Arthur Miller’s Death Of A Salesman
Arthur Miller's Death Of A Salesman
At the beginning of the play, Arthur Miller establishes Willy Loman as a troubled and misguided man, at heart a salesman and a dreamer with a preoccupation with success. However, Miller makes equally apparent that Willy Loman is no successful man. Although in his sixties, he is still a travelling salesman bereft of any stable location or occupation, and clings only to his dreams and ideals. There is a strong core of resentment within Willy Loman, whose actions assumes a more glorious and idealised past. Willy sentimentalises the neighbourhood as it was years ago, and mourns the days working for Frank Wagner, while his son Howard Wagner fails to appreciate him. Miller presents Willy as a strong and boisterous man with great audacity but little energy to support that impression of vitality. He is perpetually weary and exhibits signs of dementia, contradicting himself within his conversations and showing some memory loss.
Linda, in contrast, displays little of the boisterous intensity of Willy. Rather, she is dependable and kind, perpetually attempting to smooth out conflicts that Willy might encounter. Linda has a similar longing for an idealised past, but has learned to suppress her dreams and her dissatisfaction with her husband and sons. Miller indicates that she is a woman with deep regrets about her life; she must continually reconcile her husband with her sons, and support a man who has failed in his life's endeavour without any hope for pursuing whatever dreams she may have had. Linda exists only in the context of her family relationships as a mother to Biff and Happy and a husband to Willy, and must depend on them for whatever success she can grasp.
The major conflict in Death of a Salesman resides between Biff Loman and his father. Even before Biff appears on stage, Linda indicates that Biff and Willy are perpetually at odds with one another because of Biff's inability to live up to his father's expectations. As Linda says, Biff is a man who has not yet 'found himself,' thus using a euphemism to describe his string of perpetual failures. At thirty-four years old, Biff remains to some degree an adolescent, as demonstrated by his inability to keep a job. He and Happy are even at home in their old bunk beds; for Linda this is a reminder of better times, yet this is also a sign that neither of the sons has matured.
A major theme of the play is the lost opportunities that each of the characters face. Linda Loman, reminiscing about the days when her sons were not yet grown and had a less contentious relationship with their father, regrets the state of disarray into which her family has fallen. Willy Loman believes that if Frank Wagner had survived, he would have been given greater respect and power within his company. In addition, Willy also regrets the opportunities that have passed for Biff, whom he believes to have the capability to be a great man, despite his repeated failures.
Miller uses the first segment of the play to foreshadow many of the significant plot developments. Willy worries about having trouble driving and expresses dissatisfaction with his situation at work, while Linda foreshadows later conflict between Willy and his sons. Each of these will become important in driving the plot and the resolution of the play.
Biff and Happy are both, to a great degree, children who are trapped in a perpetual adolescence. Both men are tall and well built, but their emotional development does not mirror their physical appearance. The tone of their conversation is at times adolescent or, at the very least, nostalgic of their youth. Happy reminisces about his first sexual experience, while Biff handles a football, a sign of his childhood. The setting of the segment, the boys' childhood bedroom, also suggests that they are trapped in their adolescence. Even the names of the two men, Happy and Biff, are childlike nicknames inappropriate for a mature adult.
Biff, in particular, is a drifter who demonstrates little sense of maturity or responsibility. He moves from job to job without any particular plan, and is most content working jobs such as herding cattle that use his physicality but do not offer any hope for a stable future. Biff if self-destructive, ruining every job opportunity that he might have, and realises his own failure. He is aware that he is a disappointment and an embarrassment to his father, who holds great aspirations for his son. Biff himself feels that he is just a boy and must take steps to demonstrate the maturity of adulthood.
