things” (41; cf. 29-30).
Scene Seven
Back in the present, Happy comes down to the kitchen, and he tries to calm Willy
down as he rants about Linda’s endangering her health by waxing the floors. Happy
asks his father why he returned early from his sales trip. Willy replies that he became
frightened when he almost “hit a kid in Yonkers” (41).
Then Willy speaks about his older brother Ben, whom he describes as a “genius”
and as “success incarnate” (41). Willy bemoans his own failure to take up Ben’s offer to
take him to Alaska where Ben made his fortune in diamonds.10 When Happy asks how
Ben made his fortune, Willy says, “he walked into a jungle, and comes out, the age of
twenty-one, and he’s rich!” (41)
This suggests that the world at large is a jungle. The jungle, on the one hand,
represents unlimited possibility, but on the other hand, it represents a hostile
environment that can be conquered only with ruthlessness and force. The domestic
equivalent of the jungle is the woods, but—as Willy says—“The woods are burning!”
(41) In other words, the field of possibilities is shrinking to such an extent that human
achievement is virtually impossible. At least, that would be Willy’s rationalization.
10
What Willy seems to forget is that Ben never made it to Alaska, but—in a Wrong-Way Corrigan
maneuver—he headed south and ended up in Africa, where he actually made his fortune in diamonds
(cf. 48).
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R. Zaslavsky/Death of a Salesman
Scene Eight
Charley enters dressed for sleep, one neighbor visiting another. Charley’s bluntness
should not blind one to his feelings of compassion for Willy.11 Charley has overheard
Willy speaking to himself, and he is concerned enough to come next door to investigate.
The two men indicate that Happy should go, and when he does, Charley offers to play
cards with Willy, ignoring Willy’s saying to him that he is “ignorant” (42).
In the conversation in which Charley and Willy engage as they play cards (43-44),
when Charley attempts to reach out to him, Willy reacts negatively, even scornfully.
When Charley offers him a job, Willy responds that he has “a good job” (43). Willy tries
to push Charley away, but when Charley asks Willy if he should go, Willy—in a rare
moment of candor—silently acknowledges that he needs Charley’s ear (43). Willy
confesses his frustration over Biff’s behavior and his exhaustion in dealing with it: “I
got nothin’ to give him, Charley, I’m clean, I’m clean.” (43) By “clean,” Willy means
“empty,” “resourceless.” When Charley tells Willy, “Forget about him” (43), he is not
being hard-hearted. Rather, this is his way of saying that Biff is an adult who can take
care of himself, and that Willy needs to let Biff be his own person. In other words, it is
his way of saying that instead of trying to dominate Biff, he should allow Biff the
freedom to find himself without being judged.
This moment of almost genuine communication does not last. Willy quickly changes
the subject by bragging about the new ceiling that he has installed in the living room.
However, when Charley shows genuine interest in how Willy accomplished this
project, Willy takes his inquiry as a veiled insult and lashes out at Charley again (44).
Willy cannot take the simple joy in his own work that Charley offers him. Instead, he
rails at Charley for not being able to use tools, implying that he is unmanly and calling
him disgusting. What lies underneath Willy’s refusal to share his accomplishment with
Charley is Willy’s awareness that Charley does not need to know how to use tools,
because he has enough money to be able to pay others to do his home repairs for him.
Willy cannot afford this, so he needs to use tools. This is a symptom of Willy’s jealousy
of Charley.
Scene Nine
As Willy and Charley continue playing cards, Willy hallucinates his older brother,
Ben, and he speaks to the hallucination, which confuses Charley who takes his remarks
to Ben as addressed to him (44-47), initially wondering aloud to Willy whether Willy
has just called him “Ben” (44). Willy excuses his lapse by fabricating the excuse that
Charley reminded him of his brother (45). The subconscious basis for the confusion is
that both Charley and Ben are successes.
Ben is described—in the stage direction—as “stolid” and sure of himself, as exotic
and “authoritative.” In short, Ben is everything that Willy is not.12
As soon as Ben enters (as his theme music is heard in the background), he looks
around, then—what is one of his most characteristics habits—“looks at his watch” (44).
11
Charley has raised Bernard alone—without a wife, although whether she has died or left is never stated
(but the former is the more likely). That he has done such a fine job of raising his son under such trying
circumstances is a tribute to Charley’s humanness and humaneness.
12
In addition, Ben treats Willy in a way different from the way in which others treat him. He is unique in
addressing Willy always as “William,” almost as if he were Willy’s father rather than his older brother.
17
R. Zaslavsky/Death of a Salesman
Indeed, his first remark is, “I only have a few minutes” (45). Therefore, from the outset,
Ben is connected with time, with timeliness, with opportunity.
When Charley wonders whether Willy has heard from Ben recently, Willy reports
that several weeks before, Ben’s wife had sent them the news of his death in Africa. To
Charley’s further inquiry whether that means any kind of inheritance for Willy, Willy
says that it does not, because Ben “had seven sons” (45). This suggests that Ben is the
incarnation, not only of time, not only of success, but also of fertility. He has produced
only sons, no daughters, and by siring seven, he breaks the crippling cycle of twos that
has bedeviled the Loman family.
Even though Willy cannot know Ben very well—perhaps because he does not know
him very well—Willy idolizes (and idealizes) Ben. Willy (the younger brother) believes
that Ben (the older brother) knows all the answers (45). This is parallel to Happy’s (the
younger brother’s) believing that Biff (the older brother) is a poet and idealist.
The remainder of the simultaneous card game with Charley and hallucinated
memory of conversing with Ben is marked by increasing confusion on Willy’s part
(which makes him lash out at Charley in anger), and the upshot of the
miscommunication is that Charley feels driven to leave (46-47).
Scene Ten
In his memory, Willy wanders toward Ben through the wall-line. This hallucinated
movement is a reflection of Willy’s actual movement after he follows Charley outside,
where Linda finds him in the next scene (cf. 52). Now that Willy is alone, he can plunge
fully into his hallucinated memory of the visit that Ben made to the Loman household
during Biff’s senior year in high school (47-52).
One of the more charged moments in this memory comes when Willy begs Ben to
tell him about their father, whom Willy barely remembers, except for his beardedness
and “some kind of high music.” (48) Ben reminds him that the music came from one of
the flutes that their father made and sold. Then Ben says that when their father went on
his sales trips, he took the whole family with him (49):
We would start in Boston, and he’d toss the whole family into the
wagon, and then he’d drive the team right across the country . . . .
With one gadget he made more in a week than a man like you
could make in a lifetime.
This idyllic picture is a terrible indictment of Willy and his way of life. It also contains
the irony that the entire Loman saga that started, as it were, in Boston will end in Boston
too. Willy is oblivious to this, and he claims that he is bringing up his children in the
same way. Of course, the true legacy of his father, the one that he truly passes on, is
abandonment. Willy and Ben’s father left home, never to be seen again, when Willy was
just under four-years old (47). Ben was much older, and so he remembers more about
their father than Willy does. How accurate Ben’s fondness for his father is may be
deduced from the fact that he went to Alaska to find their father there, but he ended up
in Africa (48). Ben’s search for his father looks more like an attempt to run as far away
from him as he could. This too is what Willy is driving his sons toward. By separating
himself so decisively from their father, Ben was able to achieve material success.
Ben represents the material success that Willy never achieved, a success that Ben
achieved as a result of his global wandering. Ben seems to have achieved also the
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R. Zaslavsky/Death of a Salesman
happiness that neither the ironically misnamed Happy nor any other Loman ever has
achieved. The one Loman who has inherited some of the wanderlust that drove Ben is
Biff. Both Ben and Biff are travelers, and both are called by one-syllable names that
begin with “B.” Of course, Ben is the master of time, while Biff—as one discovers later—
merely has served time, in more than one sense. One of the nagging questions of the
play is whether Biff ever will master himself, as Ben has mastered time. Ben walked into
the jungle when he was seventeen, and—more important—he walked out of it (48). Biff
is now (in 1928) seventeen. Ben tells Biff that unless he is ruthless, Biff never will make
it out of whatever jungle he is in or into which he goes (49):
Never fight fair with a stranger, boy. You’ll never get out of the
jungle that way.
