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Summary Death of a Salesman - Aspects of Tragedy
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‘Death of a Salesman’ byArthur Miller - A2 Revision
Booklet
, Name: ___________________
Plot Summary
Death of a Salesman takes place in and around the Brooklyn house of Willy Loman, a
salesman who has traveled for more than 30 years up and down the New England coast.
The action is confined within a 24- hour period, from Monday night to late Tuesday
evening, much of it reflecting the tragic turmoil of Willy’s mind. A requiem concludes the
play, an epilogue at the funeral of the salesman.
The story is told through a complex montage of scenes interlocking the present with past
events - memories, imagined moments, and flashbacks from the life of Willy Loman.
At 63, Willy Loman, a traveling salesman all his life, is becoming increasingly worried
about his ability to make ends meet. Although his house is nearly paid for, and his sons
are on their own, lately each sales trip is more exhausting and less satisfying. He feels
drained and is losing his grip on his own existence: “I’m tired to the death” he tells his
wife, Linda.
Their older son, Biff, estranged from his father for years, has moved away and has been
drifting across the country: “I’ve had twenty or thirty different jobs since I left home
before the war.” Happy, his younger brother, stayed in New York and has his own place.
He works in a warehouse and pursues his dream: ”My own apartment, a car, and plenty
of women.” For the moment the two brothers are back home, visiting their parents. From
the bedroom they used to share as boys, they overhear their parents and also talk about
their own lives.
Willy has returned home from an aborted sales trip and Linda, worried about her
husband difficulties, urges him to ask his firm for a position that would not require
traveling. He agrees to speak to his boss. Once she has gone to bed, however, Willy begins
to talk to himself, troubled by a restless mind spinning out of control: “I have such
thoughts, such strange thoughts,” he had actually told Linda earlier.
In this tormented state Willy recalls his past, the young father he once was - an energetic
and boasting man, determined to properly raise his boys by sharing with them his
strong business outlook and dreams of success. This whirlpool of memories replays
snippets of the history of the Loman family leading up to the present. Through the play a
recurring image haunts Willy’s imagination – it’s his older brother Ben, a model of
entrepreneurial success. Other scenes reveal discrepancies between Willy’s apparent
optimism and the actual situation in which the Loman family finds itself.
When Happy and Biff wonder about Willy’s behavior, Linda Loman sadly acknowledges
the deterioration of their father’s spirit, and reveals to them that he has lost his salary
and is now working on commission only. She then insists to the boys not to turn their
backs on Willy, but to show him respect and give him support: “Attention must be finally
paid to such a person,” she emphatically reminds them. When she also tells them that
their father has even tried to kill himself, Biff agrees to move back home, find a decent job
, and help out his parents.
Next morning, encouraged by his sons’ renewed support, Willy goes to see his boss. The
young man, Howard, heir to the Wagner company, not only refuses Willy’s request, but
he eventually lets know the failing salesman that he is no longer needed as an employee.
Willy turns to his neighbor Charley who offers him a job, but Willy’s pride prevents him
from accepting this reasonable proposition. Instead, as he has done before, he borrows
more money from Charley to pay the latest round of bills and his insurance premium.
In a restaurant, as planned, Willy meets his sons for dinner. He finds out that Biff failed to
have the intended interview with Oliver, his former employer, and was left waiting for
hours with no other result than his helpless frustration. This circumstance lead him to
steal the man’s fountain pen, an irrational, impulsive, reprehensible act. Willy, anguished
by his own predicament, refuses to hear any such facts because, as he shouts at his sons:
“The woods are burning, boys, you understand? There’s a big blaze going on all around. I
was fired today.” They are quite shocked by the news. Meanwhile Willy is unable to
acknowledge Biff’s disappointment and refuses to listen to the uncomfortable truth why
his son’s plan didn’t succeed. Together, Biff and Happy end up leaving Willy behind, as
they walk out of the restaurant with two young women they had met there. Alone, and
again tormented by his contradictions and confusing thoughts, Willy recalls figments of
the past. Particularly disturbing is his guilty memory of an extra-marital encounter with
a woman in a Boston hotel room, where Biff had once surprised him.
At night, later, when Biff and Happy return home, Linda chastises her sons for having
abandoned their father in the restaurant. And she continues to fiercely defend Willy. But
Biff can no longer live with lies and false hopes. He tells his father to “take that phony
dream and burn it” and explodes with rage and bitter recriminations. Willy sees Biff’s
outburst as a sign of love. “That boy is going to be magnificent!” he exclaims as he clings
to his resolve to make his dream of success possible for his sons. Counting on the money
from his life insurance policy that will ensure the family’s future prosperity and his sons
success, he drives off into the night and is killed in an automobile crash.
After the funeral, when Biff concludes that his father had “the wrong dreams,” Charley
counters and defends Willy: “Nobody dast blame this man. [...] For a salesman, there is no
rock bottom to the life. [...] He’s a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a
shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back - that’s an earthquake. [...] A salesman is
got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory.”
Finally, Linda left by herself in her devastating grief, addresses Willy and wonders why
did he do it, why did he kill himself just when the last payment on the house was made.
Shaken by pain, she mutters, “We’re free and clear. We’re free...”
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