Happy, in contrast, is less self-aware than his brother is, yet is equally confused, and is similarly immature. Happy has the ostensible characteristics of adulthood such as a steady profession, yet his attitudes are those of a teenager. He is a manipulative womaniser who manifests little respect for the women he seduces; his euphemism for seduction is even "knockin' them over", suggesting at best an impersonal connection to the women and at worst a violent subtext. Happy clearly demonstrates aspects of an animal-like complex; he cannot respect women with whom he deals in a sexual context, believing them to be inauthentic, and instead wishes to have as a partner a person who has 'character' such as his mother. This suggests that Happy cannot respect a woman he seduces.
Happy's immaturity is perhaps even more apparent in this segment of the play, for his adolescent qualities starkly contrast with his adult lifestyle. Although he works in a respectable job, Happy compares himself to his co-workers in terms of physical accomplishment; he believes he should not have to take orders from men over whom he is athletically superior. He thus approaches the workplace with a schoolyard mentality, believing that physical strength is more important than intellectual development.
Miller contrasts the ideas that the two men have with regards to success, the major thematic concern of the play. Biff believes himself to be a failure because he does not display the trappings of adulthood such as a steady occupation and a stable home life and because he has made mistakes at all points in his life. Happy, in contrast, believes himself to be a failure because, although he is ostensibly successful, still feels empty and unfulfilled. Happy's achievements are not 'success' to a great degree, but rather a lack of overt failure.
Arthur Miller employs a disjointed time structure in Death of a Salesman in which the play shifts settings from within the act. The present day of the aged Willy Loman and his grown sons gives way to the time when Biff and Happy were teenagers. The purpose of these scenes is explanatory: teenage Biff and Happy explain the behaviour of the characters in their early thirties. The tone of these scenes is idyllic; the tension that is apparent between Biff and Willy is nonexistent, while both characters demonstrate a confidence and contentment that has disappeared decades later.
Distorted reality is also a constituency, which is heavily incorporated into the stage directions used to bring the play, and all transactions of time to life. It is incorporated in such a way that the subjective inner turmoil of Willy Loman's post war renaissances permit us to emphasise with the strictest confidence. Lights of a golden hue as incorporated into the earlier stages help us to engage more with Willy Loman, and so provide optimism. This on its own is a break from the Greek drama style founded by Euripides. Abstract and subjective realism are also of great ...
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Distorted reality is also a constituency, which is heavily incorporated into the stage directions used to bring the play, and all transactions of time to life. It is incorporated in such a way that the subjective inner turmoil of Willy Loman's post war renaissances permit us to emphasise with the strictest confidence. Lights of a golden hue as incorporated into the earlier stages help us to engage more with Willy Loman, and so provide optimism. This on its own is a break from the Greek drama style founded by Euripides. Abstract and subjective realism are also of great influence to the way in which the play suffers metamorphosis through one dimension, or plane of time, from the next. Walls are produced to only a physiological state, whereby the characters of any given scene can slip between 1931 and 1948, in a soft silence. 'Raw, sensuous music accompanies their speech.' Subject realism is taken to its climax at this visit as the dangerous passion, which is to follow, is strummed with this non-digetic sound companion.
Objective realism soon plays its part and brings to the script, what is perhaps the paramount of farce in the Loman's present and past. Biff Loman, the son of the proclaimed great, and 'well-liked' salesman is confronted with an affair, which dwarfed any that Biff could have issued to his father. Biff, for the first time loses respect for all that he had been told, and disregards any love, which was extended to him prior to this. Willy Loman, a personality of great dignity, is omitted not in spite of his counsel, rather in reason of it. In this slide of time, post war, this is without doubt the most significant occurrence, and is an event on which the rest off the play is founded, and evolved.
The American dream no longer in grasp, Will Loman seeks comfort by reminiscing on past happiness, and what its consequences have come to be. Willy Loman, delusional in self-content, objects frustration to his disfigured family through arrogance in shame and the propaganda of self-pity. The concentration moves swiftly from props on stage to physiological dominance. It seems to be that Willy Loman, who hides behind a mask of pretence, lives in a parallel world to others around him, and so further draped into the already hectic prominence of flash back, is the notion that the past has not past. Indeed, he is moving forward in time, but the past is also coming to him, and at time ahead of him. Willy Loman's Bubble is finally burst, as the synchronised complexion that is time intrudes into crevices that should never have been fused as one.