By suggesting that Biff is already in the jungle, Ben indicates that from his point of
view, the whole world is a jungle. Ben seems to have a totally amoral worldview, and
such cold-blooded aggressiveness frightens Linda (50).
The first apartment building is being constructed (50) that will usher in the
neighborhood’s next phase of development, in which the homes will be dwarfed by a
dominating array of such buildings. Willy sends his sons over to the building site to
steal materials that he says will be used to repair his front stoop. As he enters, Charley
sees them leave on their errand and expresses his fear that they will be caught and
thrown in jail. Despite Linda’s sharing Charley’s concern, Ben laughs at such
considerations, and Willy boasts about how much material the boys already have stolen
from the site, calling them “fearless characters” (50). The following interchange
crystallizes the morality divide that separates the Lomans from Charley (50-51):
CHARLEY: Willy, the jails are full of fearless characters.
BEN, clapping Willy on the back, with a laugh at Charley: And the stock
exchange, friend!
For Ben, the only difference between a convict and a stockbroker (or businessperson) is
that the convict has been caught. This sentiment will be echoed later by Stanley, the
waiter in Frank’s Chop House (100):
HAPPY: I think we’re going into business together.
STANLEY: Great! That’s the best for you. Because a family business,
you know what I mean?—that’s the best.
HAPPY: That’s what I think.
STANLEY: ‘Cause what’s the difference? Somebody steals? It’s in the
family. Know what I mean?
They have been bred to know what he means. Stanley, almost echoing Ben, sees stealing
everywhere in the contemporary jungle in which morality must be rendered irrelevant
if one wishes to emerge triumphant (and materially successful) from that jungle.
Willy reaches out to Ben in a rare moment of self awareness, declaring that their
father abandoned him, so that “I still feel—kind of temporary about myself.” (51)
Willy’s psychological feeling of abandonment, his psychological orphanhood, is what
fuels his anger and despair.
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The scene ends with Willy’s desperately shouting—as a way of affirming that he has
imbued his sons with Ben’s philosophy of the jungle—“I was right! I was right! I was
right!” (52) Of course, to an outsider, it is a puzzle what it is about which Willy is right.
The only legacy that he has bequeathed his sons is failure and frustration: he has made
them feel as much like orphans with their father present as he has felt with his father
absent.
Excursus
It must be kept in mind that the jungle of which Ben speaks adumbrates the jungle
of which Miller writes. That Millerian jungle is primarily a psychological jungle, not
only a social jungle. The Millerian jungle is primarily the jungle inside one’s head, not
only the jungle in the outside world. Of course, the Millerian jungle has interpersonal
consequences, but its source is in one’s mind.
In other words, as already has been indicated, what Miller presents is first and
foremost a psychological drama. Its essential interiority is most inferable from the two
time points that Miller chooses as frames of reference, namely 1928 and 1945. These two
time points are presented almost in a vacuum. The events that took place between those
dates seem to exist in what might be called a never-never-land, and most of the persons
in the play—like Peter Pan’s lost boys—are children who never grow up. What most
emphasizes the never-never-land quality of the world of the play is that at least three
major socio-political events that occurred between 1928 and 1945 are absent from the
play’s universe of discourse. Those missing events are the stock market crash of 1929,
the Great Depression of the 1930’s, and the Second World War. Two of the three
references to the war (cf. 99)—namely Stanley’s wish that he could have been taken into
the Army during the War (so that he by now would be dead) and Happy’s reference to
the recipe that he brought back from overseas—are so incidental, so apparently lacking
in any substantive connection to the rest of the play that they seem to be there only to
call attention to what is missing in the rest of the play.13 By calling attention in this way
to what is missing, Miller is emphasizing the pure interiority of the play, i.e., he is
emphasizing the purely psychological world and perspective of the play.
Scene Eleven
Linda comes out to Willy (who is dressed for sleep) in the yard and breaks into his
reverie as he is echoing his final remark (“I was right!”) to Ben (52). Willy looks up at
the sky, commenting that it is barely visible, presumably because of the towering
apartment buildings that now encircle the home.
When Willy asks Linda about the diamond watch fob that Ben gave him, Linda
reminds him that he pawned it a dozen or so years before, which would have been in
1932 or 1933, to pay for a vocational (radio) correspondence course for Biff of which Biff
gives no indication of having made use (52-53). This interchange is revealing in two
ways. First, it shows that even Ben’s gifts are linked to the clock, to time. Second, it
13
The third reference, namely Biff’s having said that he “left home before the war” (22) is equally
incidental.
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shows again that Willy’s financial situation always has been precarious.14 Now Willy
drifts for a moment back into his hallucination about Ben and wanders away from
Linda muttering (53).
Biff (“in his pajamas”) comes down from his room to inquire about the noise. When
he questions his mother about Willy’s disconnected mental state and about how long it
has been happening, Linda’s only concern is to keep Willy from hearing them talk. As
they talk, Linda comes as close to lashing out as she ever does, when she reprimands
Biff for not being around to do something about Willy’s condition (53).
When Biff asks his mother why she never wrote him about Willy’s deteriorating
mental condition (53), she tells him that she could not write to him because “For over
three months you had no address.” (54) Biff lies to her, saying, “I was on the move”
(54). One finds out later (cf. 131) that during this three-month period, Biff was in jail for
stealing a suit in Kansas City. Why he stole a suit is anyone’s guess—he certainly could
not have had any need for it. Even at a distance, then, his anger works in him
subconsciously, and his kleptomania is an outward expression of that anger that he
feels toward both his father and himself.
Now Happy joins the family downstairs, but he is lost in the swirling emotions of
the others (53 ff.), and he can do little more than stand by, making an occasional remark
that shows how out of his depth he is and how out of touch he is.
Biff’s unwillingness to face the fact that his mother is aging (54-55) shows his own
resistance to growing up, his own resistance to becoming psychologically mature. His
anger paralyzes him. Until he can let his anger go, he cannot reconstruct his personality
in a healthy way. As long as he clings to his anger, he remains in the suffocating
shadow of his father. To be free, he must release his anger, and he must do it himself,
because it is evident that he can count on no help from Willy.
Biff says that he “just can’t take hold” (54). Since this remark comes so close to
Willy’s remark about feeling temporary about himself (cf. 51), one can see that this is
Biff’s version of that same feeling of abandonment.
When Linda says that if Biff has no feeling for Willy, he can have none for her, one
sees that she has no independent identity of her own apart from Willy (55). She asserts
this despite the fact—as Biff reminds her—that he abuses her (55-56). Biff tells her that
Willy has no respect for her. Of course, Biff knows better than anyone else how little
Willy does respect her: even seventeen years later, he has not forgotten his heart
wrenching discovery of Willy’s infidelity.
Biff declares that Willy’s inadequacy is especially evident if one compares him to
Charley (56). Linda’s angry retort is, “make Charley your father, Biff.” (56) This reveals
that Willy and Charley are alternative father figures, with Charley the clear winner in
Biff’s eyes. However, Linda leaps to Willy’s defense, asserting what many have taken at
face value as the meaning of the play (56):
I don’t say he’s a great man. Willy Loman never made a lot of
money . . . . He’s not the finest character that ever lived. But he’s a
human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention
must be paid . . . . Attention, attention must be finally paid to such
a person . . . . The man is exhausted . . . . A small man can be just as
exhausted as a great man.
14
This is the closest that the play comes to alluding to the Depression. However, since Willy’s financial
situation already was precarious in 1928, his need here cannot be attributable to the Depression.
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This cannot be taken at face value. If a terrible thing is happening to Willy, it is his own
fault. If attention has to be paid to him, it has to be paid so that one avoids the
psychological trap into which he has fallen. If a small man can be just as exhausted as a
great man, then one can conclude from that only that the psychological exhaustion of
contemporary life crosses all social and economic lines. Looked at objectively, Linda’s
apparent encomium is less a tribute to Willy than it is an indictment of life in the
contemporary world.
