Death of a Salesman

As some previous educators have noted, the construction of this metaphor is slightly inconsistent. Willy tells his boss, Howard, that he cannot eat an orange and then throw the peel away, which of...

The relationship between Biff and Willy can be described as turbulent, dysfunctional and, actually, dissociative. It is turbulent because the history of angst, secrecy, and disappointments between...

Willy Loman has a very difficult relationship with his sons. His relationship with Biff is especially fraught. This is because Biff hasn't achieved his potential. Once upon a time, Biff was a star...

Willy Loman, Biff and Happy's delusional, mentally-unstable father, ends up committing suicide by purposely wrecking his car at the end of the play. After consulting with his dead brother's spirit,...

The Woman is one of the characters who appears only in Willy’s mind. Similar to his brother Ben, the Woman is part of a memory or a hallucination that plagues Willy. While Ben appears as if he is...

Throughout the play, Biff is portrayed as a kleptomaniac who began stealing various items as a child and was never punished for his actions. In one of Willy's memory scenes, Biff steals a football...

Bill Oliver is one of Biff Loman's former employers. He is introduced to the plot when Biff and his brother, Happy, tell their father that they're considering going into the sporting goods...

Willy brings up his memories of Dave Singleman while he is in Howard's office trying to talk his boss into letting him work in the New York area rather than having to cover all of New England. What...

The most ironic thing about Linda's speech is when she says that she and the family are now "free." In a financial sense, that's perfectly true. Now that Linda's finally paid off the mortgage, a...

Biff is locked in a cycle of deception and dysfunction in his life and his relationships with others, particularly his father. He has come back home after a failed attempt to live away from his...

"You can't eat the orange and throw the peel away" is a metaphor and obviously a very poor one. That is exactly what you do with an orange:you eat the orange and throw the peel away. You do the...

This is a symbolic expression, by which Willy means that his world is being destroyed. He is financially hard-up, he is on the verge of losing his long-term job as a salesman, and he is nervous and...

Biff knew that his father would question whether he had actually gone to see Bill Oliver to ask for a loan. His impulse to take the expensive pen may have been motivated consciously or...

When Biff suggests that Happy leave home and head out West with him, Happy initially seems interested but declines the offer. Happy seeks gratification from others and would rather become a success...

Willy has the illusion that he is well-known and well-liked mainly because he knows many people. As a traveling salesman he has to be friendly, amusing, and entertaining. But all of his...

Death of a Salesman contains several scenes that are outside the play’s main plot. The abrupt interruptions to the linear narrative serve to emphasis that Arthur Miller’s work is expressionist more...

I think we need to approach this question with a multi-faceted answer that acknowledges the role that society and in particular capitalism and the American dream played in Willy's suicide. To...

To add to the examples presented in the first answer, I would point to the title itself - Death of a Salesman. We find out that Willy's sales idol Dave Singleman embodies the concept of the almost...

What seems especially ironic in Death of a Salesman is that Willy Loman is a failure but he keeps advising his sons about how to be a success. He was advising them how to be a success when they...

Biff's assessment of his father's dreams is ultimately validated by the play at large. He argues his father's dreams were wrong because they were shallow, focusing only on a meaningless, empty idea...

This quote refers to Willy Loman's brother, who found his fortune in Africa in the diamond mines. Willy's brother worked hard and made his fortune early, while Willy worked hard and still hasn't...

Dave Singleman is Willy’s oft-cited aspirational hero of the sales industry. Singleman is representative of the old world of salesmen, one in which personality and connections determines success...

The first thing you need to analyze to find symbolic meaning in Willy Loman’s name is his last name. Broken down, it is “low man.” In the play, Willy is an unsuccessful traveling salesman who is...

The following quotation is important because it shows how and why the relationship between Willy and Biff turned sour: BIFF: You fake! You phony little fake! You fake! (Overcome, he turns quickly...

This particular exchange between Charley and Willy reflects some of their fundamental differences between how reality is constructed and how people are valued. For Willy, J.P. Morgan is valued...