The segment demonstrates the inherent causes of the Loman sons' immaturity. Willy has instilled in his sons a belief that appearances are more important than actual achievement or talent, contrasting his athletic and handsome sons with the hardworking yet uncharismatic Bernard. Willy values intangible characteristics such as personality over any actual barometer of achievement, which he dismisses as unimportant in the business world. The contrast that Willy makes is between men who are 'liked' and 'well-liked,' believing that to be 'well-liked,' as defined by charisma and physical appearance, is the major criterion for success.
Thus his sons, particularly Biff, eschew their studies for athletic achievement. Happy continually brags that he is losing weight, while Biff, ready to go to college on an athletic scholarship, shows enough disregard for his studies to fail math. This segment also foreshadows Biff's later troubles; he steals from the locker room as a teenager in this segment just as he admits that he stole from Bill Oliver as an adult in the previous segment. Although Willy does not speak directly to Happy about how he should treat girls, Miller also indicates that it is from his father that Happy gained his disrespect for women, whom Willy believes should not be taken seriously.
Miller defines several major themes of Death of a Salesman in this flashback. Most importantly, he develops the theme of success and the various characters' definitions of it. Miller presents Charley and his son Bernard as unqualified exemplars of success; Bernard is an exemplary student, while Charley owns his own business. However, Willy cannot accept the success of these two characters, believing that it is his personality that will make Willy a greater success than Charley and his sons more successful than Bernard. Yet there is an unmistakable degree of delusion in Willy's boasting; he fails to realise the limits of charm and charisma when it masks superficiality. Even Willy's claims of his own success at this point seem invalid; he brags about meeting important and powerful men, yet can only mention barely meeting the mayor of Providence. Furthermore, he worries that others do not respect him as they do Charley and that he is not making enough money. Even in the prime of his life, Willy Loman is to a great degree an inauthentic man whose dreams exceed his limited grasp, a revelation that prepares for his final failures when he is no longer a young and vital man.
Miller readily switches from location to location during Death of a Salesman, as the flashback to Willy at home switches to a flashback of Willy in a hotel room in Boston. This serves as an ironic counterpoint to Linda's comment that Willy is idolised by his children; that he is having an affair shows that Willy is not a man worthy of such fervent admiration. He displays the same callous disregard for women that Happy demonstrates as an adult, yet where Happy disregards women with whom he has insubstantial relationships, Willy cheats on the devoted Linda. This also demonstrates that Willy is not a man respected by others; the woman with whom he has an affair selected Willy for his sense of humour rather than for any substantial qualities. She thus shows a reciprocal disdain for Willy that he displays for her.
The post war Loman home segment of the chapter, also a flashback, returns to the Loman house that is the setting for most of the play. Miller thus contrasts life on the road for Willy in which he behaves like a callous womaniser with his behaviour as a husband at home. A great deal of Willy's dedication to Linda stems from his own sense of pride; he dislikes that she mends stockings not because it is a menial task, but because it shows that he cannot provide her with the financial resources to buy new stockings whenever she needs them. Miller also further establishes the contrast between Biff and Bernard; Bernard is more concerned with Biff's studies than either Biff or Willy, while Biff is reckless and abusive.
Willy Loman deals with each of these problems through denial. He tells Linda that there is absolutely nothing wrong with Biff, particularly in comparison to Bernard. However, Willy feels the strain of his indiscretions, as shown by when he hears the voice of the woman with whom he has had an affair. The strain that Willy feels during his later years is thus to a great extent self-inflicted, the product of longstanding guilt over his actions.