When Linda reveals that Willy has lost his salary and is back on commission alone,
she says that Willy’s strength of character can be seen from his willingness to borrow
fifty dollars a week from Charley and pretend that it is his salary (56-57). In other
words, according to Linda, Willy’s strength of character consists in his being a beggar
and a hypocrite. She is as much a victim of illusion as Willy is, and her judgment of
Willy is anything but authoritative.
In the conversation that follows (57-58), one sees that Linda is unaware of the cause
of the breach between Willy and Biff, unaware that Biff’s having discovered Willy’s
infidelity caused Willy to throw Biff out of the house and into his life of aimless
wandering. Biff has kept this dark secret to himself, and it has eroded him
psychologically: his continued kleptomania is one manifestation of that erosion.
Linda finally expresses her fear of what is happening to Willy: she tells the boys that
Willy has “been trying to kill himself.” (58) She adds that his recurring automobile
accidents have led the insurance investigator to conclude—on the basis of “evidence”—
that “all these accidents in the last year—weren’t—weren’t—accidents.” (58) Happy’s
response is denial. However, when Linda mentions “a woman” (58), Biff recoils in fear
that she does indeed know about Willy’s adultery. He restrains himself from reacting,
and it turns out that the woman to whom Linda referred was a witness to one of Willy’s
car crashes (59). Therefore, there seems no reason to fail to see that Willy is drifting
toward self-destruction, another legacy that he has passed on to Biff. To dispel even
Biff’s doubt that this could be true, Linda now reveals that she has found the hidden
pipe that Willy—she is convinced—plans to use to gas himself to death (59-60). At the
same time, Linda reveals her abysmal ignorance of the dynamics of her own husband
and family (60):
I know every thought in his mind. . . . I tell you he put his whole
life into you and you’ve turned your backs on him.
All the events of the play show how divorced this is from reality.
Biff—whose love for his mother washes over him in the face of this crisis—offers to
‘go straight’ by moving back home and going to work in some kind of regular business,
even though he fully recognizes that he does not “fit in business” (60). Happy—who
painfully feels his position as the less favored son—scorns Biff’s promise and points out
to Biff that Biff is too irresponsible to make good on such a promise (60-61). As Happy
puts it—deriding Biff’s whistling as a sign of his unsuitability for normal work—“in the
business world some of them think you’re crazy” (61). Then, inadvertently proving the
accuracy of Happy’s assessment, Biff says that the Lomans “don’t belong in this
nuthouse of a city” (61). Instead, they should seek the great outdoors and engage in
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healthy manual labor—as opposed presumably to the emptiness of an occupation like
selling. In the wide open spaces, Biff says, “A carpenter is allowed to whistle!” (61)15
Scene Twelve
When Willy enters, he reveals that he has been overhearing at least the end of the
preceding conversation (61).
Willy continues to be unable to relate to Biff in any way other than out of anger,
even though that anger is simply the expression of the guilt that he feels because Biff
caught him in his adultery. Hence, he pushes Biff away again, telling him to leave and
return to his beloved open spaces (“the West”) (61). When Happy tries to console him,
he ignores Happy’s comment and responds to his own earlier comment about being
laughed at (61; cf. 37). When Biff tries to calm him down, Willy accuses Biff of insulting
him, even though Biff spoke barely a word (62).
Now Biff improvises the harebrained scheme that he will try to borrow money from
his former employer, Bill Oliver, so that he can start his own business, a sporting goods
business that Happy at least seems to envision as a Loman Brothers partnership (62-65).
This scheme is as delusional as so much of what informs the life of the Lomans. One
later finds out that Biff was a low level shipping clerk whom Oliver would hardly
remember (cf. 106-109, 110-11), no matter how much Biff tries to rewrite the past by
saying, “He did like me. Always liked me.” (64)
When Biff swears by Jesus, Willy admonishes him not to “curse in this house!” (63)
In response, Biff recoils, saying, “Since when did you get so clean?” (63) This allusion to
Willy’s infidelity is left unclarified, and Willy’s fear that Biff will reveal the secret that
he holds leads Willy to lash out at him again. However, Happy intercedes and leads
them back into their fantasy about Biff’s business plans, something onto which Willy
too latches (63-64). However, Willy’s anger is only just below the surface, waiting to
find an object. Therefore, when Linda makes a harmless remark in support of the
fantasy, Willy yells at her for interrupting. Biff rushes to her protection, so Willy lashes
out at Biff. When Linda tries to defuse the situation, Willy turns on her, and Biff
becomes outraged at what he considers abuse of his mother (65). This outburst—that
reinforces Willy’s guilt feelings—deflates Willy, causing him to go upstairs.
Linda—who never gains an awareness of the undercurrents that surround her—tries
to encourage Biff to mollify Willy, after which she retires to her room (65-66). As Biff
and Happy prepare for bed and walk upstairs, they engage again in baseless fantasizing
about the future (66).
Scene Thirteen
Linda calls to Willy to warn him about the leaking shower in the bathroom, which
prompts Willy to rail against the quality of the plumbing (66). When he accidentally
blurts out that it was he who installed it, before he can face the fact that it is his slipshod
work that is at fault, he stops in mid-sentence. Willy can as little repair his family as he
can the plumbing, and his family is as leaky as the shower.
15
Biff’s habit of whistling is a link with his grandfather’s flute: it is his physiological reflex toward the
freedom that he cannot achieve in any other way (cf. 77, 90). Even Willy recognizes this, as he indicates
with his first remark in the next scene, which begins “Even your grandfather . . . .” (61)
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Now Linda turns the conversation to Biff’s plan to see Bill Oliver, now wondering
“if Oliver will remember him” (67), even though she had only a few moments before
said that “Oliver always thought the highest of him” (65). That questionable assertion—
one is tempted to call it a lie—is as questionable as anything that the Lomans say to
each other. The truth in the Loman household is a kaleidoscopically shifting thing. As if
to underline that characteristic of the household, Willy now says of Biff, “Greatest thing
in the world for him was to bum around.” (67) This is the same Willy who earlier had
said of Biff in his wanderings, “Biff is a lazy bum!” (16)
For the rest of the conversation, Willy rebuffs Linda, either chiding her for speaking
or ignoring what she is saying or simply telling her to be quiet (67-68). Of course, Willy
also ignores and deflects what Biff and Happy say after they join their parents. Happy
desperately tries to gain notice for himself by announcing that he is going to marry (68),
an announcement that even Linda ignores. This is the adult Happy’s version of the
youthful Happy’s announcements that he is losing weight (cf. 29, 33, 50).
Willy drifts off into a reminiscence of the time just before Biff discovered his
adultery, the day of the big game (68). As the gas heater glows ominously in the
background, Linda gingerly asks, “Willy, dear, what has he got against you?” (68) This
question is never answered for her. Willy simply tells her not to “talk any more.”
However, she makes one final plea that Willy ask his boss (Howard Wagner) to take
him off the road, a plea to which Willy responds affirmatively: “First thing in the
morning. Everything’ll be all right.” (68) He may make the attempt to leave the road,
but everything will most assuredly not be all right.
The scene and act end with Biff’s removing the suicidal rubber hose from the gas
heater. As Biff goes upstairs, he wraps the tube around his hand. The very removal of
the tube, however, leaves one with a lingering sense of doom regarding Willy’s
impending death.
Therefore, the second act will take place, as it were, in the shadow of death, will
elaborate the inexorable unfolding of the illusion of Willy’s life. One could say that the
first act showed the house of cards that life in the Loman household is, while the second
act will show the inevitable collapse of that house of cards.
As the illusion becomes more and more revealed as an illusion, Willy’s hold on life
weakens. To live would entail seeing the illusion for what it is. That is something that
Willy cannot do. Therefore, Willy has to die.
Act Two
The happiness of the music that opens the second act—music that disappears as the
curtain rises—represents the illusion that is fading away as the action proceeds.
Scene One
One is immediately reminded of the shadow of death with which the first act ended
when Willy says, “I slept like a dead one.” (71)
Linda’s comment about the pervasive smell of shaving lotion in the house (71)
evokes the beginning of the first act (cf. 15). This announces the beginning of another
day, but also it marks the beginning of the end of Willy Loman.
