Home Study Guides Death of a Salesman quot;s and Analysis Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller I'm the New England man. I'm vital in New England. Willy Loman, Act I Willy's self-definition is centered around his career. He isn't the man who does sales for New England - he's the New England man. He believes himself to be vital to the company, but in reality it's the company that's vital to him and his feelings of self worth. When he discovers that he isn't vital anywhere, his worldview crumbles. He's liked, but not well-liked. Biff, referring to Bernard. Act I Willy's recipe for success is based entirely around a cult of personality. Most people are liked by their friends and acquaintances. But only great men, according to Willy, are truly well-liked - and that is what brings them success. In this quot;, we see that Willy's belief in personal connections has been transferred to his sons as well, as they dismiss their friend Bernard for only garden-variety likability. The man knew what he wanted and went out and got it! Walked into a jungle and comes out, the age of twenty-one, and he's rich! Willy, regarding Ben. Act I This is a principal refrain for Ben. Although Willy is the first one to use this line, Ben repeats it many times throughout the play, making it clear that Ben is only a figment of Willy's imagination. He does not speak normal words, but is the personification of a symbol - Willy has attached all his ideas of success and worth to the abstract concept of his brother Ben, whether Ben merited it or not. I don't say he's a great man. Willie Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper. He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. He's not to be allowed to fall in his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person.
“ Attention must be paid.” It is one of the most famous lines in American literature. You can experience its latest incarnation at New York’s Ethel Barrymore Theater, where Mike Nichols has mounted a superb revival of Death of a Salesman, starring an electrifying Philip Seymour Hoffman as Willy Loman, a performance in which Hoffman establishes himself as the definitive Willy, and as one of the greatest American actors ever to appear on stage or screen. Ad Policy Yet attention must be paid to what, exactly? Is it to Willy the casualty of capitalism? Or to Willy the emblem of a midlife crisis? To Willy who “had the wrong dreams,” as his angry, alienated son Biff says? Or to Willy who lived the life of a salesman, “way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine,” as Charley, Willy’s cynical yet implausibly generous neighbor, describes him? Every ten years or so, Death of a Salesman is revived, and every ten years we get the same interpretations: Willy the impossible dreamer, Willy the conformist, Willy the American nightmare on the obverse side of the American dream. Maybe on this sixty-third anniversary of the play—the very age of its enigmatic protagonist—it is possible to get past what makes this play beloved and get to what makes it disturbing. If there is one interpretation of the play that goes unquestioned it is Biff’s own, that his father had “the wrong dreams.” Traumatized by his unwitting father, whom he catches in the arms of another woman in a hotel room in Boston, Biff confronts his own and Willy’s nature in the play’s climax. “ Why am I trying to become what I don’t want to be?” he cries. “ What am I doing in an office, making a contemptuous, begging fool of myself, when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am!” Biff’s war cry has the purest pedigree: Natty Bumppo, Bartleby, Huck Finn, Nick Adams, Sal Paradise.
Throughout Death of a Salesman, Willy pursues concrete evidence of his worth and success. He is entranced by the very physical, tangible results of Ben’s diamond mining efforts and strives to validate his own life by claiming concrete success. Willy projects his own obsession with material achievement onto his sons, who struggle with a conflict between their intangible needs and the pressure to succeed materially. To what extent is tangible wealth essential to Willy? To Happy? Biff? Linda? Charley and Bernard? How is the possession of tangible wealth linked to the concept of freedom and escape in Death of a Salesman? Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devil’s advocate. Willy’s obsession with obtaining concrete evidence of success distracts him from recognizing the important intangibles in his life, particularly the love of his family members.
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