If Charley and Bernard are the symbols of tangible material success in Death of a Salesman, Willy's older brother Ben symbolises the broadest reaches of success, intangible and practically imaginary. Whether Ben is an anti-altruistic figure, a character whose history is to be taken literally is disputable; some aspects of his biography are so romanticised and absurdly flamboyant that it is likely that the information that Miller gives concerning Ben is filtered through Willy Loman's imagination. When Ben appears in the play, it is only as a representation of Willy's imagination given literal stage representation. For Willy, Ben represents fantastic success gained through intangible luck rather than through the pessimism of steady dedication and hard work; Ben has gained what Willy always wanted but never could achieve.
The encounter between Charley and Willy shows that Willy feels some jealousy toward his friend for his success. Willy offers advice to Charley at every opportunity in an attempt to assert some dominance over Charley. He interprets a 'man' as a person who can handle tools well, thus returning to a physical definition of manhood in comparison to monetary or status-based definitions that would assert Charley's superiority. This is an ironic statement, for Willy defines manhood by creation, while in his work he creates nothing, but rather serves as a conduit for others' products.
Likewise, Charley seems to realise Willy's envy, and behaves tentatively toward his friend. Although he does injure Willy's pride by offering him a job, Charley does so tentatively, for he has great pity for Willy that he knows that he must mask. Charley does, however, gives the most sound advice to Willy, advising him to let Biff do what he pleases and leave for Texas.
Once again, Miller shifts the setting of the play to previous years in a seemingly imaginary scene that contrasts Willy's failed aspirations with the supposedly great accomplishments of his brother Ben. Willy deals almost entirely in superlatives. Ben is a legendary man who, out of pure luck, ended up the owner of a diamond mine. Ben, who exists as an extension of Willy's imagination, speaks of their father in similar superlatives, as a 'great man' and an inventor. These boasts are exaggerations meant to emphasise Willy's feelings of inadequacy in comparison to his brother and father. Willy even pathetically attempts to justify life in Brooklyn as a life comparable to that outdoors. This familial history provides a neat complement to Willy's relationship with Biff; just as Biff feels himself a failure in his father's eyes, Willy perceives himself to be inadequate in comparison to his father and brother.
The second appearance of Young Biff and Young Happy reinforces the values that Willy has instilled in his sons. Happy once again brags about losing weight, showing his focus on physical appearance and athleticism, while Biff steals from the nearby construction site. For Willy, stealing is merely an extension of his economic mindset; he makes no distinction between the fearless character in jail and the fearless character in the stock exchange. This demonstrates the insufficiencies of Willy's views on success: he attributes success to luck or immorality and cannot see the virtues of hard work and discipline as shown by Charley and Bernard. Willy can conceive of success as a mantra by Ben or the result of fearless daring, but he cannot conceive that hard work and dedication are critical. This also relates to a theme of the play, the interaction between the public life of work and private life. Willy's business values inform his instructions to his sons, while their instruction by Willy informs their behaviour in the business world.
Miller, who returns to the present reality of the play in this segment, here definitively establishes that the 'flashbacks' occur in the context of Willy Loman's imagination and are a symptom of a larger dementia. Linda attributes her husband's hallucinations to the presence of Biff, likely a sign that Biff reminds Willy of his failures as a father and as a businessman. However, the most significant effect of Willy's dementia that Miller focuses on during this segment of the play is that which it has on Linda. She has been the one to deal with Willy's erratic behaviour alone, and doing so has made her age considerably. She must be her husband's only defender, even when this threatens to further exacerbate the conflicts her family faces.
Miller deals with the indignities that Willy has suffered largely in terms of their effect on Linda. Since her existence and identity depend entirely on her husband, she staunchly defends him even when she realises that he does not deserve the defence. When she tells Biff that he cannot love her if he does not love Willy, Linda essentially makes the choice of her husband over her children. She does this largely out of a strong feeling of duty toward Willy, for she knows that she is the only person who will show any concern for whether he lives or dies. Significantly, she centres her defence of Willy on his status as a human being and not his role as a father or husband. In these respects, Linda thus admits Willy's failures but nevertheless still maintains, "Attention must be paid." This declaration is significant in its construction; Linda declares that someone must regard Willy, but does no specify anybody in particular, thus avoiding a particular accusation against her sons and condemning society in general for the ill treatment of Willy Loman. As shown by Linda's condemnation of Happy's philandering and Biff's immaturity, Linda has few qualms about confronting her sons, yet when she demands attention for her husband, she does not lay the blame only on her sons.
