‘Willy. The grass don’t grow anymore, you can’t raise a carrot in the back yard. They should’ve put a law against apartment houses. Remember those two beautiful elm trees out there? Where I and Biff hung the swing between them?’
Here in Act 1, Willy is angry at how much has changed in the present day and how much better it was before. He is telling his wife that there’s no space for anything, even a carrot in the back yard. He is moaning about the amount of pollution there is and he is very annoyed by this. He talks about the past, ‘Where I and Biff hung the swing between them.’ Wily is always bringing back the past because he liked those times and now he is irritated about why it had to change.
Willy’s past stays with him all the time and that wasn’t meant to be forgotten.
‘Willy. Happy, use the newspaper on the windows, it’s the easiest thing. Show him how to do it, Biff! You see, Happy? Pad it up, use it like a pad! That’s it, that’s it. Good work. You’re doin’ all right.’
Willy is in a good mood here as once again washing the car brings back memories from the past. This is reminding him that he could be a hard working salesman on the road, be a family man and a father. To be liked across America was a dream for Willy. He moved away from his family when he was getting older and started as a salesman and he has always been on the move and always travelling on the road. His main aim was to be liked but he failed that and then he was fooling himself and his sons that he was really liked by people.
‘Willy. …And they know me, boys, they know me up and down New England. The finest people…I have friends. I can park my car in any street in New England, and the cops protect it like it’s their own.’
Willy is saying this to his sons as if he is liked a lot and he is well known by people but he is lying just to make things better. He doesn’t want to sound like a failure to his sons, he wants his sons to be proud of him and he thinks lying might help hi sons want to follow in the same footsteps as their father.
Arthur Miller shows the two sides of “The American Dream” in the play. Miller shows this through the two characters, Biff and Happy Loman. Biff supports the frontier myth; he wants to work outside with animals on ranches, while Happy wants to be a big success in the business world. Happy and Biff show the two different personalities of their father, Willy Loman.
Willy Loman has two visions of America. One of them is the frontier myth. The appeal of working outside with your bare hands, succeeding on your own with no one to have to answer to. The other is the capitalist, corporate America, where you work up to popularity and success. Willy believes that he can lead both of these lives, and that is what leads to his destruction. He lives in New York and works in New England. He decided he wanted to become a salesman when he met a man who had been a salesman all his life. He had a brother Ben, who went out to find their father in Alaska, but stumbled on a diamond mine instead. Ben shows the stereotypical ‘all American’ attitude, especially when he says “When I was seventeen, I walked into the jungle. And by twenty-one, I walked out. And by God, I was rich!” Willy believes that although he lives in New York, he can still be a cowboy, and in the final scene he is planting seeds in his garden, even though he is surrounded by apartment buildings. Him planting seeds is his last attempt to do something with his life.
Miller uses several different themes in ‘Death of a Salesman’ to convey the different attitudes to ‘The American Dream’. One of the main ones is the jungle and diamonds. This theme is associated with the character of uncle Ben, the jungle is a symbol of life and the diamonds symbolise success. A main quote where we can figure this out is when Ben says “you must go to the jungle and fetch a diamond out”. Another main theme is the back garden of the Loman’s house. The garden seems to be very important to Willy Loman, and he mentions it throughout the play. For example in act 1, page 17 he says
‘Willy. The grass don’t grow anymore, and you can’t raise a carrot in the backyard’
Willy Loman’s vision of America leads to his destruction because he does not really know what he wants out of life. Throughout the play he constantly contradicts himself. One example of this is act 1, page 5 Willy says “Biff is a lazy bum!” and further down the page he says “There’s one thing about Biff- he’s not lazy”. He wants His children to be successful and is constantly having arguments with them because of this. Miller structured the play using lots of flashbacks of Willy’s life when he was young and happy. During these flashbacks it’s usually dominated by Willy praising and encouraging Biff to becoming a big sports star. He even gets angry with one of Biffs friends for not giving him the answers to a maths test, so he fails and can’t get in to university.
Biff and Willy argue a lot in this play. After graduating from high school, Biff lost a lot of his respect for his father. It’s not until act 1, page 52 that Biff thinks about his fathers life. He has an argument with Linda, his mother, and she reveals that he has been trying to kill himself, and he is only happy when he hears from Biff.
Willy knows he has failed in life and he knows there is not much left for him. He was a man full of pride but has realized there is nothing really to be proud of. He knows he cannot move on from the past, and only figured out one way of succeeding. At the end of the play he commits suicide by purposely crashing his car. He does this because he thinks family will benefit from his life insurance money and they can finally pay off the bills so they can be out of debt for once. This shows that Willy Loman really cared about his family and killed himself for them. This shows the real Willy Loman, he was very caring and determined and he knew there was nothing left in his life so he helped the people he loved.
