Summary and Analysis of Death of a Salesman

• Arthur Miller is a famous American playwright whose other works include The Crucible and All My Sons. He was married to Marilyn Monroe, but that marriage didn’t last.
• The setting of the play takes place in New York City, where their house is located. Their house doesn’t have any corners and seems to be run down, because things are always broken. Willy travels around to Boston and other big cities in New England for business.
• The story revolves around Willy and his visions of the past. He’s a salesman whose life is basically crumbling around him because he loses his job and is depressed about his son’s lack of success. Many of the characters call him “sport” or “kid,” even his sons and Linda’s attitude toward him is motherly towards him, so all together it creates a childish persona for him.
• Biff is Willy’s son and they had a falling out many years ago, when Biff caught Willy cheating on Linda. Biff was a football player in high school and it seemed like he was going to amount to a lot, but then he never amounted to any success because he didn’t pass high school.  He used to blame that on Willy, until the end, when he realizes that he, himself, is the actual reason behind his lack of success.
• Happy is Willy’s other son, and he’s meant to be like another version of Willy when he grows up. Even though he seems happy, he’s not, because he is neglected by his parents.
• Linda is Willy’s wife, and at first she seems like a really good character who puts up with a lot, she actually seems to control Willy, and he eventually blames her for his lack of success in the business field.
• Charley is their next door neighbor, who is rich and even though Willy doesn’t come out and say it, Willy is jealous of Charley because of Charley’s success and because of Charley’s son Bernard’s success.
• Bernard is Biff’s childhood friend who always let Biff cheat off him in school. He became a lawyer and very successful.
• Ben is Willy’s older brother and Willy idolizes him throughout the story. He is shown as a father figure to Willy and the way he appears, in all white and as a vision, makes him seem like a Jesus figure.
• Plot: It’s the last few days of Willy Loman’s life. He is a salesman disappointed with his life, because he was never as rich as he wanted to be. His kids are all grown up and moved out, but during this play they are back and staying in the house for the first time in a long time. The two boys, Biff and Happy, realize that their dad is going insane and try to bring up his spirits. Willy is having visions of the past combine with the present, so he’s shouting and raving at things that are just memories, as if they were happening now. Even though Biff and Willy’s relationship had been strained, to keep his dad from killing himself, Biff tries to make him happy and go into business. However, it doesn’t work out. In the end, Willy realizes that Biff actually does love him, so he is happy. Then Willy enter another crazed state of mind and thinks if he kills himself and it looks like an accident, his family will get $20000 and that will get Biff started in business. So he purposefully gets into a car accident and kills himself.
• There isn’t really a narrative voice. For the author’s style, he just seems to use normal English for all the dialogue.
• For imagery, all we see is what the characters tell us in their dialogue, which isn’t much, because in conversation, there isn’t a lot of lengthy description.
• There are multiple symbols throughout the story. The diamonds Willy wants to find in Africa represent tangible wealth. The stockings represent cheating and betrayal. The seeds represent planting and cultivating opportunity.
• The theme is a sad one in that, no matter how hard you try, sometimes things just don’t work out.
• The title seems to point to this too, because it implies that the character was never able to achieve a higher status than a salesman, and that he died as unsuccessful as he started.
• The plot shows the theme because the entire plot outlines Willy’s dream to be successful and it shows all his efforts as a salesman but then he gets fired and his life falls apart even more.
• “Biff Loman is lost. In the greatest country in the world a young man with such –personal attractiveness, gets lost. And such a hard worker. There’s one thing about Biff –he’s not lazy” (6). This quote represents the initial idea that Willy had about how anybody that is a hard worker, should be able to be successful. This idea is not present at the end of the play.
• “Why boys, when I was seventeen I walked into the jungle, and when I was twenty-one I walked out. And by God I was rich” (33). This is a quote by Uncle Ben and he makes it seem like being rich is so easily done, which is probably where Willy got that idea.