"Death of a salesman"

by Maila Huda Shofyana

DEATH OF A SALESMAN

Structural Elements

1.      Main Characters

a.       Willy Loman - A 63 year old once popular salesman who’s lost his popularity and sales, not to mention his mind.

b.      Biff Loman -  A 34 year old son of Willy who has been searching for himself while working on farms in the west to the dismay of his father.

c.       Happy Loman - The younger brother of Biff who tries in all he can to please his father and attempts to continue his father’s dream after he dies.

d.      Linda Loman - The wife of Willy who tries to protect Willy’s feelings and can’t make herself confront him if it means hurting his feelings.

e.       Charley: Successful businessman who lives next door to Willy.

f.        Bernard: Charley’s son. He is intelligent, hard-working, and successful–everything

g.       Ben: Willy’s deceased older brother, who appears only in Willy’s hallucinations.

h.       Howard Wagner: The son of Willy's former boss, Frank Wagner, whom Willy admired.

i.         Stanley: A waiter at a bar/restaurant where Willy meets his sons.

j.         Miss Forsythe and Letta : Attractive young women whom Hap and Biff meet in the bar/restaurant.

2.      Minor Characters

Bernard - A bookish friend of Biff and Happy who urges Biff to study in high school to no avail, however, he himself makes it as a prominent lawyer and goes to argue a case to the supreme court at the end of the play.

Charley - Bernard’s father who is fairly successful and offers Willy a job which Willy refuses on the basis of pride.

3.      Setting

·         Willy’s house - Small house in New York surrounded by apartments.

·         Restaurant - Restaurant where Stanley works where the Lomans were supposed to have dinner at the end of the play.

·         The hotel - The hotel where Willy stays while in New England for his business trips.  This is where Biff catches his father in the affair.

4.      Plot

·        Initial Situation: Willy and Biff are both home again.

·         Conflict: Willy is deteriorating and suicidal; Biff is told to get serious.

·         Complication: Willy gets fired and Biff doesn’t even get close enough to a job to get fired.

·         Climax: Biff gets honest and destroys Willy’s dream; Willy finally realizes that Biff loves him.

·         Suspense: Willy starts chatting with the imaginary figure of his brother and considers killing himself.

·         Denouement: Willy commits suicide.

5.      Theme

The theme that love is blind is conveyed thru the character of Linda Loman.

6.      Style

The style and devices Miller uses enhances Willy’s mental state.  By using flashback and reveries, he allows the audience to get into the mind of Willy Loman and brings us into a sense of pity for him.  Miller also uses a lot of motifs and repeated ideas through the play to give the viewers an idea of what Willy and his situation is all about.  Personal attractiveness is an oft repeated motif.  It shows that Willy believes that personal attractiveness makes one successful, but his belief is shot down by the success of Charley and Bernard who, in his mind, are not personally attractive.  Other motifs are debt which sadly the Lomans escape after Willy dies, stealing which Willy condones, even encourages, the boxed-in feeling of Willy, the idea that Willy’s life is passing him by, expressed in the quote, “The woods are burning,” and Ben’s success and the qualities that brought about his success.

7.      Conclusion

 Biff rejects his father’s misguided dream, but Happy runs with it. At the conclusion of the play, it is totally clear that Willy was wrong about himself. Not that we ever thought otherwise, but practically no one comes to his funeral. Biff now realizes that his father didn’t know himself and picked the wrong path. He will certainly not follow in his father’s footsteps. Happy, on the other hand, defends his father’s misguided dreams and decides to take them on himself. It is a “Man vs Society”.