Death of a Salesman

Summary

Death of a Salesman: Certain Private Conversations in Two Acts and a Requiem covers the last twenty-four hours or so of Willy Loman, a sixty-three-year-old travelling salesman, interwoven with his memories and imaginings of the past. Willy returns early to his small Brooklyn house, now hemmed in by apartment buildings, because he can no longer keep the car on the road: his mind keeps drifting. His devoted wife Linda tends to him and urges him to ask his boss for a job in New York. Their sons are home: Biff, once a high-school football star with a scholarship to the University of Virginia, now thirty-four and a drifting farmhand and petty thief, and Happy, a womanising assistant buyer who flatters his father. Willy believes success comes from being 'well liked' and has raised his sons on that creed, and he cannot forgive Biff for failing to fulfil it. Throughout the play the present dissolves into scenes from the past: the boys' adoration of him, his boasting, the visits of his brother Ben, who walked into the jungle at seventeen and came out rich, and an encounter with a woman in a Boston hotel. Willy's neighbour Charley, whose son Bernard has become a successful lawyer, quietly lends him money each week and offers him a job, which Willy refuses out of pride. Linda tells the sons that Willy has been trying to kill himself: his car accidents are not accidents, and she has found a rubber hose attached to the gas pipe. The family resolves on a hopeful plan: Biff will ask a former employer, Bill Oliver, for money to start a business. The next day everything fails. Willy's young boss Howard fires him. Biff waits all day to see Oliver, who does not remember him, and impulsively steals his fountain pen. At a restaurant dinner, the sons abandon their bewildered father for two women. The climactic memory is revealed: as a teenager Biff came to Boston to find his father and discovered him with another woman, and lost all faith in him. That night Biff confronts Willy with the truth, that they are both ordinary men and that Willy's dreams are false, and breaks down weeping. Willy, moved that Biff loves him, decides that his life insurance will give Biff a new start, and drives off to his death. At the funeral, few people come. Charley defends the salesman's life of dreams, Biff says Willy had the wrong dreams, and Linda cannot cry, telling Willy that she made the last payment on the house that day and that they are free.

Plot or Argument

• Act One: The return

  Willy comes home exhausted; Linda, Biff and Happy discuss his decline; memories of the boys' youth and of Ben intrude. Linda reveals Willy's suicide attempts, and the family forms a plan.

• Act Two: The day of failure

  Willy is fired by Howard and refuses Charley's job; Biff fails with Oliver; the restaurant scene collapses into Willy's memory of Boston.

• Act Two: Confrontation

  Biff confronts Willy with the truth about himself and the family; Willy, convinced that Biff loves him, plans his death for the insurance money.

• Requiem

  At Willy's grave Linda, Biff, Happy, Charley and Bernard give different verdicts on his life.

Characters

• Willy Loman, protagonist

  Ageing salesman whose belief in being well liked collapses along with his mind and career.

• Linda Loman, Willy's wife

  Loyal, protective wife who sees Willy's decline and defends his dignity.

• Biff Loman, elder son

  Former football hero, now drifting, who finally confronts his father's illusions.

• Happy Loman, younger son

  Shallow, self-deceiving son who inherits Willy's dreams.

• Charley, neighbour

  Practical businessman who quietly supports Willy.

• Bernard, Charley's son

  Studious boy mocked by Willy who becomes a successful lawyer.

• Ben, Willy's brother

  Dead adventurer who appears in Willy's memories as the embodiment of success.

• Howard Wagner, Willy's boss

  Son of Willy's old employer who fires him.

• The Woman, Willy's mistress

  Woman in Boston whose discovery by Biff shatters their relationship.

Lessons

• The wrong dreams

  Willy's creed of personality and popularity fails him and his sons. The play questions an idea of success measured only by sales and status.

  • Is Willy a victim of the system or of his own illusions?
  • Do you agree with Biff that Willy had the wrong dreams?
  • What does Charley mean by defending the salesman's dream?

• Attention must be paid

  Linda insists that an ordinary man's suffering deserves notice. Miller argues that tragedy belongs to the common man as much as to kings.

  • Why does Linda's speech carry such force?
  • Is Willy a tragic hero?

• Family secrets and their damage

  The Boston affair, hidden for years, explains the rupture between Willy and Biff. The play shows how secrets and lies distort a family's sense of reality.

  • How do the memory scenes reveal what the family cannot say?
  • Why can Biff finally tell the truth only near the end?

