Summary and Analysis of Death of a Salesman

Author:

Death of a Salesman was written in 1949 by Arthur Miller, an American playwright. Miller wrote many other plays, like The Crucible and All My Sons, featuring discontented characters railing against stifling social conventions.

Setting:

The play is set mainly in the Loman house in Brooklyn, NY. Willy Loman makes business trips throughout New England. The play takes place some years after WWII, a time when consumerism was starting to become prevalent in American society.

Characters:

Willy Loman has been a traveling salesman for the same company for over thirty years. He’s a sub-par salesman who works long hours, earns little money, and gets little respect. Yet, he deludes himself with the belief that he’s got it made. He repeatedly tells himself, his boys, and his wife that he’s “well-known in Boston” or that things will pick up the next day. He constantly comes up with excuses for his failures. His self-delusion and denial of cold, harsh reality only delay the inevitable trauma of having to face it later. Being forced to see Biff for who he really is, a bum, is the tipping point that brings Willy to commit suicide at the end of the play.

Biff is the elder of Willy’s two sons. Biff, unlike his father, is unable to completely ignore things by. He resents his father for bringing him up with empty rhetoric and false expectations. Towards the end of the play, he unleashes all this resentment in a long, angry outburst. Biff repeatedly tells  When he finds out that Willy is having an affair with another woman, the emotional distress hits him so hard that he loses the will to go to the University of Virginia.

Happy is Willy’s younger son. He works a miserable, low-paying job as an assistant to an assistant. At Willy’s funeral at the end of the play, Biff asks Happy to come with him (out west). Happy responds with “I’m staying right in this city, and I’m gonna beat this racket,” making it clear that he’s a doomed static character. Unlike Biff, he doesn’t learn from his father’s mistake of blindly chasing an unrealistic dream. Happy is destined to carry Willy’s legacy of blindly and unsuccessfully chasing the American Dream. 

Linda is Willy’s loyal and loving wife.  But in the play, even she plays more of a role as Willy’s over-protective mother than that of a wife. She never confronts Willy about his ridiculous self-delusional behavior and all the suffering it brings to everyone, especially her. Rather, she puts up with her lot in life, having to maintain the house on a shoe-string budget, mend stockings that she knows other women have been wearing, and keep a horrifying rubber hose in the house. She shields Willy from reality by continuously going along with his elaborate excuses. Rather than scolding Willy for being irresponsibly blind to the suffering he’s causing everyone, she attacks Biff and Happy for not doing more to help.  All she gets in return from Willy is disrespect.

Plot summary:

Death of a Salesman begins when Willy Loman has returned home early from a business trip. His two sons, Biff and Happy, are back home for the first time in years. Biff is now jobless, after having worked numerous temporary jobs out West. Happy lives in his own small apartment in NYC, working in a demeaning, low-paying job. The two of them, in a bedroom upstairs, start fantasizing about living a life out west working outdoors, where they can be free.

Meanwhile, Willy begins to lose himself in a daydream of a memory of Biff and Happy during their high school days. Younger Biff is confident, popular at his school, and a star football player with multiple colleges recruiting him. Willy is gleefully bragging to his sons, telling them that he’s a popular and successful salesman all throughout New England. Their studious neighbor, Bernard, runs onto the scene to remind Biff that he needs to start studying to avoid flunking math. The three Lomans laugh at this and ridicule Bernard, agreeing that “he’s liked, but he’s not well liked.”

But later, he reveals to Linda that his New England sales were modest. He complains that he’s being disrespected for being talkative and fat. Willy’s daydream ends on a less-than-glorious note, as Bernard and Linda are nagging Willy about Biff’s irresponsible behavior (not studying, driving without license, stealing the football, being rough on the girls).

Willy’s neighbor, Charley, comes over to check on Willy. They play cards. Charley offers Willy a job, which he refuses. In the middle of their game, Willy has a conversation with imaginary Ben, Willy’s brother. Angry and confused, Charley leaves. Willy goes on daydreaming again, remembering the last time he saw Ben.

Biff, Happy, and Linda see Willy daydreaming. Linda scolds Biff and Happy for not being supportive of their father, telling them that he has tried to kill himself multiple times. At this, Biff and Happy earnestly promise to try to succeed to make Willy happy. When they tell Willy about their plan to start a business and meet with Bill Olliver, Willy instantly cheers up and has a new hope in Biff. Willy enthusiastically gives tips to Biff for his meeting with Bill Olliver.