Then the mention of Biff’s having gone to see Oliver shows that the delusional mind
set of the Loman family is intact (71-72). To leave no doubt about this, Willy indicates
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that he is still trapped in a world of illusion by announcing his decision to buy some
seeds to plant where nothing will grow and by envisioning their moving to a place in
the country (as a perfect family with perfect children who are married and visiting, with
Willy building one—no, two—guest houses) (72). The illusory nature of this plan is
manifest if one realizes that it comes from someone who is late paying his insurance
premium, whose car repair bill has yet to be paid, whose refrigerator is deteriorating
just as it is about to be paid off, whose wife has to sew the lining on his jacket, and who
is about to make the last payment on the current house (after which no one would lend
him the money to buy a new one) (72-74).
Linda continues to feed his illusions. First, she supports his fantasy about a house in
the country: “You’ll do it yet, dear.” (72) Second, she encourages him to talk to Howard
Wagner about being taken off the road (72), an eventuality that is no more likely than
Biff’s being remembered fondly—let alone financed—by Oliver. Then, after she tells
Willy that their sons want to treat him to dinner at Frank’s Chop House that night, she
says, “It’s changing, Willy, I can feel it changing.” (74)
After Willy leaves to talk to Howard, the telephone rings. It is Biff. Linda tells him
that she went to the gas heater to remove the rubber hose, but the hose was gone. She
assumes that Willy had taken it away, but Biff disabuses her of that notion, telling her—
what has been seen already at the end of the first act—that he was the one who
removed it (75-76). Her divorce from reality is evident in her response, “I’m not afraid
any more.” (76) Biff informs her that he is still waiting to see Oliver (76). Linda’s
comment that Willy is “only a little boat looking for a harbor” (76) might evoke pity for
him if one were not aware that his boat had sailed long ago and that he is drowning in
an ocean of illusion, with no boat and no harbor in sight.
Scene Two
Although Willy has come to talk to Howard, his employer, about being taken off the
road, Howard is so focused on his new tape recorder that Willy must fret while Howard
shows off his new machine, a machine that Willy could not afford, even if he had any
desire to have one. Howard’s playing his recent recordings of his son reciting the state
capitals and of his wife awkwardly trying to think of something to say establishes a
twofold contrast with Willy (76-78). First, Howard takes delight in even the most
mundane of his family’s performances, while Willy—one knows—cannot take pleasure
in even the titanic struggles of his own children. Second, Howard is at home in the
modern world, with its technological advances, while Willy is stuck in a past that never
existed as he remembers it and is unable to face the reality of the present, let alone the
possibility of a future. Howard is a person of his time, but Willy cannot change with
changing times.
Willy begs Howard to take him off the road and find a place for him in the New
York store, but Howard is adamant that there is no place for Willy there. Willy invokes
the memory of Howard’s father (Frank), but his memory of their closeness as boss and
employee (and of his income when Frank ran the business) must be assumed to be just
as delusional as Biff’s memory of his work with Oliver. Willy’s peak of persuasiveness
is his account of the career of the quintessential salesman, Dave Singleman), who
perfectly incarnated the life of the salesman and who “died the death of a salesman”
(81). Singleman’s lonely death on a railroad car in his eighty-fourth year is a sad
commentary on what Willy sees as the paradigmatic life of value.
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Howard’s credo that “business is business” (80) leaves no room for such
sentimentality. After all, Willy is not even a Dave Singleman. It comes as a surprise to
no one except Willy that Howard fires Willy, adding insult to injury by advising Willy
to let his sons support him (83). This is a more pointed rebuff if one considers that
Howard is roughly Biff’s contemporary (cf. 76). This makes Willy’s being fired by
Howard like being fired by his own son. The connection with Biff is strengthened by the
fact that Howard’s son whistles as Biff whistles (77; cf. 60-61).
Then Howard brushes Willy off—and calls him “kid” (84). If there were any doubt
that he has fired Willy, he impatiently dispels it by asking Willy to return his samples.
He advises Willy, “Pull yourself together, kid” (84), and leaves him alone in the office.
Scenes Three and Four
As Willy walks from Howard’s office to Charley’s office, he hallucinates first Ben
(Scene Three), then the day of the big game in 1928 (Scene Four).
Scene Three
Around an exhausted Willy Ben’s theme music swells in the background (84).
Willy greets the hallucinated figure of Ben with a question about how he
accomplished what he did in Alaska (84). Since Ben already has said that he never made
it to Alaska (cf. 48), one knows that this conversation is a pure hallucination (into which
Linda has been integrated making comments that she may have made in an entirely
different context or may not have made at all).
When Ben enters, typically his first comment is about time (84), and he immediately
looks at his watch, adding “Haven’t the time, William.” (85) Coming as it does
immediately after the conversation with Howard, who also does not have time for
Willy, this interchange suggests that successful individuals are pressed for time, yet
they are not crushed by time, having become its masters. Willy, on the other hand, has
time to spare, yet he is the prisoner of his own inability to use even the time that he has
to good advantage.
Ben offers Willy a job in Alaska, a job that is as illusory as the business that Biff and
Happy planned to establish (cf. 63-64). In Willy’s mind at least, a Loman brothers
business is a panacea. However, when Willy tells Linda about the offer, Linda is
presented as holding him back (85). Willy thereby places the blame for his failures in
later life on Linda, a self-serving rationalization, even if it is partially accurate.
When Willy addresses Linda, he calls her “kid” (85), another indication that this
hallucination has been triggered by his encounter with Howard (cf. 84).
The entrance of Biff in his high school sweater and Happy carrying Biff’s football
gear indicates that Willy is mentally placing this hallucination in 1928. Neither boy
speaks in the presence of Ben.
Willy speaks to Ben, but he speaks only about Biff and Biff’s potential for greatness.
Of course, Willy’s reference to diamonds reminds one that Ben actually made his
fortune from diamond mines in Africa, not in Alaska. Instead of responding to Willy,
Ben simply disappears as quickly as he had appeared, uttering as his last word “Rich!”
(87)
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Scene Four
The day of the big All-Scholastic Championship game has arrived, and both Happy
and Bernard reveal their hero-worship of Biff, each vying to be certain that he carries
enough of Biff’s gear to be allowed to accompany Biff into the locker room at Ebbetts
Field (87-88). Thanks to Linda’s intercession for Bernard, both he and Happy are
granted their desire.
Then Biff promises Willy again that he will score a touchdown especially for him,
signaling him when he is about to do so (88). This is the peak of Biff’s idolatry of his
father: shortly after the game, he will discover that his idol has feet of clay.
When Charley arrives, he is in a jovial mood and tries to joke with Willy about the
game, pretending ignorance of it and claiming that the playing field has been blown up
(88-89). Linda knows that he is joking, but Willy reacts violently, challenging Charley to
a fight (88-90). Willy’s vaunted sense of humor (cf. 37-39) deserts him when it comes to
his home and hearth, because his insecurity will not allow him to be easy about his
home life. On the road, on the other hand, he is known as a joker, although one suspects
that his jokes on the road are cruelly denigrative of those at whom they are aimed.
As soon as Charley—bemused at the severity of Willy’s reaction—leaves, Willy
pursues him, and the scene ends with an angry Willy, irrationally cursing Charley as he
stands with his fists up and ready while a frenzied music rises around him.
Scene Five
As Willy (in 1945) steps off the elevator and enters the hallway leading to Charley’s
office, he is continuing his hallucinated memory of his conversation with Charley (in
1928) (90). Charley’s secretary Jenny is concerned that Mr. Loman, as she calls him, is
standing in the hallway and shouting at “nobody” (90).
In the stage direction, Bernard is described as “mature” (90), which means more here
than simply having reached adulthood. In addition, he is “earnest” (90), an aspect of
him that has remained constant since he was young (cf. 32). What has changed in
Bernard since his high school days is that he has become “self-assured” (90), something
that no member of the Loman family—except Ben in a narrow sense—has been able to
achieve.
