21) Charley means that Willy doesn’t understand that personality and emotional things don’t matter in the business world. He doesn’t realise that it doesn’t matter to Howard that Willy helped to name him because if Willy can’t sell goods then he is no use to the company. It shows that Willy is stuck in the past, in the days when salesmen sold their personalities and then their goods.
22) Willy tries to make himself look and feel better about borrowing money from Charley by saying that he will pay him all the money back because he has been keeping account of it. “I’m keeping an account of everything remember. I’ll pay every penny back.” He also says that he does have the money but can’t access it. “I’d draw it from my bank but Linda would know and I…”
23) Happy’s conversation with Miss Forsythe reveals that he is a womanizer and considers that the more women he has been with the better he is. He tells blatent lies to Miss Forsythe in an attempt to impress her. This shows that he doesn’;t care about women liking him for who he his but just wants them to be impressed by him. He treats women as sex objects.
24) It is unlikely that Happy will ever marry and settle down because he can’t stop flirting with women. “That’s why I can’t get married. There’s not a good woman in a thousand. New York is loaded with them, kid!”
25) When Biff went to see Bill Oliver, he had to wait six hours to see him and Biff even tried to date Oliver’s secretary so she could get him to see Oliver. Then when Biff finally goit to see him, he didn’t remember him and only saw him for a minute before he walked away.
26) Biff learns that he was never as good as he considered himself to be and that he was never actually a salesman with Bill Oliver but actually only a shipping clerk. He realises that he and his family have been living a lie and deceiving themselves for years. “How the hell did I ever get the idea that I was a salesman there? I even believed myself that I’d been a salesman for him! And then he gave me one look and – I realized what a ridiculous lie my whole life has been. We’ve been talking in a dream for fifteen years. I was a shipping clerk.”
27) Happy advises Biff to tell his father that he has a lunch date with Bill Oliver the next day and then to come back tomorrow and say Oliver is thinking it over. Then he pretends that Oliver is still thinking it over for the next few weeks and eventually the whole thing fades away and is forgotten about.
28) Willy reveals that he has been fired by Howard and that he won’t even let him work on commission anymore which makes it harder for Biff to tell him the truth about the day’s events.
29) Biff discovers that his father won’t listen to bad news and only hears what he wants to hear. In the end he says that he cannot talk to Willy because he won’t listen to him.
30) The single trumpet note symbolises the irreconcilable differences between Biff and Willy. There is a complete communication breakdown between the two of them and the trumpet note symbolises this.
