Death of a Salesman

“I’ve always made a point of not wasting my life, and everytime I come back here I know that all I’ve done is to waste my life.” 

Normally, Biff believes that his choice to work in the outdoors gives his life meaning. However, he is always reminded of his failures in the eyes of his father and in respect to the American Dream upon returning home. Willy’s expectations of Biff leave him in an impossible position, forced to concoct ways to start a successful business from scratch despite having no capital or viable partners.

“I don’t know what the hell I’m workin’ for. Sometimes I sit in my apartment—all alone. And I think of the rent I’m paying. But then, it’s what I always wanted. My own apartment, a car, and plenty of women. And still, goddammit, I’m lonely.” 

Conversing with his elder brother Biff, Happy admits that though he has everything he has ever dreamed of and is well on the path to the American Dream, he is unbearably lonely. Though he is working hard for what he always wanted, he doesn’t see a purpose in his struggle. This highlights the emotional hollowness at the center of the American Dream.

“Don’t say? Tell you a secret, boys. Don’t breathe it to a soul. Someday I’ll have my own business, and I’ll never have to leave home any more. […] Bigger than Uncle Charley! Because Charley is not—liked. He’s liked, but he’s not—well liked.” 

In one of his reveries, Willy remembers telling his young sons that he will one day have his own business. This dream is the ideal of the American Dream and what Willy desperately works towards. It is clear that Charley’s business is not up to his standards, simply because Charley is not “liked enough”—the Loman marker of predicting success.

“I’m very well liked in Hartford. You know, the trouble is, Linda, people don’t seem to take to me.” 

As he does quite often, Willy contradicts his own statements and reality within one sentence. Though he emphasizes his popularity to impress his family as a marker of success, he simultaneously remembers the reality that people don’t actually like him. Willy states his fantasy and the grim reality almost simultaneously, trying to come to terms with them both. 

“Why didn’t I go to Alaska with my brother Ben that time! Ben! That man was a genius, that man was success incarnate! What a mistake! He begged me to go.” 

In multiple instances, Willy expresses regret for not taking his brother’s offer to go to the Alaskan wilderness. Ben’s path to success was merely dictated by chance, and it directly opposes the prerequisites of success as outlined by the American Dream. While Willy is adamantly committed to the Dream, he contradicts his own purpose by wishing he chose the exact opposite path. 

“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.” 

Willy remembers asking his older brother Ben to stay for a while. His only semblance of a father figure, Willy looks to fill the hole his father left upon abandoning him. The feeling of being “temporary” expresses Willy’s lack of a permanent hold on his own identity. This goes a long way in explaining his constant contradictions, his carefully shaped perception of himself, and his denial of reality.

“Walk in very serious. You are not applying for a boy’s job. Money is to pass. Be quiet, fine, serious. Everyone likes a kidder, but nobody lends him money […] Don’t be so modest, You always started too low. Walk in with a big laugh. Don’t look so worried. Start off with a couple of your good stories to lighten things up. It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it—because personality always wins the day.” 

In yet another instance of contradictions, Willy first tells Biff to be serious and quiet if he wants Bill Oliver to give him a loan. In the very next sentences, he tells Biff to lighten the mood and tell stories. While Willy understands that being serious and working hard is the key to success, he cannot let go of his fantasy of having a likeable personality being the true path of success. 

“Like a young god. Hercules—something like that. And the sun, the sun all around him. Remember how he waved to me? Right up from the field, with the representatives of three colleges standing by? And the buyers I brought, the cheers when he came out—Loman, Loman, Loman! God almighty, he’ll be great yet. A star like that, magnificent, can never really fade away!” 

Willy reminisces about Biff’s football game, romantically idolizing him. In Willy’s perception, Biff is a young man with godlike potential; he is so bright and full of greatness that nothing can prevent him from success. He completely ignores Biff’s faults, such as his constant thievery, pride, and lack of seriousness in his academics

 “You wait, kid, before it’s all over we’re gonna get a little place in the country, and I’ll raise some vegetables, a couple of chickens […] And they’ll get married, and come for a weekend. I’d build a little guest house.” 