The next day, Willy goes into his boss’ office asking for a promotion to be assigned as the company’s New York City salesman. The boss rejects the idea and fires Willy. Dejected, Willy goes to Charley’s office for a loan. There, he sees Bernard, now grown-up and a successful lawyer. He desperately asks him why Biff hasn’t succeeded in life, but Bernard doesn’t know and just tells Willy that it’s best to let Biff be. Charley offers Willy a job, which Willy again refuses out of pride. When Charley gives Willy the money, Willy tells Charley, “you’re the only friend I got.” By revealing such a humbling truth to Charley, Willy has made it clear something in him has changed.  At this point, nearing the end of the play, Willy has come to accept the reality of his humiliating situation. Having been fired by his company, Willy doesn’t have any earning power. Even though it was clear to the reader that Willy wasn’t making much money, it took being fired for Willy to realize his predicament. Willy used to envy Charley way too much to even acknowledge him as a friend. Even when Charley would offer Willy financial help in the past, Willy’s pride got in the way of any thought of accepting it. This quote by Willy shows that he recognizes his tough financial situation.

That night, Willy, Biff, and Happy meet at a restaurant to talk about their day. Willy tells his sons that he was fired from his job. Biff tries to tell Willy that his meeting with Mr. Oliver didn’t go well, but Willy keeps interrupting and finishing Biff’s sentences for him. In the end, Biff claims that he got a lunch date with Mr. Oliver, but can’t go of embarrassment. Willy’s emotions overtake him and he falls into another flashback from Biff’s high school days. He and Happy leave the restaurant with two girls, leaving their babbling father behind.

In his flashback, Willy thinks back to a night in a hotel room he spent with a mistress. Willy and the woman are playing in bed when they hear a knock at the door. Willy tries to hide the woman, but when young Biff comes in he’s horrified to see with his father with the woman. Biff bursts into tears, calls his father a phony, and angrily storms off. Willy’s flashback ends and Willy leaves to go home.

At home, Linda yells at Biff and Happy for abandoning their father. When Willy comes home, Biff confronts him and forthrightly tells Willy that he should accept him for who he really is, a bum. The two of them erupt in anger and argue. At the end Biff is sobbing, which touches Willy. After everyone else goes to bed, Willy talks to imaginary Ben about whether to accept a $20,000 proposition. He goes outside, speeds away in his car, and kills himself in a crash. Willy killed himself so that Biff would get $20,000 in insurance money.

Author’s Style:

This play is essentially written from Willy’s point of view. It frequently cuts to Willy’s flashbacks. It frequently features Willy’s imagined conversations with Ben. Rather than looking at Biff and Happy’s night out with the girls from the restaurant, the play keeps its eye on Willy as he daydreams in the restaurant bathroom. By taking Willy’s point of view, Miller’s play gives the reader critical insight into Willy’s abnormal and often confusing thought process. The reader gets to see Ben just as Willy sees him, so we empathize with Willy a little bit more. Without witnessing Willy’s frequent flashbacks and hallucinations, the reader would have no idea why Willy suddenly erupted in anger during his card game with Charley. This is ultimately a play centered around Willy and his reactions to triumph and failure.

Theme:

Freedom and confinement, a major theme in this play, shows up again and again in the Loman family.

Biff is the most outwardly expressive of his urge to be free. Unlike Willy and Happy, Biff repeatedly rejects the notion of being stuck in a job he doesn’t feel comfortable in. Biff spent some years working on farms and ranches out in the West. He tells Happy he loves to work outdoors, where he can feel free and alive.

Meanwhile, Willy is stuck in a demanding, rat-race job as a traveling salesman. He’s confined by his own expectations and ambitions to make it big. Not only does he confine himself, but he also takes Biff’s freedom by putting lofty expectations and ambitions on him.

Especially at the end of the play, it’s clear Happy is destined to be confined just like Willy. At the funeral, Happy boldly declares, “I’m going to show you and everybody else that Willy Loman did not die in vain. He had a good dream. It’s the only dream you can have – to come out number-one man.” Even after seeing Willy’s unhappiness and obsession lead to a life of lies and misery, Happy still doesn’t get it. Willy’s example was not meant to inspire, but rather to warn people against being so stubbornly devoted to a single, inflexible goal. Happy is going to grow up to be confined by his stubborn ambition, just like his father was.

Even Linda finds herself confined by Willy. Having to constantly fret over Willy’s contemplation of suicide, Linda is confined to a life of mothering a grown man. In the very last lines of the play at Willy’s funeral, Linda says, “We’re free…We’re free…”