The conversation turns to dreams when Willy returns home: of Biff becoming a successful entrepreneur and a salesman that Willy has of him. Meanwhile, Linda comes downstairs and speaks to Biff and Happy that she dreads that Willy is planning to kill himself as she had found a piece of rubber hose that was connected to a gas pipe in the basement. Willy moves outside the kitchen, after Charley leaves home, and is still caught up in his imagined conversation with his elder brother. Ben once invited Willy to Alaska and ask him to join him in order to make his fortune. While playing play cards and talking to Charley, Willy imagines himself talking to his elder brother, Ben. Ultimately, Charley, Willy’s neighbor, enters from the next door. Meanwhile, Willy sits downstairs in the kitchen and talks to himself loudly, recalling happy moments from past: their family car cleaned by Biff and Happy, Biff’s preparation for his important football game, willy’s joyfully working on projects around his own home, his afternoon with a woman in a hotel room on trips to Boston.
Biff and Happy, as they talk, resolve that they can be effective, successful, and happier if they initiate a business of their own, together. Happy, the younger son of Willy, works as a low-level sales position in New York City, employing most of his time seducing women. After working on a farm in Texas, Biff has just returned home and Willy, that morning, begins criticizing for his failures to earn money and to find a prestigious profession. He senses that he’s not moving ahead toward anything at all.Īt a high school, he was among the best football player but couldn’t get a college scholarship since he failed the mathematics test and declined to earn money for his summer school to graduate. Biff, now thirty-four years of age, has held four different jobs since graduating from his high school. On his return to home, Linda, Willy wife, ease him and motivates him to ask the master of the company, Howard Wagner, for a place in in the New York office where he his salary will be guaranteed without traveling.īiff and Happy, Willy’s two sons, upstairs in their bedroom recalls their past happier times of their adolescents and compares it with their disappointing lives of today.
Moreover, the company has taken away his salary so that he works on a straight commission. Recently, his sales rate has declined as his old costumes are either dying or retiring. Willy, who is now sixty-three years old, has been working as a traveling salesman for more than thirty years. Willy Loman, after having set out on a sales trip to Portland, Maine that morning, returns to his Brooklyn home very late at night since he continually drove his car off the side of the road. Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller Summary And in the end, Willy commits suicide, realizing his so little accomplishments in his life. But, due to a miserable financial status, he couldn’t secure a loan for his son to start his own business. He, as a salesman, is subject to the impulses of the flea market and thinks that it is this job that can only rise him in the world of business. He craves his brother’s prosperity and endeavors for a flawless life, nonetheless, he frequently is unsuccessful to accomplish his dreams. Other than the American Dream, Willy Loman desires nothing. In Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller reconnoiters subjects of money, death and the loss of individuality. Initially the play was titled as The inside of His Head, however, later he appears dissatisfied with the title and conferred the second title of the play i.e., Death of a Salesman. We, from the 1 st title, get a deep intuition into the psychosomatic temperament of the central character who is a salesman.
The play is awarded various honors and awards that also includes the Pulitzer Prize and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award.