When faced with the possibility of Biff’s successful business venture, Willy fantasizes things that truly make him happy. While he has remained committed to the life of a salesman, his sole desire is to be in the country. When he has no need to struggle any longer, Willy is ready to build a home in the country and have his own garden. 

“Will you stop mending stockings? At least while I’m in the house. It gets me nervous. I can’t tell you. Please.” 

Willy’s constant annoyance with Linda’s stockings symbolizes his guilt about his sexual infidelity. He gave the unnamed Woman stockings that he should have given to Linda. At the same time, Willy’s aspirations of financial stability are disturbed when he is reminded that he can’t even provide his wife with new stockings. 

“I’m talking about your father! There were promises made across this desk! You mustn’t tell me you’ve got people to see—I put thirty-four years into this firm, Howard, and now I can’t pay my insurance! You can’t eat the orange and throw the peel away—a man is not a piece of fruit!” 

When Howard fires Willy, Willy starts to fall apart. He cannot fathom that his invested likeability and personability at the firm failed to provide him with either a steady income or an upward path to success. Like an orange, he spent all his life working for the company until he is only a shell of a man—a shell to be thrown away in his old age. 

“Ben: There’s a new continent at your doorstep, William. You could walk out rich. Rich!” / “Willy: “We’ll do it here, Ben! You hear me? We’re gonna do it here!” 

Willy remembers Ben’s last call to come to Alaska with him. He consistently justifies his choice to remain in Brooklyn as a salesman, determined to prove that he can achieve the American Dream and venture into uncharted territory in the business world. Had Willy been bolder and less tied to myths about American success, he might have achieved a different kind of success that is unmoored from the American Dream.

“Willy, when’re you gonna realize that them things don’t mean anything? You named him Howard, but you can’t sell that. The only thing you got in this world is what you can sell. And the funniest thing is that you’re a salesman, and you don’t know that.” 

After getting fired, Willy complains that despite his personal and social investment at the firm, Howard still shamelessly fires him. Charley tries to explain to Willy that contrary to his adamant belief, likeability and personality alone never lead to success in the business world. This quote also underscores how poorly suited Willy is to being a salesman.

“Funny, y’know? After all the highways, and the trains, and the appointments, and the years, you end up worth more dead than alive” 

Willy alludes to his attempts at suicide in a contemplation of his life insurance policy. Despite all his years of experience and hard work, he still does not amount to more than what his life insurance policy would give to his family. This statement foreshadows Willy’s later imaginary discussions with Ben and his suicide. 

“Say you got a lunch date with Oliver tomorrow […] You leave the house tomorrow and come back at night and say Oliver is thinking it over. And he thinks it over for a couple of weeks, and gradually it fades away and nobody’s the worse.” 

At dinner, Happy tries to convince Biff to hide the truth of what happened at Bill Oliver’s office from Willy. Unlike Biff, Happy is willing to indulge in Willy’s fantasies. He acknowledges that the stories he fabricates keeps him sane, and that without them Willy’s entire perception of his life will fall apart. 

“Dad, will you give me a minute to explain? […] His answer was—[He breaks off, suddenly angry] Dad, you’re not letting me tell you what I want to tell you! […] I can’t talk to him!” 

Biff goes against Happy’s request to appease Willy and instead tries to tell him the truth. However, he hits a significant wall when Willy is unable to wrap his mind around the truth. No matter how Biff words the event, Willy adamantly spins the events of the day to fit his own perception of reality. 

“You—you gave her Mama’s stockings! […] You fake! You phony little fake! You fake!” 

