Boston hotel room daydream through Willy’s departure
from Frank’s Chop House
Summary
Upon his sons’ departure from Frank’s Chop House, Willy
is immersed in the memory of the teenage Biff’s visit to see him
in Boston. In his daydream it is night and he is in a hotel room
with his mistress, while in the present he is presumably still in
the restroom of Frank’s Chop House. Biff is outside knocking on
the hotel room door, after telephoning the room repeatedly with
no result. The Woman, who is dressing, pesters Willy to answer the
door. She flirtatiously describes how he has “ruined” her, and she
offers to send him straight through to the buyers whom she represents
the next time he visits Boston on business. Willy, who is clearly
nervous about his surprise visitor, finally consents to her appeals
to answer the door. He orders her to stay in the bathroom and be
quiet, believing it may be a nosy hotel clerk investigating their
affair.
Willy answers the door, and Biff reports that he failed
math. He asks Willy to persuade the teacher, Mr. Birnbaum, to pass
him. Willy tries to get Biff out of the room quickly with promises
of a malted drink and a rapid trip home to talk to the math teacher.
When Biff mockingly imitates his teacher’s lisp, The Woman laughs
from the bathroom. She exits the bathroom, wearing only a negligee,
and Willy pushes her out into the hallway. He tries to pass her
off as a buyer staying in the room next door who needed to shower
in Willy’s bathroom because her room was being painted. Biff sits
on his suitcase, crying silently, not buying his father’s lies.
Willy promises to talk to the math teacher, but Biff tells him to
forget it because no one will listen to a phony liar. He resolves
not to make up the math test and not to attend college, effectively
negating his contracted role in Willy’s inflated version of the
American Dream. He deals the most serious blow by accusing Willy
of giving Linda’s stockings away to his mistress. Biff leaves, with
Willy kneeling and yelling after him.
Stanley pulls Willy out of his daydream. Willy is on his
knees in the restaurant ordering the teenage Biff to come back.
Stanley explains his sons’ absence, and Willy attempts to tip him,
but Stanley stealthily slips the dollar bill back into Willy’s coat
as he turns. Willy asks him to direct him to a seed store, and he
rushes out, frantically explaining that he must plant immediately,
as he does not “have a thing in the ground.”
Nothing’s planted. I don’t have a thing
in the ground.
(See Important Quotations Explained)
Analysis
Willy settles on Biff’s discovery of his adultery as the
reason for Biff’s failure to fulfill Willy’s ambitions for him.
Before he discovers the affair, Biff believes in Willy’s meticulously
constructed persona. Afterward, he calls Willy out as a “phony little
fake.” He sees beneath Willy’s facade and rejects the man behind
it; to be exposed in this way as a charlatan is the salesman’s worst
nightmare. Assuming a characteristically simplistic cause-and-effect
relationship, Willy decides that Biff’s failure to succeed is a
direct result of the disillusionment that he experiences as a result
of Willy’s infidelity. Despising Willy for his affair, Biff must
also have come to despise Willy’s ambitions for him.
In this reckoning, Willy again conflates the personal
with the professional. His understanding of the American Dream as
constituting professional success and material gain precludes the
idea that one can derive happiness without these things. Ironically,
in Willy’s daydream this desired tangible proof of success is acquired
by means of the immaterial and ephemeral concepts of “personal attractiveness”
and being “well liked.” Willy believes that Biff, no longer able
to respect him as a father or a person, automatically gave up all
hopes for achieving the American Dream, since he could not separate
Willy’s expectations of him from his damaged emotional state. In
a sense, Willy is right this time—Biff’s knowledge of Willy’s adultery tarnishes
the package deal of the total Dream, and Biff rejects the flawed
product that Willy is so desperately trying to sell him.
Willy’s earlier preoccupation with the state of Linda’s
stockings and her mending them foreshadows the exposure and fall
that the Boston incident represents. Until the climactic scene in
the restaurant, when Biff first attempts to dispel the myths and
lies sinking the Loman household, the only subconscious trace of
Willy’s adultery is his insistence that Linda throw her old stockings
out. The stockings’ power as a symbol of his betrayal overcomes
Willy when Biff’s assault on his increasingly delicate shield of
lies forces him to confront his guilt about his affair with The
Woman. When Biff, the incarnation of Willy’s ambition, rejects the
delusion that Willy offers, Willy’s faith in the American Dream,
which he vested in his son, begins to dissolve as well.