In his maturity, Bernard has become a man of the court, both physically and
professionally: he plays tennis avidly enough that even when he travels, he carries a
pair of tennis rackets with him (90); and he is a lawyer who is about to argue a case in
Washington, DC (91). Bernard has heard from his father that Biff is back home. Willy
cannot help boasting that Biff is in town because he is “Working on a very big deal”
now that he has finished “doing very big things in the West” (91).
When Willy inquires about Bernard’s family, one sees that he is married, and that
his wife just has given birth to their second son. Since Bernard and Biff are exact
contemporaries, the lack of a family in Biff’s life is brought home starkly. Willy cannot
keep his mind off Bernard’s tennis rackets and the prosperity that they imply (90, 91,
92).
Willy—who should know the answer to this question all too well—asks Bernard
why Biff’s life seems to have “ended” shortly after the big game in 1928 (92). Bernard
reminds Willy that he has been puzzled why Biff—after failing senior mathematics (for
which failure Willy blames the teacher, not Biff)—did not simply “go to summer school
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and make up that subject” (93). Willy claims that Biff’s ditching summer school has
perplexed him too, especially since Willy “begged him to go . . . ordered him to go”
(93). Nevertheless, according to Willy, Biff “laid down and died” (93). Bernard reminds
Willy that it was not after the big game that Biff’s obvious deterioration began, because
when Biff found out about the failure, he was “ready to enroll in summer school” (93),
to which Willy reacts with surprise.
Then Bernard treads on the dangerous ground that Willy has labored long and hard
to suppress. He tells Willy that shortly after the school year ended, he thought that Biff
went to New England to see Willy (93-94). Willy, on edge, responds, “Yeah, he came to
Boston. What about it?” Willy knows full well, but he cannot face that knowledge. Then
Bernard—who even then sensed that the trip to Boston was, as it were, the straw that
broke Biff’s back—tells Willy that he recalls that when Biff returned from Boston, Biff
burned his favorite sneakers and then had a fist fight with Bernard,16 both boys crying
the whole time. Even in high school, Bernard knew that the fight was not an act of
strength on Biff’s part, but an act of defeat or submission or resignation or despair.
Having placed the explosive on the table, now Bernard lights the fuse (94):
I’ve often thought of how strange it was that I knew he’d given up
his life. What happened in Boston, Willy?
To Biff’s expression of concern and neutral curiosity, Willy reacts defensively, taking it
as a pointed question. Willy’s angry answer is, “Nothing” (94). Then Willy fixates on
that “what happened?” and accuses Bernard of trying to blame him for what has
happened to Biff (94). The turmoil in Willy alarms Bernard. He does not know that
Willy’s guilt is the root of the fixation, even if Willy’s conscious mind cannot see the
truth of Bernard’s conjecture.
Scene Six
Charley enters, carrying the gift of a bottle of bourbon, to say goodbye to his son
Bernard (94-95). When Bernard bids Willy farewell, he leaves him with some advice:
“But sometimes, Willy, it’s better for a man just to walk away.” (95) Bernard’s advice to
the father (Willy) about himself is his version of the advice that his father (Charley)
gave the day before to the father (Willy) about his son (Biff): “Forget about him.” (43)
Charley and Bernard are truly father and son, and they both understand that
individuals must be allowed the freedom to find and take care of themselves and must
be given the trust that will anchor such freedom: the parent has to stand back without
imposing his or her own narrow interest on the child. Willy cannot take this advice. He
cannot leave his children alone, and he cannot restrain his impulse to suffocate them.
Bernard knows, as his father does, that Willy is clinging to a life that is unsustainable,
and that he must cut his ties to what is dragging him down before it is too late. Their
compassion prevents them from seeing how late it truly is for Willy.
Now Charley embarrasses Bernard by telling Willy that he is on his way to
Washington to “argue a case in front of the Supreme Court” (95). In other words,
Bernard has reached the pinnacle of achievement in his profession, exceeding even his
father who has reached the pinnacle of achievement in his.
16
The length and intensity of the fight shows that whatever Willy may say and think of Bernard, even in
high school, he was physically capable of holding his own, even against an athlete like Biff.
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The first thing that Charley does when Bernard leaves is to pull out his wallet and
take out money, counting it as he places it on the desk (95). Then, as if in echo of
Bernard’s advice, Willy and Bernard speak about him (95-96):
WILLY: And you never told him what to do, did you? You never
took any interest in him.
CHARLEY: My salvation is that I never took any interest in
anything.
Charley’s depth of understanding is far beyond Willy’s ability or willingness to
understand. Charley says that he never took an interest in anything at the precise
moment that he is giving Willy fifty dollars to help ease his financial difficulties. This
should tell Willy—as it tells one watching the play—that Charley does not mean what
he says in the selfish way that Willy understands what he says. What Charley means is
that he never tries to impose his will on anyone, that he allows others to be what they
are. He did not smother Bernard with false expectations, as Willy did with Biff (and to a
lesser extent, with Happy).
Now Charley repeats his offer—that he made the day before (Act One, Scene Three,
43)—of a job for Willy. Again Willy indignantly refuses. Charley responds to his refusal
with virtually the same question with which he responded to Willy’s skewed priorities
in 1928:
[1928] Willy, when are you going to grow up? (89)
[1945] When the hell are you going to grow up? (97)
This enrages Willy again, and again he responds to the man who has been his financial
salvation with the same anger that he did in 1928 when he also called Charley an
“ignoramus” [97; cf. “you big, ignorant, stupid . . .” (90)]. Willy’s anger is the anger of a
child who has been caught in a lie. Willy’s immaturity is long standing and tenacious.
Willy is more of a child than his own children are. The tragic dilemma of Willy is that
he looks to his sons to give him the fathering that he never gave them, fathering that
they cannot give him because of his failure to enable and empower them to do so.
When Willy blurts out that he has been fired, his refusal of a job from Charley seems
unfathomable. Charley then admonishes Willy that he has lost even the one thing that
might have given his life value, namely his being a salesman: “And the funny thing is
that you’re a salesman, and you don’t know that.” (97) What Charley realizes is that
Willy has abandoned his natural skill and has substituted likeability for it (97), i.e., he
has replaced professional achievement with self-selling. However, the self is not a
product, and it cannot be sold. It is even an open question whether Willy even has a self
any longer.
Willy refuses the offer again (98). Although Willy will take the money and thus
demean himself, he will not take the job that would enable him to recover his dignity.
This is the moment that Willy’s life ends. He has no livelihood any longer, and he
refuses to accept a replacement livelihood. Without a livelihood, there is no life.
Therefore, Willy’s refusal of any offer of a livelihood is a refusal to go on living. As he
says (98):
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After all the highways, and the trains, and the appointments, and
the years, you end up worth more dead than alive.
Willy is a lost soul who sees his worth in monetary terms alone, so that he can claim
that he is worth more dead than alive. Charley, on the other hand, says that “nobody’s
worth nothin’ dead” (98). The paradox in Willy’s case is that he is worth nothing alive
or dead, and his sons feel the same way.
Nevertheless, Charley—who sees Willy for what he is—still shows him compassion
and offers him companionship. For Charley, there is a worth to a human being as such.
For an instant, Willy is touched (98):
Charley, you’re the only friend I got. Isn’t that a remarkable thing?
However, it is only an instant. That Willy has never realized this before both astonishes
and evokes pity in Charley, who can say only, “Jesus!” (98) Then all the stage lights are
brought down, and the stage is shrouded in darkness.
Scene Seven
Out of the darkness there emerges the raucous music and red glow of Frank’s Chop
House. The music and coloring give the restaurant an almost hellish quality (98).
Stanley the waiter treats Happy as if he is a regular customer and—based on his
willingness to relocate a table to satisfy Happy’s wishes—a good tipper (98-99). Stanley
is cynical about life, but he is good at his job. It is apparent that Happy has ordered the
food for the dinner, and that he has spared no expense: even in 1945, lobster dinners
would have been quite expensive (99).
No sooner does an attractive young woman (who claims to be a magazine cover
model) enter and sit at the table next to Happy’s than Happy makes advances toward
her, offering her a bottle of champagne that he claims that his company sells (100-101).17
Happy’s claim that his business is selling makes explicit the extent to which Happy has
become another version of his father, a womanizing salesman.