However, as Miller ennobles Linda as the long-suffering and devoted wife, he nevertheless shows Willy Loman to be undeserving of the respect and admiration Linda accords him. Biff emphasises the fact that Willy has no sense of character and no respect for Linda, while notes about her physical appearance emphasise that Linda has aged considerably because of her demanding husband. It is Biff who gives the most accurate conception of Willy as a fake who cannot accept others who realise his own false character.
This final segment of the first act serves as a turning point for Biff, who finally realises that he must 'apply himself' as his parents have demanded of him. This realization comes when Linda finally reveals that Willy has attempted suicide, finally focusing on the severity of his plight. Willy's suicide attempts are the mark of a failed man, but more importantly show the disparity between his aspirations and his actual achievements. Even when he focuses on Biff's opportunity, Willy believes that whatever he desires Biff should easily receive because of the force of his personality and not on his actual accomplishments.
The idea that Biff proposes for a sporting goods business with his brother demonstrates the various character flaws in Biff and his father. It continues the family emphasis on appearance and personality over substance and achievement. Biff places his aspirations for success on Bill Oliver just as his father depended on Frank Wagner; Linda even worries about this, thinking that Bill Oliver may not remember Biff. Finally, the idea of the sporting goods business emphasises the immaturity of Biff and Happy; both men want to work in sporting goods as an attempt to relive their youth and high school athletic glory. Even Willy himself sees this as an opportunity for him and his sons to regain what they had lost decades before.
The second act begins with a dramatic shift in tone from the previous act, as Willy now remains cheerful and optimistic. Willy now speaks about buying a place in the country, while believing that he can now work in New York City. Most importantly, the pipe connected to the gas heater with which Willy tried to commit suicide is now gone; Linda automatically assumes that Willy took it away himself, although this fact will come into question later in the play.
If a sense of optimism dominates this act of the play, it nevertheless seems somewhat unfounded. Willy has gone from suicidal to confident and cheerful in the matter of one night, while little remains resolved. His plans depend almost entirely upon the success of Biff's meeting with Bill Oliver, a plan that seems tenuous at best. For Willy Loman, his entire existence seems to depend on a highly dubious plan that appears destined to fail.
Willy Loman is soon introduced to the lair of Wagner's Office. In this segment of the second act, Arthur Miller uses Howard Wagner as a symbol of progress and innovation in contrast with Willy Loman's outdated notions of business tactics. Most of the details in Howard's office emphasise technological innovation and novelty, from his well-appointed, modern office to the recording machine that fascinates Howard. This shows that Howard is more interested in the future than the past, as he ignores Willy to consider his new machine. In contrast, Willy speaks not of his future with the company but with his history and past promises. Willy is frightened by the recorder is a symbol of Willy's obsolescence within a modern business world; he cannot deal with innovation and has no place in the modern business world. Even his values, as he notes, belong to a different time. Willy speaks of a past time when being a salesman demanded respect and friendship, which seems to indicate an environment that has passed by, yet this, can also be taken as another example of Willy idealising a past that never actually existed.
Willy once again falls prey to his idea that personality and personal relationships are critical factors in the business world. He cites how he remembers when Howard's father brought Howard as a newborn to the office and how Willy helped name him, yet in terms of the business world, this fact bears little relevance. This is not necessarily an indictment of Howard as callous and unfeeling; he shows little interest in Willy during the scene, but nevertheless indicates that he has been patient with him. It is only when Willy becomes disruptive does Howard finally gives Willy a much needed rest by firing him.
