Character list: Willy Loman A sixty year old salesman living in Brooklyn, Willy Loman is a mercurial (Mercurial describes someone whose mood or behavior is changeable and unpredictable) man with powerful aspirations to success. However, after thirty-five years working as a traveling salesman throughout New England, Willy Loman feels defeated by his lack of success and difficult family life. Biff Loman The thirty-four year old son of Willy Loman, Biff was once a star high school athlete with a scholarship to UVA. But he never attended college nor graduated from high school, after refusing to attend summer school to make up a flunked math class. He did this out of spite after finding out that his father was having an affair with a woman in Boston. Since then, Biff has been a continual failure, stealing at every job and even spending time in jail. Despite his failures and anger toward his father, Biff still has great concern for what his father thinks of him, and the conflict between the two characters drives the narrative of the play. Linda Loman The dutiful, obedient wife to Willy and mother of Biff and Happy, Linda Loman is the one person who supports Willy Loman, despite his often bad treatment towards her. She is a woman who has aged greatly because of her difficult life with her husband, whose hallucinations and erratic behavior she faces alone. She is the moral center of the play, occasionally stern and not afraid to confront her sons about their poor treatment of their father. Happy Loman The younger of the two Loman sons, Happy Loman seems content and successful, with a steady career and none of the obvious marks of failure that his older brother displays. Happy, however, is not content with his more stable life, because he has never risked failure . Happy is a compulsive womanizer who treats women purely as sex objects and has little respect for the many women whom he seduces. Charley The Lomans' next door neighbor , father of Bernard, Charley is a good businessman, exemplifying the success that Willy is unable to achieve. -owns his own succesful business. He and Willy have a contentious relationship, Charley being Willy's only friend. Bernard Bernard is Charley's only son. He is intelligent but lacks the personality that the Loman sons have. This absence of spirit makes Willy believe that Bernard will never be a true success , but Bernard proves himself to be far more successful than Willy imagined. As a grown-up, he is a lawyer preparing to argue a case in front of the Supreme Court.
The theme of madness The reader quickly realizes, that this is based on Willy's confused perspective. Willy's madness and reliability as a narrator become more and more of an issue as his hallucinations grow stronger. The reader must decide for himself how concrete of a character Ben is, or even how reliable the plot and narrative structure are, when told from the perspective of someone as on the edge as Willy Loman. Nostalgia / regret The dominant emotion throughout this play is nostalgia combined with regret. All of the Lomans feel that they have made mistakes or wrong choices. The play induces this feeling by numerous transitions back and forth from happier, earlier times in the play. Willy's business ideas do not seem as sad or as bankrupt when he has an entire lifetime ahead of him ; Biff looks back at a high school athletic hero, and, more importantly, at a time when he did not know that his father was a fake and a cheat, and still idolized him. Gender Relations In Death of a Salesman, woman are sharply divided into two categories: Linda and other. The men display a distinct Madonna/whore complex, as they are only able to classify their nurturing and virtuous mother against the other, easier women available (Miss Forthsite si gagica cu aventura). I In an Oedipal moment, Happy is sorry for not being able to find a woman like his mother. Women themselves are two-dimensional characters in this play. They remain firmly outside the male sphere of business, and seem to have no thoughts or desires other than those beloging to men. Even Linda, the strongest female character, is only fixated on a reconciliation between her husband and her sons, selflessly subordinating herself to serve to assist them in their problems. Willy's most common line is that businessmen must be well-liked, rather than merely liked, and Willy does not recognize that his business principles Questions 1. Willy's bussiness principle: a. Look past the messenger and focus on the message. b. Businessmen must be well-liked, rather than merely liked. (his business strategy is based entirely on the idea of a cult of personality, knowing the right person)He sustains this idea in front of his sons, desconsidering Bernard,Charleys son; that laks personality but is a good student) c.Eat as many of your words as you can. 2. Pinpoint the moment in wich Biff begins his ongoing trail of failures a.His visit to his father in New England b.His dificulties with mathemathics that year. c.The Ebbets Field game. 3. How does ben affect Willy? How does he influence the events? Ben is the person Willy holds up as an example of success. He calls his brother a genius, and he looks to him for advice. In fact, it's after the imaginary conversation he holds with his brother that finalizes his decision to commit suicide.
Ben affects Willy because he represents everything Willy is not. Ben was wealthy and offered Willy opportunities to enjoy some of that wealthy by working with him. However, Willy declined; now Ben has died and Willy only seems him in retrospect or in conversations that he imagines. 4.What do you think of the American Dream in relation to Death of a salesman?Is it a good example? Death of a Salesman is certainly symbolic of the American Dream or rather the illusion of the American dream . THe American Dream seemed almost tangible to the middle class bent on achieving it. Two perfect kids (ideally one of each gender) a perfect home with a perfect domestic mother waiting for her husband to return home from his perfect high paying job. Willy Loman desperately wants this but the illusion of happiness is exactly that, and illusion.