After Biff enters, Happy introduces him to the woman, using the introduction as an
excuse to find out her name (101-102). Happy ignores Biff’s comments and continues to
converse with the young woman, now constructing a set of lies to enhance Biff and
himself in her eyes. Although she is not impressed by Biff’s playing for the New York
Giants, she is impressed by Happy’s having attended West Point (102), both of which
are bald-faced lies. That Happy is interested in conquest only for the sake of conquest is
revealed when he offers to let Biff have the woman. Despite Biff’s reservations—what
Happy calls his lack of “the old confidence” (102)—Happy entices her into calling a
friend so that the two of them and Biff and he can go out after dinner (102-103).
Finally, Biff impresses upon Happy that he has something important to say to him.
Happy assumes that Biff wants to talk about his meeting with Oliver. What Happy does
not understand, however, is that what happened with Oliver is only a prologue to what
Biff truly has on his mind.
17
Of course, how much of what Happy and the woman tell each other is the exact truth is open to
question. That there is some truth in it is evidenced by the cavalier way that Happy flashes money
around and by the young woman’s lavish and expensive clothing.
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Biff then goes on to describe his frustrating meeting with Oliver. Oliver kept him
waiting for hours, and even Biff’s attempt “to date his secretary” was of no avail (103104). In this respect, Biff is not as successful as his father. When Oliver finally came out
to talk to Biff, after keeping him waiting all day, Oliver could not recall who Biff was
(104). Happy is oblivious to what Biff is saying, asking him, even after this, whether Biff
pitched him their business scheme. Biff tells him that Oliver simply walked away from
him. This shocked Biff into a realization that his whole life has been an illusion: “I
realized what a ridiculous lie my whole life has been! We’ve been talking in a dream for
fifteen years.” (104)
Left alone in the waiting room, and fuming with anger and frustration, Biff stole
Oliver’s fountain pen (104). Biff now wants to lay the facts before Willy, but Happy
advises him to lie and say that he has another meeting with Oliver (105). Happy is
content to let sleeping illusions lie, but Biff is trying to face reality at last.
Scene Eight
That Biff wants to come clean with Willy shows that he is still tied to his father and
that he is unable to break away fully. He cannot see that Willy is intractable and cannot
change. What Biff needs to do in order to become his own person is to follow the advice
of Charley and Bernard: he has to walk away and take no interest. However, he is too
torn to do that.
After Biff orders drinks, he embarks on the painful task of telling his father what
actually happened to him at Oliver’s and what that has made him realize (105-106).
However, when he confronts Willy with the lie with which they have falsified his work
with Oliver, Willy angrily denies the truth, prompting Biff to beg Willy to let him
“finish” telling the truth (106-107). Willy typically refuses to listen to the truth about the
past (107):
I’m not interested in stories about the past . . . because the woods
are burning, boys, you understand? There’s a big blaze going on all
around.
In other words, Willy feels that his whole world is falling to ashes around him: he feels
totally closed in and cut off, as if he were in the midst of a forest fire.
The thought of a fire leads Willy to say, “I was fired today.” (107) This shocks Biff.
However much Biff reviles his father, he still places him on some kind of a pedestal. Of
course, Willy does not tell Biff and Happy that Charley offered him a job. Lying is such
a part of Willy that he tells only that part of the truth that will serve him best. In this
instance, he wants to evoke pity and guilt in Biff. He claims that he needs good news
from Biff so that Linda may be consoled (107). Then he inadvertently lets the truth of
himself slip through (107):
I haven’t got a story left in my head. So don’t give me a lecture
about facts and aspects. I am not interested.
In other words, Willy is running out of lies (stories). Nevertheless, he refuses to face the
truth that would set him free from the web of lies with which he has surrounded
himself and his family.
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Biff persists in trying to communicate with his father, but it is hopeless because
Willy follows his own fantasy wish fulfillment for Biff instead of listening to what Biff
has to say, even treating Biff’s attempts at truthful narrative as annoying interruptions
(107-109). Biff’s frustration erupts repeatedly, but his comments fall on deaf ears:
Dad, will you give me a minute to explain? (108)
Dad, you’re not letting me tell you what I want to tell you! (108)
Listen, will you let me out of it, will you just let me out of it! (109)
I can’t talk to him! (109)
Biff knows that he is trapped and needs to be let out, but he continues to look to his
father to release him. Biff still needs to realize that unless he releases himself, he will
remain lost and trapped.
Scene Nine
Biff’s frustration is expressed in the jarring note of the trumpet that introduces the
subsequent conversation. Now leaves appear on stage, ushering Willy into the past
again, although Biff and Happy remain in the present (109).
Willy hallucinates a conversation from 1928 that he could not have witnessed, since
he was on his way to Boston to visit his father there (109-110). This means that Willy’s
visions of the past may not all be memories, even inexact memories, but that—to a
greater or lesser extent—they are Willy’s fantasies, slanted according to his needs at any
given moment.
As Willy witnesses the conversation between Linda and Bernard about Biff’s failure
in mathematics, he is in something of a trance. Biff and Happy cannot make sense of his
few outbursts in response to what he is imagining, and Biff is worried about him.
Happy, on the other hand, is concerned only about what Biff is telling Willy about his
meeting with Oliver.
Scene Ten
Finally, what breaks through Willy’s reverie is Biff’s admitting that he stole Oliver’s
fountain pen (110-111), a theft that Happy tries to excuse, even as Willy is appalled.
Biff’s pathetic explanation is, “I never intended to do it, Dad!” (111)
Scene Eleven
Now one will see what was waiting for Biff when he visited Willy in Boston at the
Standish Arms Hotel, where Willy is having an affair (111). This transpires
simultaneously with a continuation of the conversation in Frank’s Chop House about
Biff’s encounter with Oliver (111-112).
Biff now follows Happy’s advice to lie about the encounter, and Willy even colludes
with the boys to fabricate an excuse for Biff’s having stolen the pen (112). Biff realizes
that this is part of an unhealthy pattern, and he recalls the basketballs that he stole from
Oliver (cf.26). Going back to Oliver and stealing again, Biff is caught in a time loop from
which he can see no escape. Therefore, one cannot take seriously his statement, “I’ll try
elsewhere.” (112) For Biff, as for all the doomed Lomans, there is no elsewhere.
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Instead of responding to the anguish that Biff is feeling, Willy acts as though Biff is
“spiting” (113) him and hits Biff. Happy—embarrassed at the scene that Willy and Biff
are causing—breaks them apart. Through this, one hears the switchboard operator at
the hotel try unsuccessfully to put a telephone call through to Willy’s hotel room (111).
This is followed by the laughter of Willy’s paramour in the hotel. When she is heard
saying, “Someone’s at the door, Willy!” (113), one knows that the “someone” is Biff.
Willy is in bed, and she tries to awaken him so that he will answer the hotel room door.
As Willy loses himself in this recollection, the young woman (Miss Forsythe) whom
Happy approached earlier in the restaurant returns with a friend (Letta). The four
young people are about to go out on the town. Nevertheless, Biff introduces the women
to his “father” (114). Willy is standing in a hallucinatory trance, still hearing the sounds
from the hotel in 1928. Before the door in the hotel room is opened to reveal Biff,
Willy—to conceal the meaning of his blurting out something about the hotel door—asks
where the restroom door is, and he leaves the table.
Scene Twelve
The young women treat Willy as if he is some kind of puppy dog [cf. “cute” (114);
“sweet,” “daddy” (114)]. When Miss Forsythe makes light of Willy’s being their father,
Biff makes a bizarre speech about his father (114):
Miss Forsythe, you’ve just seen a prince walk by. A fine, troubled
prince. A hard-working, unappreciated prince. A pal, you
understand? A good companion. Always for his boys.