Miller once again shifts the setting of the play to an earlier date in order to contrast Willy's present experiences with those of his idealised past. The reappearance of Ben is symbolic of those dreams that Willy Loman has sacrificed in favour of a more mundane existence. Linda's reassurance to Willy that Wagner promised him that he would be a member of the firm is ironic, for the presence of this promise, never fulfilled, would keep Willy Loman from pursuing a more adventurous way of life. Additionally, this segment gives some indication that Linda has, in some respects, limited her husband by forcing him to take a more stable path. She claims that not every man has to conquer the world, thus assuming that Willy Loman is not a man capable of doing so.
However, Miller also reemphasises Willy's belief in personal connections as the critical factor in business. By this point in the play, Willy's claim that it is not 'who you know' that counts has been thoroughly disproved, for Willy was fired by a man whom he has known through childhood.
Bernard and Charley reappear in this segment as foreshadowing of their later roles in the play. This segment re-establishes the contentious relationship between Charley and Willy, who is shocked to think that Charley may not be in total awe of Biff's athletic achievements, while demonstrating how Bernard remains in Charley's shadow. This dynamic among the characters has obviously shifted, and Miller's insertion of a flashback at this point foreshadows a later development of the dynamic between the Loman's and Bernard and Charley.
Miller juxtaposes the unsuccessful Willy Loman with the great successes of Bernard and Charley in this segment. Miller continues to develop Willy Loman as a pathetic and deranged character who shouts to himself throughout the hallway of the office building as he hallucinates about his past experiences with his sons. Bernard, in contrast, is a successful man, esteemed in his profession and content in his private life.
The portrayal of Bernard that Miller offers in this segment is ironic, considering Willy's previous statements about Bernard in comparison to his sons. While Willy believed that Bernard is more serious behaviour and lack of 'personality' would hobble him once, he entered the business world in comparison to Biff's and Happy's friendliness and gregarious natures. Yet while Happy is at best moderately successful and unhappy and Biff is an outright failure, Bernard, whom Willy believed to have skills not applicable to the business world, is now ready to argue a case before the Supreme Court. Bernard himself even seems to realise how Willy's expectations for his sons have been thwarted, and fails to tell Willy the reason why he is going to Washington so that he will not embarrass him.
Bernard also serves to elucidate the development of the relationship between Willy and Biff Loman. Bernard can pinpoint a turning point in their relationship, citing a specific time after which Biff's attitude toward his father changed. Bernard seems to attribute this occurrence to Biff's current failure, claiming that Biff never wanted to go to summer school and thus graduate high school after visiting his father in New England. Miller thus constructs a situation in which Willy is directly responsible for Biff's failures. According to Bernard's interpretation of the event, Biff is nearly self-destructive, ruining his chances for a stable future in order to spite his father.
Charley also represents a degree of success and serenity that Willy is unable to achieve. It is Charley who best declares the problem with Willy's philosophy of business: he believes that it is personality and intangible factors that are critical to success, when it is in fact more concrete factors such as sales that determine whether a man is successful. Charley also realises the degree to which Willy is jealous of him and his son; he believes that this is the reason that Willy will not accept a job from him.
The relationship between Charley and Willy is not based on any affection, but rather on custom and a developed sense of obligation to one another. Charley admits that he does not like Willy and Willy dislikes him in return, but Charley is in fact Willy's only friend. This declaration is one of the few moments in the play in which Willy seems to realise and acknowledge his pathetic state. This is accompanied by Willy's claim that a person is worth more dead than alive, which emphasises Willy's suicidal state and foreshadows events to come.
While Biff's failures and flaws have been a major preoccupation throughout the play, this segment demonstrates how detrimental Happy's character flaws can be. A compulsive womaniser, in this segment Happy tells blatant lies to the women he meets, claiming that Biff is a professional athlete, then forgets about his father in favour of seducing Miss Forsythe. In the final, most cruel move that Happy makes, he denies that Willy is his father, thus repudiating his father even more callously than Biff has done.
