Willy is not portrayed by Miller as a bad character. Due to this fact, the audience feels sorry for him as he is failing in his job. What Willy doesn’t realise however, is that the American dream is out of date and the new business world relies on being ruthless and aggressive. Although Willy does try hard in his work and works long hours everyday, his method to sell his products is out of date. As Charlie tells him later in the play, “The only thing you got in this world is what you can sell.” but the tragic fact about Willy is that he hasn’t got the salesman ability to sell his products, so he fails miserably in his profession.
Throughout the play, Miller puts in time switches to inform us of the characters’ history, to help us to understand the characters better. To convey clearly that a time switch is occurring, stage directions to dim the lighting and change of scenery such as “the entire house and surroundings become covered with leaves.” are used. At the first time switch, Miller also connects the two periods skilfully by having Willy talking to himself throughout the change in time; so it seems that there hasn’t been a change at all.
The first time switch goes back to when Biff and Happy were children. The scene begins in a light mood with Willy and the children conversing happily. Here we see a totally different side of Willy. He boasts about his work and about making lots of money, speaks very optimistically, and gives the children presents. This gives the audience an image of an excellent fatherly figure who is very successful and well loved and also forms an image of a very typical, almost patriotic American way of life. But Willy acts this way because he thinks that it is the right thing to do, not because he is that kind of person. Willy puts being well liked as his top priority, and believes that success comes with popularity. He is so obsessed with being well liked that he confuses the private world with the public world, so he cannot see his family’s love for him as he pretends to be someone that he is not. He works for success all his life, and when he fails, he makes himself believe that he is popular, and therefore successful, according to his theory. As we see later in the scene, Willy isn’t making much money—he boasts that he has sold 1200 gross of goods when in fact he has only sold 200. The good mood of the time switch is destroyed when Willy contradicts himself by first saying “Chevrolet, Linda, is the greatest car ever built.” Then when he needs to spend money to repair it, he exclaims to Linda, “That goddam Chevrolet, they ought to prohibit the manufacture of that car!” Here we see a dark reflection of Willy’s confused mind like it was in the first scene. From that point on, Willy admits to Linda that his business is not going well at all. In contradiction to what he had told the boys at the beginning of the scene—that he was very popular and even met the Mayor of providence, he now confesses to Linda, “I know it when I walk in. They seem to laugh at me.”, “I’m not noticed.” and, “I’m fat. I’m very – foolish to look at…” Linda responds by comforting Willy. This shows that she accepts Willy’s faults as she has heard Willy’s statements about being very popular and his confession about not being well liked but she does not criticise him for it.
Linda, throughout the time switch, plays role of a “typical” housewife: doing the washing, supporting her husband and caring for the children. Linda plays an important role in the play, as when we learn about Willy’s affair later in the play, Willy feels very guilty towards Linda as he cheated on her. His guilt is symbolised by the stockings, which he gave away to the woman while Linda is mending her old ones. Willy feels extremely guilty whenever he sees Linda mending her old stockings. He becomes enraged and tells Linda to put the stockings away. Linda however, is not aware of Willy’s affair.
Linda is very pragmatic. She sees her husband’s shortcomings and helps him to get through his problems, but she doesn’t take any initiative to criticise Willy of his faults. She knows that Willy has problems with their children and his work. She wants Willy to remain happy even when their financial situation is appalling. To achieve this, she acts as a peacemaker when Willy has arguments with Biff and pretends not to notice Willy’s attempts at committing suicide. Linda’s actions make the audience admire her supportive attitude and patience towards Willy, especially the way which she accepts everything Willy does without complaint, even when Willy wasn’t being nice to her, but this also makes the audience frustrated at the lack of help and guidance Willy is getting, giving an awful feeling of inevitability that Willy is going to fail. This is part of the tragedy—Linda sees Willy’s failure but does not try to make Willy more successful. She thinks optimistically even when she knows that things are definitely not going to work out, as she doesn’t want to be the one who causes trouble.
Biff is shown as a young, athletic, popular teenager. Willy shows a lot of favouritism towards Biff and Biff idolises Willy, but Willy’s influence on Biff’s attitude towards life has made Biff believe that life is just about being popular. This belief makes him disregard the importance of schoolwork, and consideration for other people. These faults are shown clearly when Willy encourages Biff’s stealing habits and when Linda complains about Biff “being too rough with the girls”. In many ways Biff is a “typical” American teenager for that period of time. Biff had a very good chance of graduating and going to university as he had three scholarships, but when he went to Boston to see Willy, he discovers Willy’s affair. He was devastated and thought that everything Willy had ever told him were lies. Biff then flunked maths and did not graduate. Instead of following Willy’s footsteps to pursue the American dream, Biff wanted to lead a simple life, not constantly pursuing money.
Happy, on the other hand, was the less favoured of the two children. Happy was not aware of Willy’s affair and constantly looked up to Willy as an example. Happy is similar to Linda, as he accepts his cold treatment from Willy. He constantly wants to get into Willy’s good books—"I'm losin' weight pop, you notice?" and "I'm going to get married, just you wait and see." He is a womaniser and is very corrupt when he is older. Like Willy, Happy believes in the American dream, and he is not what he claims he is.
Miller’s usage of the time switch is very effective. The stage directions are cleverly set and he uses it to give us an image of what the characters were like. Through the time switch, we see how the characters have changed. After the opening scene, the general mood is set. Carrying on the exposition of the play by creating a time switch after the opening scene forms a very effective juxtaposition as it shows how the characters have developed.
Miller uses Willy Loman’s failure to attack the idea of the American dream in society, pointing out the faults and the unfairness of the merciless capitalist system, in which the only way to raise your social status was to gain wealth and material possessions. More importantly however, the play warns people not to follow Willy’s example: confusing the real world with the idealistic world and lying to yourself when there is a problem. Always think and act realistically, not how you would like to, as things don’t always go your way.