Context

The play appeared in the postwar American boom, when salesmanship, advertising and consumer credit were expanding, and when older workers like Willy were being discarded. Miller drew partly on his uncle Manny Newman, a salesman, and on the Depression's effect on his own family.

Composition

Miller wrote the play in about six weeks in 1948 in a cabin he built in Roxbury, Connecticut. Its original working title was 'The Inside of His Head'. It opened on Broadway on 10 February 1949, directed by Elia Kazan with Lee J. Cobb as Willy, and Jo Mielziner's set allowed past and present to merge on stage.

Reception

The play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play, ran for 742 performances, and has been revived constantly worldwide. Miller's essay 'Tragedy and the Common Man' (1949) defended its claim to tragic stature.

Comparisons

• the-death-of-ivan-ilyich

  Both show an ordinary man confronting the emptiness of a conventional life as death approaches; Ivan finds peace through compassion, Willy through a fantasy of sacrifice.

• a-view-from-the-bridge

  Miller's later tragedy also centres on a working man's self-deception destroying him, with a wife who sees what he cannot.

• a-dolls-house-and-other-plays

  Miller was steeped in Ibsen: both plays expose family lies in a domestic setting and build to a revelation that breaks illusions.

• humboldts-gift

  Both portray American men destroyed by the gap between their dreams of greatness and the market's verdict.

• macbeth

  Both are tragedies of a man who hears seductive voices (the witches, Ben) promising greatness and who acts on them to his ruin.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The way the stage directions in Act One let the past enter without a scene change: the apartment buildings fade, leaves appear, and the young Biff and Happy arrive washing the car. Track every time Willy slips into memory and what triggers it.
• Linda's speech to her sons in Act One, after Willy has gone to bed, in which she insists that her husband deserves attention and reveals the rubber hose behind the gas heater.
• Willy's visit to Howard's office in Act Two, where the wire recorder plays Howard's children while Willy tells the story of the old salesman Dave Singleman and is fired.
• The restaurant scene in Act Two, which breaks open into the Boston hotel room. Notice that the play withholds this memory until almost the end, as Willy himself has done.
• The Requiem at the grave, where Linda, Biff, Happy, and Charley each give a different judgment on Willy's life.

Key terms and names

Requiem

The short final section at Willy's grave. Its name, taken from the Mass for the dead, makes the family's competing verdicts into a kind of funeral liturgy without consolation.

Ben

Willy's older brother, who appears only in memory or imagination. He walked into the jungle young and came out rich, and he becomes Willy's image of success won by daring rather than by being liked.

Dave Singleman

The old salesman Willy describes to Howard in Act Two, who sold by telephone from his hotel room into his eighties and was mourned by buyers across the country. He is the model Willy built his life on.

The Woman

Willy's companion in a Boston hotel, whose presence Biff discovers when he comes to find his father after failing mathematics. The discovery is the hidden wound of the whole play.

Bill Oliver

Biff's former employer, from whom Biff hopes to borrow money for a sporting-goods venture. Oliver does not remember him, and Biff walks out with his fountain pen.

The insurance policy

Willy's life insurance, which he comes to see as the one thing he can still give Biff. It turns his death into his last sale.

The seeds

The packets Willy buys after the restaurant and plants by flashlight in the shaded yard, talking with Ben. He wants something to grow from his life where nothing will now grow.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension Why does Willy come home early at the start of Act One, and what does Linda want him to ask Howard?
2. Comprehension What does Charley offer Willy in Act Two, and why does Willy refuse it while still taking his money?
3. Comprehension What happens when Biff goes to see Bill Oliver, and what happens to Willy at the restaurant afterward?
4. Interpretation Willy measures success by being liked, Ben by riches seized boldly, and Charley by plain competence. Which standard does the play endorse, if any, and how do Bernard's and Biff's lives test them?
5. Interpretation Why does Miller keep the Boston hotel scene hidden until late in Act Two? How does knowing it change what we understand about Biff's failures since high school?
6. Interpretation When Biff weeps in the final confrontation, Willy concludes that Biff loves him and then drives off to his death. Is Willy's last act an act of love, of pride, or of despair?
7. Interpretation At the Requiem Charley defends the salesman's need to dream and Biff says his father had the wrong dreams. Who is right, and why does Linda's last word concern the house?
8. Big Question Can a person's worth be measured by what he earns or by how many people come to his funeral? If not, what is the right measure, and does anyone in the play see it?

