The climax of Death of a Salesman was driven by the unstable relationship between Willy, the father, and Biff, and his son. The conflict came from a past full of false hopes and a present reality with tragic events.
Willy would have gone to Alaska with his brother in hopes of a bright future, but then he met Dave Singleman. Singleman was a loved and respected salesman; he was well like in twenty of thirty different cities. When Singleman died, hundreds of people attended his funeral. From idolized Singleman and decided to be a salesman himself. He also thought of himself as a man who could be easily liked. He thought he could die and have a funeral just like Singleman. In truth, Willy’s arrogance of thinking he was well liked made him blind to the fact that he was not liked at all. He filled Biff with the same hot air he filled himself with. He told Biff that he was very well liked and that he would be successful because of it. Biff believed in him and lived up to the idea of being liked would get him far. He did well in the football team, he loved Willy, and was good student.
The conflict between Willy and Biff started the day when Biff found out that Willy had an affair. Biff said that no one would listen to a phony liar and ran off. He no longer meets the expectation Willy had for him. Biff no longer say his father as an idol. Their relationship was broken from then on.
The conflict between the father and son fuels the climax of the play. Willy and his sons were supposed to meet at a restaurant to supposedly celebrate Biff’s loan and Willy’s new job. Neither got what they wanted. Willy was hoping that his brilliant son got the loan to keep his own hopes up. Biff’s failure made Willy enter into a delusional daydream which caused Biff to abandon him. The relationship between father and son was now worse than is has ever been. Biff confronts Willy in the fruitless garden and informs him that his leaving forever. Willy is heartbroken thus making him attempt suicide on the end of the play.
A past of such bright promises caused Biff to have dislike or even hate Willy for all the hot air he filled him with. Biff lived in a reality were he did not make enough money and blamed it on Willy. Willy could not handle the responsibility of ruining him nor the fact that he was not successful. All this lead to his final attempt to take his life.
In the end of the novel Willy keeps talking about $20,000 dollars. We soon realize that he’s talking about his life insurance. He once again thinks of suicide. Biff and Happy join Willy in the garden when he is planting the seeds. The seeds represent the bright future the Loman family will have after claiming the $20,000. Biff then comes out to light and blames his failure on Willy for filling him with so much hot air and breaks down into tears. Then he goes up to his bedroom with promises to leave and never comeback. Everyone else follows except for Willy, which starts the car and speeds off. Most likely to attempt to kill himself in another car accident.
The dinner at Frank’s Chop House was supposed to be a merry one, a dinner to celebrate the loan Oliver was supposed to give Biff and the non-traveling job Howard was supposed to offer to Willy. The fact was none of the two got what they wanted; Willy even lost his current job. The dinner was fiasco; Willy had another humiliating daydream where he got caught with The Woman by Biff. After realizing that he had nothing, Willy ran off to a seed store to buy seeds to plant on the ground, claiming that he had nothing on the ground. The ground represents their current lives, nothing but dirt. The seeds represent what they could have had if they chose different paths in their lives. Willy makes a pointless attempt in buying the seeds in hopes that everything will be ok after the plants grow.
The rubber pipe Linda, the wife, found in the basement is a symbol for Willy’s desperate attempts at suicide. He once drove off a bridge to kill himself but the shallow water saved him. Then he apparently tried to kill himself by inhaling gas. Linda was cheerful at the fact that the rubber pipe was gone, thinking that Willy got rid of it himself. Instead, Biff was the one that got rid of the pipe, not Willy. Nevertheless, the fact that the rubber pipe is no longer in the basement symbolizes a bright future. Maybe the fact that it was Biff that took the rubber pipe implies that is a false sense of a bright future.
Willy is obsessed with the idea that everyone should like him. His dream is to be able to go into any city and be recognized as Willy Loman at first sight, that’s why he likes his job as a salesman. When Willy was younger he used to conquer every city and bring back good amounts of money home. Everyone that knew and liked Willy eventually died. Willy noticed that people no longer noticed him when he walked down the street. He even found out that people laugh at him by overhearing a conversation his sons and his wife were having. It must be hard for him to realize that his dream is fading that his own son is turning on him. Maybe this is the reason why Willy has been acting so strange lately.
The first thing I noticed about the play is that the Lomans are an average middleclass family. They have a stable relationship with the exception that Willy, the father, is disappointed of Biff, the older son, because he has not made someone out himself at the age of thirty-four. Biff has gone job from job never earning more than thirty dollars a week. Willy wants him to be earning at least fifty a week and considers him as a lazy bum. A minute later he considers him an attractive and hardworking man, which leads to the second thing a noticed. Willy seems mentally unstable in a way. He sometimes forgets that he is driving in day dreams; he constantly talks to himself, he forgets what car he was driven just a few minutes ago and things like that.
Arthur Miller has had more than 70 of his works published as stage plays, radio plays, screen plays, non-fiction, assorted fiction and others. Some of Miller’s major works were the following: All My Sons (1947), Death of a Salesman (1949), The Crucible (1953), A View from the Bridge (1955), After the Fall (1964), Broken Glass (1994), Resurrection Blues (2002) and Finishing the Picture (2004).
Arthur Asher Miller (October 17, 1915 – February 10, 2005) was an American playwright and essayist. He was a prominent figure in American theatre, writing dramas that include plays such as All My Sons, Death of a Salesman, The Crucible, and A View from the Bridge. Miller was often in the public eye, particularly during the late 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s, a period during which he testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee, received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and was married to Marilyn Monroe.
Death of a Salesman 