Death of a SalesmanAct two- Willy and Howard

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Juliet Gaishauser

Death of a Salesman

Act two- Willy and Howard

     The second act begins with a change in tone from the previous act, as Willy is now cheerful and optimistic and speaks to Linda about buying a new house in the country; he now believes that after seeing Howard he will have his job permanently in New York City.

     Howard Wagner is Willy’s boss. Howard inherited the company from his father, whom Willy regarded as a “masterful man” and “a prince.” Though much younger than Willy, Howard treats Willy with condescension and eventually fires him.

     Willy goes to the office with intention of asking Howard for a New York position; however, Howard makes this difficult. As soon as Willy walks into Howard’s office he ignores Willy’s attempt of discussing his career with him. There is many times where Willy asks Howard a question and he simply ignores it or changes the subject. Howard seems to be fascinated with his new wire recorder. The only questions that Howard answers are about the recorder. “What’s that, Howard?” “Didn’t you ever see one of these? Wire recorder.” After this Willy tries to ignore the recorder, “Oh can we talk a minute?” After this Howard continues to obsess about his new gadget. Did Howard already know what Willy had come to him for? If so, he was desperately trying to avoid the subject.

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     Howard, still obsessing over the machine then turns it on to let Willy hear his children. In this kind of situation we would expect Willy to find this extremely annoying and say how awful he thought it was, but not here. Willy does his best to remain calm as he is desperate for Howard to hear him out. After the recoding stops, we see that Howard is panicking slightly at not knowing what else he could do to stop Willy asking him the dreaded question, he even starts to interrupt Willy mid-sentence.

     Howard is a ...

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