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 instead of dogged service of the boss. Willy hoped to have become Singleman by this stage in his career: a man with such charisma and stability that he was able to give up traveling to be a successful salesman.

Instead, Willy finds himself at a low point both professionally and personally. Despite his experience, Willy’s younger boss Howard treats him condescendingly, expecting Willy to be thankful for the grueling schedule he still has to maintain in order to barely make ends meet at home.

It is interesting to discuss how Singleman and Loman’s surnames have symbolic significance, especially since you want to discuss the former’s lasting impression on the latter. Singleman’s name indicates that he is a paragon, a singular example of a “great” salesman. The name also suggests that no one else could replicate his success because of his unique place in time. Conversely, Loman’s name describes his emotional state as well as his professional status. Willy has hit a low point, lamenting the degradation of a profession he once believed would bring him success and happiness. Instead, being a salesman has brought Willy in the depths of self-loathing and desperation.

The contrast between Willy and his idol underscores the disconnect between who Willy wants others to believe he is and who Willy actually is. His inability to resolve this tension combined with dire financial straits motivates Willy’s decision to end his life.

As he grovels in the office of a distracted and disinterested Howard Wagner, pleading for an in-town job, lowering his salary requests again and again, Willy Loman desperately relates a histrionic story of the eighty-four-year-old Dave Singleman who, without ever leaving his hotel room, conducted a successful sales career. When he died the noble "death of salesman", hundreds of his associates - out of love and respect - attended his funeral. In fact it was the manner of Singleman's death, not his life, which drew Willy to embrace salesmanship and to turn away from the pioneering, 'Horatio Alger' type of career offered by his brother, Ben. In this decision, Willy rebuffs the rugged individualism and the indifference to social relationships exemplified in Ben Loman. Rather, Willy chooses Singleman's way, a life of loyalty and friendship, a life cocooned in a web of sustaining social relationships. But when Willy's manner of death is juxtaposed with Singleman's, its irony and tragedy are all the more poignant, for Willy dies alone.     

What did Dave Singleman represent for Willy in Death of a Salesman?

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 impressed Willy was that Singleman was eighty-four years old and still successful as a traveling salesman. Willy is using him to suggest that he himself is relatively young at the age of sixty-three, but he is making a bad impression on Howard. If Willy is still full of energy, then why does he want to be taken off the road? Willy sounds like an old-timer by talking about a man who traveled by railroad in the old days when automobiles were a novelty. 

Singleman set a bad example for Willy. Specifically, Willy got the idea that he might never have to retire, so he didn't have to worry about the future. He was the kind of man who would be unhappy in retirement. He didn't know anything but selling. He had thought about doing a little gardening but never got around to it until it was too late. A lot of men do not want to retire or even to think about retiring. As Shelly Levine, a salesman, says in David Mamet's play Glengarry Glen Ross, "A man IS his job." So, partly because of Singleman, Willy never planned ahead but just lived from day to day and from roadtrip to roadtrip. There wasn't too much he could have done, but he did meet lots of people on his travels and he might have found ways of making more money by changing to a different company, or even starting his own little business.

The name Singleman suggests several different things. It suggests that he was a single man, a bachelor. He didn't have Willy's responsibilities or expenses. And he never thought about retiring because life on the road was more interesting than sitting alone in some furnished room waiting to die. The name Singleman also suggests that he is a single, unique example of a man who can continue working when he is eighty-four years old. Willy shouldn't have chosen him as a role model. Willy is nearly used up at the age of only sixty-three. Furthermore, Willy only took Singleman's word for it that he had lots of friends and that he was earning a good living. Singleman may have just been getting by. People who live to be eighty-four don't have many friends left. He was dealing with merchants who were half his age, or less. He may have had some bread-and-butter item to peddle which merchants could use but not in big quantities, so he didn't have any competition. The description of Singleman's magnificent funeral was all, literally, in Willy's dreams. Willy probably had more people at his own funeral than Singleman had. Willy had his wife, two sons, and Charley.

