After The Woman’s laughter through Ben’s first appearance
in Willy’s daydream
Summary
The Woman is Willy’s mistress and a secretary for one
of his buyers. In Willy’s daydream, they sit in a hotel room. She
tells him that she picked him because he is so funny and sweet.
Willy loves the praise. She thanks Willy for giving her stockings
and promises to put him right through to the buyers when she sees
him next. The Woman fades into the darkness as Willy returns to
his conversation with Linda in the present. He notices Linda mending
stockings and angrily demands that she throw them out—he is too
proud to let his wife wear an old pair (Biff later discovers that
Willy has been buying new stockings for The Woman instead of for
Linda). Bernard returns to the Loman house to beg Biff to study
math. Willy orders him to give Biff the answers. Bernard replies
that he cannot do so during a state exam. Bernard insists that Biff
return the football. Linda comments that some mothers
fear that Biff is “too rough” with their daughters. Willy, enraged
by the unglamorous truth of his son’s behavior, plunges into a state
of distraction and shouts at them to shut up. Bernard leaves the
house, and Linda leaves the room, holding back tears.
The memory fades. Willy laments to himself and Happy that
he did not go to Alaska with his brother, Ben, who acquired a fortune at
the age of twenty-one upon discovering an African diamond mine.
Charley, having heard the shouts, visits to check on Willy. They
play cards. Charley, concerned about Willy, offers him a job, but
Willy is insulted by the offer. He asks Charley if he saw the ceiling
he put in his living room, but he becomes surly when Charley expresses
interest, insisting that Charley’s lack of skill with tools proves
his lack of masculinity. Ben appears on the stage in a semi-daydream.
He cuts a dignified, utterly confident figure. Willy tells Charley
that Ben’s wife wrote from Africa to tell them Ben had died. He
alternates between conversing with Charley and his dead brother.
Willy gets angry when Charley wins a hand, so Charley takes his
cards and leaves. He is disturbed that Willy is so disoriented that
he talks to a dead brother as if he were present. Willy immerses
himself in the memory of a visit from his brother. Ben and Willy’s
father abandoned the family when Willy was three or four years old
and Ben was seventeen. Ben left home to look for their father in
Alaska but never found him. At Willy’s request, Ben tells young
Biff and Happy about their grandfather. Among an assortment of other
jobs, Willy and Ben’s father made flutes and sold them as a traveling
salesman before following a gold rush to Alaska. Ben proceeds to
wrestle the young Biff to the ground in a demonstration of unbridled
machismo, wielding his umbrella threateningly over Biff’s eye. Willy
begs Ben to stay longer, but Ben hurries to catch his train.
Analysis
Just as the product that Willy sells is never specified,
so too does The Woman, with whom Willy commits adultery, remain
nameless. Miller offers no description of her looks or character
because such details are irrelevant; The Woman merely represents
Willy’s discontent in life. Indeed, she is more a symbol than an
actual human being: she regards herself as a means for Willy to
get to the buyers more efficiently, and Willy uses her as a tool
to feel well liked. Biff sees her as a sign that Willy and his ambitions
are not as great as Willy claims.
Willy’s compulsive need to be “well liked” contributes
to his descent into self-delusion. Whereas Linda loves Willy despite
his considerable imperfections, Willy’s mistress, on the other hand, merely
likes him. She buys his sales pitch, which boosts his ego, but does
not care for him deeply the way Linda does. Linda regards Willy’s
job merely as a source of income; she draws a clear line between Willy
as a salesman and Willy as her husband. Willy is unable to do so and
thus fails to accept the love that Linda and his sons offer him.
Willy was first abandoned by his father and later by his
older brother, Ben. Willy’s father was a salesman as well, but he
actually produced what he sold and was successful, according to
Ben, at least. Ben presents their father as both an independent
thinker and a masculine man skilled with his hands. In a sense,
Willy’s father, not Willy himself, represents the male ideal to
Biff, a pioneer spirit and rugged individualist. Unlike his father,
Willy does not attain personal satisfaction from the things that
he sells because they are not the products of his personal efforts—what
he sells is himself, and he is severely damaged and psychically
ruptured. His professional persona is the only thing that he has
produced himself. In a roundabout manner, Willy seeks approval from
his professional contacts by trying to be “well liked”—a coping
strategy to deal with his abandonment by the two most important
male figures in his life.
Willy’s efforts to create the perfect family of the American
Dream seem to constitute an attempt to rebuild the pieces of the
broken family of his childhood. One can interpret his decision to
become a salesman as the manifestation of his desperate desire to
be the good father and provider that his own salesman father failed
to be. Willy despairs about leaving his sons nothing in the form
of a material inheritance, acutely aware that his own father abandoned
him and left him with nothing.
