Willy's First Flashback (Death of a Salesman)

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WILLY’S FIRST FLASHBACK

How do the audience know a flashback is occurring?

  • Miller tells us in the stage directions:
  • The apartment houses are fading out, and the entire house and surroundings become covered with leaves.  Music insinuates itself as the leaves appear.’
  • It is clear from Miller’s depiction of the set design that a softer glow will replace the harsh, threatening ‘orange glow’ which dominates the stage when the characters are seen in the present.  When Willy’s memory takes over, this glow is more dream-like with shadowy leaves and music, evoking a happier pastoral era.  Remember at the close of the play, however, we see the looming ‘hard towers of the apartment buildings’ dominating the setting once more. Without Willy’s retreats into the past, the dream of a happier, more Edenic life cannot exist in this city.  He lives in a claustrophobic urban environment indicative of the harsh life he has chosen.

What is the mood in this sequence? Why?

  • It is happy and bright because Willy is revisiting an auspicious, hopeful past in his mind.  He is expounding his philosophy of success through being ‘well-liked’.  He is recalling a time some 17 years previously when he returned from yet another sales trip.  From his perspective, he remembers feeling powerful, positive, optimistic, heroic.  Not only that, but Biff has just been made captain of his football team and for Willy this is a great landmark of success and prosperity and indeed represents a bright future for all of them.

Is this a flashback of something as it actually happened in the past?

  • Not completely.  The audience is observing the events as Willy remembers them (inside his head!!)  It’s an idealised memory – probably embellished somewhat by Willy’s tenacious grip, belief in the American Dream.

How does Miller prepare us not to fully trust Willy’s perception of events?

  • We are prepared by his inconsistencies, his self-contradictory statements.  Find examples of this in the dialogue.
  • Willy: …America is full of beautiful towns and fine, upstanding people.  And they know me, boys, they know me up and down New England…I have friends.  I can park my car in any street in New England, and the cops protect it like their own…
  • Then reality creeps in and Willy cannot suppress it.  He tells Linda just shortly afterwards: ‘They seem to laugh at me…I’m not noticed…I talk too much…I’m fat…’
  • See other examples.  There are many!!
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What qualities define success for Willy?

  • Being ‘well-liked’
  • Being masculine – having physical strength and good looks,  excelling in sport…
  • Being rich
  • Being competitive – yet he does not instil the moral sense to contain it – Biff has become a thief as a result.

How does their present situation reflect this philosophy?

  • Miller tells us Bernard is ‘earnest and loyal, a worried boy’ – we should then reconsider the wisdom of Willy’s disapproval of Bernard.  Should he be mocking a young boy in front of his sons? Biff ...

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