It is interesting that the words "death of a salesman" are spoken only once in the play. This is when Willy is talking to Howard about Dave Singleman.

Do you know? when he died--and by the way he died the death of a salesman, in his green velvet slippers in the smoker of the New York, New Haven and Hartford, going into Boston--when he died, hundreds of salesmen and buyers were at his funeral.

Singleman was homeless. He was undoubtedly buried in Boston because that was where he died. If he had died in Philadelphia, he would have been buried in Philadelphia. Willy thinks there is something glamorous and even heroic about being a traveling salesman, but he himself is an example of the grim reality.

What did Dave Singleman represent for Willy in Death of a Salesman?

Dave Singleman is a salesman with a reputation of nearly-mythical proportions. Of course, Willy would always take things by face-value, so he would have believed every single thing said about this man. One of the things said about Singleman is that, when he was alive, he lived in a hotel room from where he would sell, be successful, well-known, and still make it rich. 

Willy sees those qualities as essential to be victorious in life, and this is what sparks his motivation. This is because, to Willy, David Singleman is the American Dream: money, popularity, easy-done deals, and the benefit of having friends everywhere you go. 

 And when I saw that, I realized that selling was the greatest career a man could want. ’Cause what could be more satisfying than to be able to go, at the age of eighty-four, into twenty or thirty different cities, and pick up a phone, and be remembered and loved and helped by so many different people?

So little is Willy's concept of "self" that he does not even realize that he depends on being liked, in order to feel his own worth. Moreover, he also thinks that things come easy to everybody, and that there is a specific formula that can be followed by anyone and still achieve the same results. He still does not understand that David Singleman followed his own dreams, and that he succeeded by doing what he felt was necessary. Willy is doing the opposite: he is following David Singleman's dreams, and he expects the same results. Since it does not work that way, Willy will end his life, still not well-grounded. 

Who is Dave Singleman in Death of a Salesman?

To some extent, the title of the play refers not just to the death of Willy Loman but to the death of a particular breed of salesman. Back in the day, Dave Singleman was a legendary figure, working right up until the age of eighty-four. Willy, clearly inspired by Singleman, draws on his heroic example in trying to convince his boss to keep him on. At the age of sixty-three, Willy is a spring chicken by comparison to Singleman, and he is certain that he has plenty of salesmanship still left in him.

But the sad facts are that times have changed and that salesmanship is now a young man's game. There's just no place for the likes of Willy Loman. The same would've applied to Dave Singleman if he'd still been alive. Apart from his great age, he would've been hampered by his lack of success. Although Willy presents him as this almost mythical figure, you have to ask yourself a question: if someone were really successful in life, would they still be working as a traveling salesman well into their eighties?

Even if Singleman really was the hotshot salesman of legend, then the chances are that he, too, would struggle just as much as Willy in the world of modern salesmanship. It's a jungle out there, and those who cannot compete, like Willy Loman and Dave Singleton, are pretty much dead.

What is the importance of Dave Singleman in Death of a Salesman?

Dave Singleman was part of the reason that Willy did not follow his brother out to the lucrative gold fields of Alaska. Dave Singleman was a salesman in his eighties, well respected and successful. This was a very attractive future to Willy, and he was mesmerised with the promise of comfort and recognition that Dave Singleman’s career exemplified –

 WILLY:…I realised that selling was the greatest career a man could want. ’Cause what could be more satisfying than to be able to go, at the age of eighty-four, into twenty or thirty different cities, and pick up a phone, and be remembered and loved and helped by so many different people?

Willy was impressed also with the recognition Dave Singleman received after death, as ‘hundreds’ of buyers and salesman from all over the country attended his funeral.

There is also poignancy in that the title of the play is taken from the passing of Dave Singleman, and shows how Willy would have liked to have passed-

 WILLY: …and by the way he died the death of a salesman, in his green velvet slippers in the smoker of the New York, New Haven and Hartford...