If one takes the speech at face value, one sees precisely how enslaved Biff is to his
father, and how dependent he is on his father’s approval. However, the resentment that
he is said to feel in response to Miss Forsythe’s denigration of Willy’s ability as a parent
would be his attempt to be protective of the very person who has let him down and
kept him down. Indeed, this speech does not seem to be consistent with what Biff
knows about his father. Instead, it seems more like the kind of speech that Willy would
fantasize in the mouth of his son. Therefore, one is tempted to regard this perhaps as
what Willy thinks that he hears—what he wants to hear—as he drifts away toward the
restroom. At the very least, then, the status of the speech—not alone in the play in this
regard—is equivocal. The same is true of Biff’s defense of Willy in what follows (114115).
Whatever the case actually may be, in his frustration, Biff rushes out (115). Happy
pursues him, taking the now leery young women with him. As they leave, Willy is still
wandering around in a daze, still haunted by the laughter of the woman in the hotel,
whom—in his fantasy—he urges not to answer the door of the hotel room (115).
When Letta suggests to Happy that he should tell his father that they are leaving,
Happy says, “No, that’s not my father. He’s just a guy.” (115)18 Happy’s hedonism
trumps everything else. Leaving Willy behind, Happy calls for the check, and Stanley
calls to him to indicate that he has it. (One shortly finds out that Happy did pay the
check: cf. 121).
18
His denial of his father after this last supper is a mundane and pathetic version of Peter’s triple denial
of Christ. Of course, Willy is no savior, and Happy is no saint, although they may be as close as the
modern world comes to such exalted figures.
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Willy is now left abandoned (116). However, before one feels too sorry for him, one
should recall Willy’s own insensitivity. Willy is so lost in thought that he is not even
aware that he has been abandoned (cf. 121).
Scene Thirteen
In his dazed mental state—still in the restaurant—Willy continues fantasizing about
the Standish Arms Hotel in Boston in 1928 on the day that Biff came to see him after he
failed mathematics.
Against the “sensuous music” of the background, Willy’s lover enters laughing
(116). The knocking on the hotel door causes her to urge him to answer it, but Willy
adamantly refuses (116-117), even going so far as to claim that there is “nobody there”
(117). Willy’s guilt is difficult to understand, since he could not know that the person
knocking is Biff. In addition, of whom in Boston would he need to be afraid?
Nevertheless, Willy seems to fear the exposure of his sordid and exploitative love affair
to anyone.
Then his lover proves the old adage that there is truth in every joke when she
laughingly says to him, “You are the saddest, self-centeredest soul I ever did see-saw.”
(116) This is an incisive capsule description of Willy.
Then the knocking becomes so insistent—as does his lover’s plea that he answer it—
that Willy pushes her into the bathroom to hide and tells her not to come out.
Almost instantaneously, the sensuous music ceases and Willy sees Biff facing him.
Willy—having forgotten his promise to take his boys on this road trip (cf. 31)—wonders
what Biff is doing there, and Biff tells him that he telephoned (117). This is the
telephone call left unanswered in Willy’s earlier hallucinated memory (cf. 111).
When Biff tries to have a conversation with his father, telling him that he let him
down, Willy tries to hurry Biff out of the room (117). However, before they can leave,
Biff blurts out that he failed mathematics and cannot graduate on time. Willy’s only
concern is to find a way for Biff to evade the consequences of what he has done, and Biff
willingly goes along, claiming that his teacher would not simply give him the few
points that he needed because the teacher hated him for pulling a tasteless prank in
class (118).
When Willy laughs at the prank, his lover in the bathroom—who must have
overheard (cf. “lisps,” 119)—laughs with him. Willy again tries to rush Biff out of the
room, but Biff knows that there is someone in the bathroom (118-119). Now the woman
boldly comes into the room—to Biff’s horror. Willy tries to explain her presence away,
to deny it, in a way,19 but his explanation is so transparently false that even Biff is not
fooled (119). Her comment about ”football or baseball” (119) shows that Willy has
talked to her about his sons. The crushing revelation, however, is Miss Francis’s
running on about the stockings that Willy has given her, a revelation that makes a
weeping Biff deaf to anything beyond what he has seen and realized (119-120).
When Willy tries to excuse himself on the basis of his loneliness (120), Biff gasps
through his tears, “You—you gave her Mama’s stockings!” (121) This shatters Biff, now
calling his father a “liar” and “fake” (121). He bolts away from a kneeling Willy and out
of the room. The last thing that Biff hears as he leaves is his father saying, “I’ll whip
you!” (121; cf. 40)
19
Happy had denied his father (115) as Willy had denied his lover, which suggests that Happy too is his
father’s son, as Willy is clearly Happy’s father.
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Scene Fourteen
Willy suddenly drops out of his hallucinated memory to realize that he is still in the
restaurant when he sees Stanley (the waiter), who tells him that his sons have left “with
the chippies” (121). Willy is so disoriented that he is barely affected by the news that his
sons have abandoned him. Willy realizes that they have not had the promised dinner.
As he leaves, he gives Stanley a tip (“a dollar”), and when Stanley refuses, saying that
he has been paid already by Happy, Willy gives him more money (121-122). As Willy
says, “I don’t need it any more.” (122) This says as clearly as Willy can say it that he
intends to commit suicide, after which he will not need anything, let alone money.
Willy leaves the restaurant, obsessed with the need to buy seeds (122):
I’ve got to get some seeds . . . . I’ve got to get some seeds, right
away. Nothing’s planted. I don’t have a thing in the ground.
Of course, before long, something will be planted in the ground, and it will not be only
seeds.
Scene Fifteen
As the music of the flute is heard, Biff and Happy—the latter carrying a bunch of
roses—return home after their night out (122). Since it is rather late at night, when
Happy sees his mother, he is surprised that she is still awake, and—seeing Willy’s coat
draped over her lap—he asks her whether his father is asleep (122-123).
When Linda asks them where they have been, Happy tells her about the girls that
they met (“very fine types”), and hands Linda the bunch of roses (123). Linda smashes
the flowers out of his hand onto the floor (123). Then Linda rails against Biff and Happy
for abandoning Willy, for treating Willy worse than they would treat a complete
stranger (123). When Happy—either lying or simply oblivious to the truth—tries to tell
her that Willy enjoyed himself and that they did not desert Willy, Linda orders them
out of the house, calling them “a pair of animals” (124) Even Biff turns on Happy when
he persists in his lie, so Happy goes upstairs, presumably to pack his clothes before he
returns to his own apartment (124).
With Happy upstairs, Linda turns even more virulently against Biff, the favored son,
who admits that they abandoned their father, having deserted him while he was
“babbling in a toilet” (124). Then Linda lashes out against Biff: “You louse.” Biff
responds by acknowledging the truth of her accusation, which agrees with the
impoverished self-image that has been his legacy (124):
Now you hit it on the nose! . . . The scum of the earth, and you’re
looking at him!
Again Linda orders him out of the house. When Biff says that before he leaves, he has to
talk to his father (“the boss”), Linda tells him to stay away from his father (125).
However, Biff is determined, as he says, “to have an abrupt conversation” (125) with his
father, face to face, just the two of them. By “abrupt,” Biff means “brutally honest.”
Through all this, Willy—as Linda tells Biff—is “planting the garden!” (125) Biff
starts to go outside.
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Scene Sixteen
Willy prepares to plant his seeds in the garden, needing to read the directions on the
seed packets in order to know how to proceed (125).
Ben appears. Since Willy speaks to Ben about what is on his mind in the present, one
knows that this conversation is a pure fabrication of Willy’s imagination, a totally
hallucinated conversation.
Willy bemoans that to which his life has come, what it has done to Linda. A human
may come into the world with nothing, but—as Willy says—“A man can’t go out the
way he came in, Ben, a man has got to add up to something.” (125) He speaks to Ben as
if this is a continuation of a conversation of which one does not know the beginning,
except for the fact that Willy has been contemplating the life insurance gain to his wife
if he commits suicide (cf. 125-126). Ben—functioning as devil’s advocate—tells him that
suicide may nullify the insurance (126). Ben accuses him of cowardice, to which Willy—
using the metaphor of a cash register—replies (126):
Does it take more guts to stand here the rest of my life ringing up a
zero?