Biff, in contrast, does little out of calculation during this segment of the play, but merely continues his pattern of foolish mistakes. While Biff may have started to fail in order to spite his father, by this point his self-destructive behaviour is ingrained. His plan to ask Bill Oliver for money was dubious at best, but Biff made it even more unlikely by accidentally pocketing his fountain pen. In contrast to Happy, Biff does show some concern for his father's feelings; he worries that Willy will think that Biff intentionally botched the meeting with Bill Oliver.
The Loman sons' insistence on framing Biff's meeting with Bill Oliver in the best possible terms shows that their true interest in the sporting goods business is not for their own personal gain, but rather to please their father, whose emotions they must keep in constant consideration. Biff believes that he cannot tell Willy the truth about his meeting with Bill Oliver, for Willy will think that Biff purposely sabotaged the meeting as an affront against him. Biff's concern is primarily what his father will think and what effect this will have on him; his failure during the meeting, with the exception of his embarrassment over taking the fountain pen, is barely a consideration unless it involves how his father will react to the news. This gives further evidence that Willy dominates his sons, whose actions are based on how their father will react to them.
Willy's hallucination about Young Biff failing math and visiting him in Boston gives a greater indication for the reason why Biff garnered such animosity for his father. Willy ties together Biff's visit to Boston with his affair with the woman in Boston; the likely confrontation between Willy's life at home as a father and his life on the road as a salesman seems to provide the motivation for Biff's spiteful, self-destructive behaviour.
Once again returning to the past for the Loman family, Miller finally gives a full explanation for Biff's refusal to take a summer school course and thus pass math, the critical event that determined his successive failures. It is Willy's infidelity that prompted the change in Biff, as he learned that his father was having an affair with the woman in Boston. Yet the revelation of this reason for Biff's bitterness is not the only example in this segment of how Willy has carelessly ruined the lives of those around him. Willy has ruined the reputation of the Woman, but can offer nothing to her in return. He has made false promises to this woman, such as telling her that he will get her stockings, but denies and discards her. This parallels Willy's earlier insistence that Linda not mend stockings. Stockings thus serve as a symbol of what Willy can provide and as a measure of his success.
Yet another humiliation for Willy Loman occurs in this segment: his sons have abandoned him at the restaurant, leaving him alone with the waiter while they go out with the women Happy had met. Willy's preoccupation with seed is symbolic of his realization that he has nothing permanent that he has created. As a salesman he is merely a liaison for what others create, while the family he has created has abandoned him at the restaurant. Seeds thus symbolise something more permanent and tangible that he can create as an example of his work. This also relates back to Willy's seeming embarrassment when Ben thinks that he cannot hunt or fish in Brooklyn; Willy worries that, as a salesman, he is not close to nature. His wish to plant seeds is a way to compensate for this deficiency.
Willy Loman's funeral is a cruel and pathetic end to the salesman's life. Only his family and Charley attend, while none of his various customers or associates at work bothers to pay their respects. However, the funeral rests primarily on Willy's status as a salesman: it is the character of a salesman that determined Willy's course of action, according to Miller. For a salesman, there are only dreams and hope for future sales. Happy and Biff interpret Willy's suicide in terms of these business dreams: Happy wishes to stay in the city and succeed where his father failed, while Biff rejects the business ethos that destroyed his father and plans to leave New York. Both Happy and Charley frame Willy Loman to be a martyr figure, blameless for his suicide and noble in his business aspirations, thus repudiating the humiliations that Willy suffered during the course of the play.
The play ends on an ironic note, as Linda claims that she has made the final payment on their house, securing for the Loman's a sense of financial security for the first time. Willy Loman worked for thirty-five years in order to build this sense of security and stability, yet committed suicide before he could enjoy the results of his labour.
The urban existence is one that finally comes forth to devastate the ideals, and dreams that were once enforced onto the protégé of Willy Loman, leading to the untimely, premature 'death of a salesman'.
Mohammed Lukman Ahmed
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