As a result, in Willy’s mind, past and present exist on the same level, he perceives himself both in the present and in the past, showing a certain sense of schizophrenia in his personality. He is led by contradictions, saying for example at one point that his son Biff is a “lazy bum” and, very shortly later, that “there’s one thing about Biff – he’s not lazy”. Overwork, worry and repressed guilt have caused Willy’s mental collapse and in this state of nervous breakdown, the notion of time is fading away. There is an evolution : the function of memory entails a multiplicity of temporal levels, a series of various locations : Boston, where Willy lives; New York where he goes to find his work boss, Howard; Alaska where his brother Ben has found success; the numerous places where Willy has travelled as a salesman… Ultimately, Willy’s memory causes his loss of any fixed identity.
In a sense, the exploded setting of the house, with its transparent walls, its scrims, its curtains, its nearby orchestra…, is a concrete, tangible image of an exploding consciousness, in which spatial and temporal fragments are entwined. This emphasizes the role of the appeasing flute, symbolic of a return to reality, which becomes more and more necessary and urgent, and eventually futile, as the plot unfolds.
It is important to note that the past is not uniform in the play, it takes different forms, each one being fundamental in understanding Willy’s state of mind.
Firstly, there are the scenes that are fully immersed within the past, they are the basis of what happens in the present, they provide a rational explanation of what has brought up the situation which Willy confronts. These scenes are progressive : the apparent unity of the family and their neighbours during Biff and Happy’s youth, where one sees the type of education that Willy has given to his children (“And they know me, boys, they know me up and down New England. The finest people.”), one based on appearances and a superiority complex. This family scene is prolonged and underlines the fact that Willy’s life has been centred around his children and that the education he has given them is ironically what has drawn them away from him. Other scenes are Willy’s brother Ben’s two visits, the latter portraying Willy’s model of success as a follower of the American dream (“William, when I walked into the jungle, I was seventeen. When I walked out I was twenty-one. And by God, I was rich!”). The climactic episode of the past occurs when Biff finds his father in a Boston hotel with his mistress, the Woman. This is a traumatic episode (“You fake! You phony little fake! You fake!”), as Willy is faced with both sides of his personality, characterizing his sense in living : his family on one side, and the sexual pleasure that the capitalistic society has allowed him to appropriate on the other.
The action also unfolds simultaneously in the past and in the present, through Willy’s split consciousness. Miller permits with a “montage dialogue”. For example, there is the card game scene : as soon as Charley leaves, we enter the past (“through the wall line of the kitchen”). Here, the words of the Ben, Willy and Charley echo themselves, one character takes up the words of another, thus creating great confusion. Another scene is the restaurant episode, and simultaneously, allusions to the day the Regents results were disclosed : Bernard’s choric voice may be heard (“Birnbaum flunked him! They won’t graduate him”) and little by little echoes from the Boston hotel become more and more perceptible (“Off left the Woman laughs.”). There is also the scene where Willy is conversing with Ben (“One must go in to fetch a diamond out”) and, at the same time, answering Linda’s repeated invitations to come to bed (“I want you upstairs”). The dangerous evolution of this mingling of past and present is more and more apparent, as it gets harder to bear for the audience, the tension reaching its climax during this last scene.
Willy also suffers from hallucinations : during some episode, spectators are made to understand that Willy has lapsed into a mental vision and therefore cut himself off from his immediate environment. In Howard Wagner’s office, as Willy stares at the empty seat and addresses Frank, long dead and gone (“Frank, Frank, don’t you remember what you told me that time?”). In his garden, as Willy discusses with Ben’s ghost, and one realizes that the ghost is very much a figment of Willy’s distorted mind (“The boat. We’ll be late.”) : he is in fact talking to himself.
One also encounters at one point a “mise en abime” of the past : a memory within a memory. It occurs with the symbolic appearance of the stockings, mended by Linda, which Willy then offers to the Woman. Thus, as Willy sees his wife mending her stockings, the laughter of the Woman echoes through his mind (“The Woman’s laughter is heard distantly”), therefore contributing to increase Willy’s sense of guilt. The stocking is the object which brings together the two women in Willy’s life, contrasting the life which he has dedicated to his family with the life he has dedicated to the American dream and its hypocritical leisure.