In Willy's hallucination/memory, Biff shows off the football he stole from the locker room and Willy initially tells him to return it. Willy then praises Biff's actions by telling his son that the...

Biff steals things because he is a kleptomaniac. He essentially cannot help himself when he steals Bill Oliver's fountain pen and runs out of the room. Willy has raised Biff to be a selfish,...

As one of the first sounds that the audience perceives, the flute plays faintly in the opening of Act of Death of a Salesman. A melody is heard, played upon the flute. It is small and fine,...

Biff Loman always had considerable potential to go on and make something of this life once he left school. A high school football star with a head for figures, the world was very much his oyster....

Willy says over and over that the secret to his "success" is that he is "well liked." This term is a cover, however, a placeholder for the truth Willy cannot explain about his life -- that the...

The jungle represents the modern, cut-throat world of business competition in which some, like Ben, might triumph while others, like Willy, go under. It is a jungle in the sense that people are...

In Death of a Salesman, Willy and Linda Loman have a complex relationship in which Linda serves largely as an enabler to Willy’s dreams and fantasies. A devoted and supporting wife – within...

In Death of a Salesman the phrase "Casting off" is used during a conversation where Linda and Willy are discussing their sons, who have come back to live with them. WILLY: Figure it out. Work a...

Happy subscribes to his father's belief that appearance and personality are the essential aspects necessary to have success in the business world. As a delusional, conflicted salesman, Willy Loman...

What is Linda's reaction to Willy's complaints about himself? In Act 1, Willy is criticizing himself and his abilities. He says people laugh at him, overlook him, don't take him seriously, and...

In "Death of a Salesman," Linda Loman seems to have more forgiving and understanding view of her sons, Biff and Happy, than does Willy. Veering between open expressions of disappointment and...

Willy is deeply jealous of Charlie, his next-door neighbor. Charlie is everything that Willy is not: Where Willy is a braggart, Charlie is a modest man of few words; Where Willy is a dreamer,...

The first technique is one called "mimesis" or imitation. The basic form of drama is imitative in that actors on stage pretend to be imaginary characters, rather than standing up in propria persona...

There are five principal characters in Death of a Salesman. They are Willy, Linda, Biff, Happy, and Charley. The only big conflict between any two of these characters is between Willy and Biff, and...

After Biff tells his father that he has a meeting early in the morning with Bill Oliver, Happy intervenes and says that he has a wonderful idea. Happy grabs Biff and tells him that they will go...

In this scene, Willy has an imaginary encounter with his dead brother Ben. No matter how real the details of Ben's story, Ben represents to Willy the material success that he longs for but that has...

Arthur Miller's famous play Death of a Salesman deals with the fall of Willy Loman, a traveling salesman, who lives in Boston, Massachusetts, with his wife Linda. He also has two grown sons, Happy...

Ben, Willy Loman's brother, does not think too differently from Willy when it comes to the way "boys" should behave. The reason why I put the noun "boys" in quotation marks has to do with an...

One of the themes of Death of a Salesman is clarified by Biff in the Requiem. Based on his new understanding of life, his father, and himself that he has gained over the course of the play, Biff...

Charley and Willy are next door neighbors and antagonists, but at the same time, they are friends or, more precisely, frenemies. They play cards together, and Willy is dependent on Charley for a...

Willy is not demoted; he is fired. It is clear from the start of the scene with Howard, that Howard is not at all interested in the exhausted and distraught man in his office. Indeed, he is more...

A filmed version of Death of a Salesman, directed by Volker Schlöndorff, was televised in 1985 and was later released in theaters. Dustin Hoffman repeated the role of Willy Loman that he had played...

One of the most influential scenes is act 2, scene 3, which is where Willy goes to Charley's office and ends up talking to Bernard, Charley's son. This scene is important because this marks the...

On the literal level, it is, indeed, about the death of the salesman, Willy Loman. However, more importantly, it is a tragedy concerning the death of the American Dream that Willy Loman represents....

Temporary means not permanent. This line provides insight into Willy Loman's character. It shows that the early abandonment he experienced when his father deserted the family has influenced his...