When confronted with the reality of Biff’s lack of greatness, Willy falls into his most dreaded memory of Biff catching him with the undressed Woman. Biff accuses Willy of being a phony and, in turn, loses the high perception he has of his father as the ideal male. The stockings Willy gave to the Woman represent the financial stability and emotional investment that Willy failed to give Biff’s mother. 

“Because he thinks I’m nothing, see, and so he spites me. But the funeral—[Straightening up] Ben, that funeral will be massive! They’ll come from Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire! All the old-timers with the strange license plates—that boy will be thunderstruck, Ben, because he never realized—I am known! Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey—I am known Ben, and he’ll see it with his eyes once and for all! He’ll see what I am, Ben! He’s in for a shock, that boy!” 

In his final reverie, Willy discusses his suicide with an imaginary Ben. Ben’s presence is significant, as Willy has always longed for his brother’s acceptance as a father figure. Willy reconstructs his idealized fantasy of being well-liked and successful one last time, romanticizing a funeral where the crowds will impress Biff and prove his success.

“You’re practically full of it! We all are! And I’m through with it. [To Willy] Now hear this, Willy, this is me […] I stole myself out of every good job since high school! […] And I never got anywhere because you blew me so full of hot air I could never stand taking orders from anybody! That’s whose fault it is!” 

Biff is unwilling to play along with Willy’s fabricated perception of reality any longer. He forces Willy to face the reality that the only reason Biff seemed so full of potential and yet still failed is because of the inflated ego of Willy’s own making. Even worse, that ego inflation precipitated Biff’s failures by engendering a sense of entitlement in the young man. 

“I stopped in the middle of that building and I saw—the sky. I saw the things that I love in this world. The work and the food and the time to sit and smoke. And I looked at the pen and said to myself, what the hell am I grabbing this for? Why am I trying to become what I don’t want to be? What am I doing in an office, making a contemptuous, begging fool of myself, when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am! Why can’t I say that, Willy?” 

Biff discusses his epiphany upon running off with Bill Oliver’s pen. He realizes that the rat race of the business world holds no attraction for him. He questions why he is chasing it in the first place when all his heart craves is to be out in nature. He also questions why he can’t proudly follow his dreams. 

“I am not a leader of men, Willy, and neither are you. You were never anything but a hard-working drummer who landed in the ash can like all the rest of them! I’m one dollar an hour, Willy! […] Do you gather my meaning? I’m not bringing home any prizes any more, and you’re going to stop waiting for me to bring them home!” 

Slowly unraveling harsh truths, Biff tells Willy that there is no greatness in them. They are both nothing but mediocre, and expecting anything above the ordinary from themselves will only cause them heartache. The fabricated reality that Willy has carefully curated for his family does nothing but hurt them when they are repeatedly disappointed with Biff’s failure to be successful. 

“Willy: Loves me. [Wonderingly] Always loved me. Isn’t that a remarkable thing? Ben, he’ll worship me for it!” / “Ben: [with promise] It’s dark there, but full of diamonds.” 

When all other fantasies fall apart, Willy clings to one last hope: acceptance. Where his father and brother abandoned him, he sees his son’s love as evidence of having something to live or die for. He sees this love as a promise that Biff will be impressed with the life insurance policy. An imaginary Ben eggs Willy on, stating that the darkness of death is full of diamonds—the wealth that Willy was never able to attain in life but that Ben was able to obtain in the African wilderness. 

“Nobody dast blame the man. You don’t understand: Willy was a salesman. And for a salesman, there is no rock bottom to life. He don’t put a bolt to a nut, he don’t tell you the law or give you medicine. He’s a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back—that’s an earthquake. And then you get yourself a couple of spots on your hat, and you’re finished. Nobody dast blame this man. A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory.” 

At Willy’s burial, the family struggles to come to terms with Willy’s grand dreams that lead only to his demise. Charley insists that Willy’s incredible dedication to his dreams were necessary to keep going as a salesman. No matter how grim the circumstances may be, a salesman must maintain the illusion of the Dream.