Ben seems grudgingly to concede this point. Willy feels enabled by this change on Ben’s
part, and he launches into an outlandish fantasy about the “massive” funeral that he
will be given and how the sight of such a funeral will redeem him in Biff’s eyes
[although he refers to Biff only by a pronoun (“he”), not by name] (126). Ben’s replies
are brutal (127):
He’ll call you a coward.
And a damned fool.
He’ll hate you, William.
Willy wonders why he and his family cannot recapture the ‘good old days.’ Of course,
what Willy fails to realize is that those old days were no more good than the new days
of his recent life.
When Willy asks Ben what he can do to remove Biff’s hatred of him, Ben distances
himself while looking at his watch. Then Ben disappears.
Scene Seventeen
When Ben vanishes, Biff appears (127). Willy is in the garden having trouble finding
his seed packets because of the lack of visibility. He seems to have forgotten that it is the
middle of the night, and he blames the towering apartment buildings for blocking his
light (127). Of course, Willy has been in the dark his whole life, and his final moments
simply make that explicit.
When Willy rebuffs Biff, Biff simply takes his gardening tool away. Then Biff tells
his father that he is “saying “good-by” to him (127): “I’m not coming back any more.”
However, Willy can make no sense of this statement, and he continues to fixate on Biff’s
meeting with Oliver (128).
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Biff tries to bring Willy back into the house, so that he can tell both his mother and
his father what he has realized about himself. Willy resists, expressing his desire to
avoid his wife. Even now, he is reluctant to be in the same room with his wife and Biff,
perhaps out of fear that Biff finally will reveal what he knows about Willy. Then—as if
to allay at least that fear—Biff says (128), “This isn’t your fault: it’s me, I’m a bum.” As a
result, Willy breaks away from Biff and rushes into the house.
Biff tells his mother that he and his father have settled things, that he is leaving
home, and that he will not even write home again (128). Linda concedes that Biff’s
leaving is the best thing for all concerned, because he and his father will “just never get
along.” (128)
When Linda asks Willy at least to shake his son’s hand in a gesture of goodbye,
Willy—typically acting as if he is the aggrieved party—insists on talking about the
Oliver scheme, refusing to acknowledge its chimerical nature (129). In response to Biff’s
assertion that his father never will understand him and therefore should forget about
him, Willy again accuses him of being spiteful and again refuses to shake Biff’s hand
(129).
Willy launches into a string of invectives, repeatedly accusing Biff of being spiteful,
(129-133). Willy claims that Biff is trying to blame him for all their troubles, and Willy—
the one who is truly spiteful—denies that he has any responsibility for what has
happened (130).
Biff brandishes the rubber hose from the gas heater, but Willy denies any knowledge
of it. Then Biff invokes the need for the family finally to face the truth:
No, you’re going to hear the truth—what you are and what I am!
(130)
We never told the truth for ten minutes in this house! (131)
It’s goddam time you heard that! (131)
Now he tells Willy that he knows that his position in his firm has been on a lower level
than he has claimed, and—to provide a truth about himself to match this truth about his
father—he reveals that he “had no address for three months” (131) because he was
serving time for theft in a Kansas City jail (cf. 54). Then he admits his lifelong
kleptomania (131): “I stole myself out of every good job since high school!” Now, he
does blame Willy for what he has become (131): “you blew me so full of hot air I could
never stand taking orders from anybody!”
The truth about the insight that came to him now pours out of Biff, the centerpiece
of which is Biff’s question (132): “Why am I trying to become what I don’t want to be?”
Biff’s relentless pummeling of Willy with the brute reality of their situation causes Willy
to lash out in return (132-133). Finally, Biff is so overwhelmed by his fruitless efforts to
make his father understand that “he breaks down, sobbing” (133). Again Willy misses
the point. He takes this outpouring of despair and frustration as a concession to himself,
as an admission that Biff “likes” him. For Biff, however much he likes his father is an
indicator of how much he is enslaved to his father’s approval, an approval from which
he must break free. In addition, even though Biff repeats that he is leaving the next day
and tells Linda to cart Willy off to bed, Willy’s plaintive relapse into his groundless
fantasies for Biff reemerges undimmed: “that boy is going to be magnificent! (133)
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R. Zaslavsky/Death of a Salesman
Scene Eighteen
Ben appears in the background as Linda tries to calm Willy down and put him to
bed (133). The conversation—part hallucinated, part apparently actually occurring—
continues at cross purposes: the interlocutors speak, but they do not communicate, and
no one hears what anyone else is saying (133-135).
The hallucinated conversation with Ben seems to be a continuation of their earlier
hallucinated conversation about Willy’s life insurance policy (cf. 125-127). Linda
alternates between urging Willy to go to bed and commenting about the resolution of
the situation with Biff. The latter comments—unbeknownst to Linda—act as a kind of
choric response to, and ratification of, Willy’s decision to commit suicide:
It’s all settled now. (133)
I think this is the only way, Willy. (134)
After Happy goes upstairs (134), Linda remains behind for a few moments, afraid that if
she leaves Willy alone, he will kill himself (cf. stage direction, 134). Then she too goes to
her bedroom (135). However, she calls down, repeatedly asking Willy to come upstairs
to bed (134-137).
Willy goes outside, and now the figure of Ben becomes an avatar of the grim reaper,
and his obsession with time and his watch becomes ominous, equivalent to a counting
down the minutes to Willy’s death (135).
Suddenly Linda realizes that Willy is not answering her, and she becomes alarmed.
When she hears the car starting and driving quickly away, she fears the worst, as does
Biff, who rushes downstairs (136).
Then the crash of the music is a dissonant miming of the sound of the car crashing
and carrying Willy to his death [musically signaled by the reduction of the dissonance
to the soft sound of “a single cello string” (136)].
Scene Nineteen
The final scene of the play proper is a pantomime of the mourners preparing for
Willy’s’ funeral.
The leaves appear, and the mourners walk “through the wall-line of the kitchen”
(136). In terms of the guidelines established at the beginning of the play, this
combination signals either a past event or an hallucination. Since it is not a past event, it
must be an hallucination. However, whose hallucination is it? It can only be Willy’s.
Perhaps this is his last hallucination at the moment that his car carries him to his death.
In other words, this is what Willy wants to happen after he dies, not necessarily what
actually happens after he dies. The mourners stand at Willy’s grave in this hallucinated
tableau. What they say at the graveside is in the Requiem.
Therefore, the Requiem too must be an hallucination, a projection of Willy’s mind,
not an objective reality.20
20
One even might wonder whether Willy is actually dead. Perhaps this is his hallucinated version of what
will follow his suicide. Whether that suicide actually has taken place may be a tantalizing mystery that is
deliberately left open at the end of the play.
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R. Zaslavsky/Death of a Salesman
Requiem
The foregoing suggests why there is an artificiality and a false consolation here that
is hard to explain unless it has its source in Willy. In particular, Charley’s speeches are
so out of character and so inaccurate as a description of Willy that one must conclude
that the ventriloquist behind them is Willy himself.
The same can be said of what Biff says, especially the key remark that one simply
cannot conceive as coming from the Biff whom one knows from the events of the play:
“I know who I am, kid.” (138) Happy seems to be the only person who is what he has
been, which is consistent with Willy’s barely having paid attention to him.
Linda’s concluding speech that she does not understand—especially since she has
been talking for much of the play about Willy’s impulse toward suicide—is
unfathomable as a genuine expression of the flesh and blood Linda. This too must be
Willy’s speaking through her.
Just before the curtain falls, the apartment buildings reappear, which signals a
return to the present after the hallucination of the mourning and the Requiem.
Conclusion
Death of a Salesman, then, is no classical tragedy about the heights and possibilities of
human nature stretched to the utmost. Rather, it is a powerful contemporary
psychological drama that focuses a microscope on the shrunken human possibilities of
contemporary life, on the pervasive dysfunctionality that cripples most humans in the
modern world and drives them to cripple their children psychologically in turn. This is
a profoundly sad play, but it is not a tragedy. Nevertheless, it is a play that diagnoses
the dilemma of modernity and its legacy, and it invites its viewers to reflect on that
legacy and to exert themselves to transcend it.
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