Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller: Detailed Summary

“The only thing you got in this world is what you can sell. And the funny thing is that you're a salesman, and you don't know that.”

  

 Subtitle: Certain private conversations in two acts and a requiem

 

Act I

Play begins with Willy Loman returning to his New York home during the night. Hearing him enter, Linda, his wife, is very much concerned about his old age. and gets out of bed to greet him. Willy explains a slight road accident happened to him on the way back to home. During this conversation, the audience discovers that Willy had several automobile accidents recently and that indicates the emotional instability of the character. Willy and Linda begin arguing about one of their sons, Biff, who has recently returned from New York, after searching job. Throughout this conversation (as throughout many others), Willy contradicts himself, especially regarding Biff’s character.

 

In the upstairs, Biff and his brother, Happy, who are spending the night at their house, wake up and strain to hear the conversation between their father and mother. They reminisce about their childhood and discuss the tensions that have formed between Biff and Willy regarding their jobless situation. Although Biff and Happy are in their thirties, they frequently act much younger and are treated by their parents as if they are younger. Happy is clearly a womanizer, while Biff is frustrated at his lack of professional success and the conflicts he feels between his own desires and the desires his father has for him. Both men discuss their dissatisfactions with their lives and speculate about their future options. Happy attempts to persuade Biff to move back to New York permanently, especially after they overhear Willy talking loudly to himself. He suggests that Biff need to visit a man he once worked for, Bill Oliver, and ask for another job.

 

Much of the action in the play occurs as flash-backs, with Willy responding to the past as if it were the present. Now, Willy remembers buying a much younger Biff and Happy a punching bag; Biff is playing with a football he had stolen from his school. Willy begins bragging about how well-known and well-liked he is in the East coast towns he travels through as a salesman. Within this flashback, Bernard, a cousin of Biff and Happy, enters and urges Biff to come study his math. Biff, a senior in high school at this point, is in danger of failing the course, hence failing to graduate, which would prevent him from accepting an athletic scholarship at the University of Virginia.

Willy and Linda begin to discuss their financial problems, which have increased because the firm that has employed Willy for decades has taken him off salary and put him entirely on commission. At this point, Willy remembers a woman, apparently a clerk in one of the companies he visits but whose significance will become clear only much later in the play. Willy refers to his Uncle Ben, who “knew what he wanted and went out and got it,” who, in other words, became rich.

Linda reveals their financial difficulties to her Sons, but when they criticize Willy’s firm, Linda claims Biff and Happy are equally neglectful. Linda also reveals that Willy has been trying to kill himself, that his frequent automobile accidents seem to have been intentional.

 

When Biff tells Willy that he is going to visit his former employer, Bill Oliver, Willy encourages him to ask to borrow $15,000. Simultaneously, he criticizes Biff for lacking a professional or manly demeanour. Happy encourages Biff to get his old confidence back, though he seems to have lost it years ago. The Act ends with Linda pleading with Willy to ask for a position that would not require him to travel. 

 

 

Act II 

This Act occurs the following day. At breakfast, Linda assures Willy that Biff had left in a good mood, confident that Bill Oliver will respond to him favourably. She also says that their sons want Willy to meet them for dinner. Willy talks to his boss, Howard, asking him for a position in New York rather than on the road. Howard declines, claiming to have no position available. Willy begins shouting, citing his early success which  exasperates Howard, probably because Willy exaggerates his earlier abilities. 

 

 

By the end of the conversation, Howard has fired Willy entirely. At this point, another flashback occurs, the day of Biff’s big high school football game in Ebbets Field. When time shifts back to the present, Willy enters his brother Charley’s office. He speaks with Bernard, who has grown into a successful and responsible man. Bernard asks what actually happened to Biff after high school, when he failed math and refused to make the course up over the summer. Willy becomes defensive and loud. As he frequently has, Charley offers Willy a job, but Willy denies. Although he is disgusted, Charley continues to lend Willy money. The scene shifts to the restaurant, where Happy is waiting for Biff and his father.  When Biff arrives, he reveals that he had failed with Bill Oliver, who kept him waiting all day and didn’t even remember him. Although Biff attempts to have a frank conversation with Willy,  Within this conversation, another crucial flashback occurs. When Biff had failed in maths, he had gone to Boston to persuade Willy to intervene with the teacher. Instead, he discovered Willy in a hotel with another woman and became profoundly disillusioned with both Willy and his own life’s possibilities.  It was after this discovery, apparently, that Biff refused to attend summer school and hence relinquished his opportunity for an athletic scholarship and a college education. Biff and Happy leave Willy in the restaurant. The next morning,  Willy has clearly become more unstable and thinks more overtly of suicide.  The Act ends with Willy speeding off in his car.  

 

 

Requiem 

 The last moments of the play occur after Willy’ s funeral, which has not been well-attended like the funeral of his alter ego Dave Singleman, as he wished in his life time. Biff indicates that he will return to the West, while Happy will remain in business in New York. The play concludes with Linda at Willy’s grave, uttering the ironic remark that because their house is finally paid for (with Willy’s insurance money), they are now “free.”

 

 “A man is not a bird, to come and go with the springtime”