Faith Connections

• Mark 8:36 (Scripture)

  Christ asks what it profits a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul. Willy has not even gained the world, but he has spent his soul trying, and by the end he values himself only by his insurance policy.

• Luke 15:11-32 (Scripture)

  The prodigal son comes home and is received by a father who runs to meet him. Biff comes home in Act One as a kind of prodigal, but the reconciliation the parable promises comes only in fragments, because the father is also lost.

• Ecclesiastes 2:18-23 (Scripture)

  The Preacher hates all his toil because he must leave it to one who comes after him, and his days are full of sorrow. Willy's last plan, to leave Biff the insurance money, is the Preacher's vanity carried to its bitterest end.

• Pascal, Pensees, the fragments on diversion (Great Conversation)

  Pascal argues that men keep busy with hunting, gambling, and business so that they need not think about their condition. Willy's endless travel and talk of the next big sale work the same way, until the memories he has kept at bay take over the stage.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: If a man believes that personal attractiveness and being liked are the keys to success, he will raise his sons on that belief and judge himself by it. But the world of business, embodied in Howard, values a man only while he sells, and charm cannot stop age. Therefore when Willy's sales fail, he has no other measure of his worth; unable to accept Biff's truth that they are ordinary men, he sells his life for insurance money. The play suggests that a false dream, not merely a hard economy, destroys him.

Rhetorical device: motif. Stockings recur through the play. Linda mends her old stockings in Act One, Willy angrily tells her to throw them out, and in the Boston memory he has given new stockings to the Woman. The repeated object ties his guilt to his wife's quiet sacrifice without a word of explanation.

Debate: Resolved: Willy Loman is destroyed more by his own false dream than by the indifference of the company that fires him.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Miller sets two fathers and two sons side by side: Willy and Biff, Charley and Bernard. Using Willy's meeting with the grown Bernard in Charley's office in Act Two, the Boston memory, and the Requiem, argue what Miller suggests makes a father's influence on a son wholesome or destructive.

Comparison with The Death of Ivan Ilyich: Ivan Ilyich and Willy Loman both face death after lives spent pursuing respectable success, and both are surrounded by family who cannot speak the truth to them. Compare how each man is or is not brought to see his life truly, and argue why Tolstoy grants Ivan an illumination that Miller seems to withhold from Willy.

Medical Lens

Frequently used in medical and psychiatric education. Willy shows exhaustion, inability to concentrate on the road, loss of the line between memory and present, conversations with absent or dead people, mood swings and repeated suicide attempts (car crashes and the hidden rubber hose attached to the gas heater). Readers have variously proposed major depression with psychotic features, early dementia or a stress-related breakdown; the play deliberately renders his inner world rather than a diagnosis, and Miller's working title 'The Inside of His Head' emphasises this. Linda is a classic portrait of the family caregiver who hides the danger even as she warns her sons. The play also raises the theme of suicide motivated by life insurance and of the ageing worker discarded by his employer. Suicide-risk discussion should follow responsible-messaging guidance.

• Act One, opening

  Willy returns home unable to drive, describing how his mind drifted and he nearly went off the road.

  Dementia MemoryAging SenescenceMelancholia Depression
• Act One, memory scenes

  Willy talks aloud to people from the past, including his dead brother Ben, while others watch.

  Madness PsychosisPsychology Unconscious
• Act One, Linda's speech to her sons

  Linda reveals Willy's deliberate car crashes and the rubber hose she found by the gas pipe.

  SuicideNursing Caregiving
• Act Two, the firing and Charley's office

  Willy is fired after decades and remarks that he is worth more dead than alive.

  SuicideAging Senescence
• Act Two, final scenes and Requiem

  Willy plans his death for the insurance; the funeral and Linda's inability to cry.

  SuicideDeath Dying

Creative Prompts

• Essay

  Argue whether Willy Loman's symptoms are best read as depression, dementia or neither. What does the stage technique of merging past and present do to the diagnostic question?

• Dialogue

  Write a scene in which Willy, in 1949, visits a doctor about his driving. What would the doctor have said?

• Classroom

  Compare Linda's 'attention must be paid' speech with Miller's essay 'Tragedy and the Common Man'.

Further Reading

• Timebends: A Life, Arthur Miller

• All My Sons, Arthur Miller

• Salesman in Beijing, Arthur Miller

  Miller's account of directing the play in China in 1983.