74 pages • 2 hours read
Arthur MillerDeath of a Salesman
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1949A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Act II, Scenes 9-14 and RequiemChapter Summaries & Analyses
Act II, Scenes 9-12 Summary
Alongside the scene at the restaurant, a memory of Linda appears. Willy hears a young Bernard inform Linda that Biff failed math and won’t graduate. Present-day Biff explains why he took Oliver’s pen and lies that he has another meeting with Oliver. Willy hears an operator ringing his hotel room in the past, and he responds to it in the present. His irrational behavior upsets Biff. Slipping between the past and present, Willy is angry that Biff refuses to meet with Oliver because he stole the pen, telling him that he is “no good for anything” (87). When Biff finally admits that he doesn’t have an appointment with Oliver and that he went only for Willy, Willy slips entirely into a memory of the Woman at a hotel in Boston. The Woman asks Willy if he plans to open the door, prompting the present-day Willy to stumble for a door in the restaurant. Distraught, Biff shows Happy the rubber hose and asks him to help Willy. Happy is distracted by the girls, and although they at first are impressed that he is out with his father, he later tells them that Willy is not his father before leaving with them.
The next scene finds Willy in the memory of the hotel room with the Woman. She playfully tells Willy that he ruined her and that she won’t see him anymore. As they get dressed, someone knocks at the door. Willy orders the Woman to remain in the bathroom. Willy finds Biff at the door, who has come to explain that he failed math and won’t graduate. As he asks Willy to talk to his teacher before school closes, the Woman laughs and comes out of the bathroom in lingerie. Willy pretends that she is simply using her bathroom and tells her to leave. She refuses to leave until he gives her the stockings he promised. When Willy asks Biff to help him pack, a distraught Biff calls Willy a liar and a phony. Weeping, Biff grabs his suitcase and leaves. Willy is kneeling and yelling both in the past and present when the scene shifts to the restaurant. Stanley helps a disoriented Willy to the door, and Willy heads off to buy seeds for his garden.
After a night out, Biff and Happy are back home with a bunch of roses for Linda. Furious that they left Willy alone at the restaurant, Linda knocks the flowers to her feet and shouts at the young men to leave and never return. She orders them to clean up the mess, stating that she is no longer their servant. Biff insists on speaking to Willy, who is planting in the garden late at night. Linda forbids him from approaching Willy, calling the boys a cruel “pair of animals” (98).
In the backyard, Willy works in the garden and talks to an imaginary Ben. They discuss Willy’s plan to commit suicide. Ben warns Willy that the life insurance company might not pay the policy and that Biff will think of him as a coward. Instead, Willy happily imagines the money his family will receive upon his death and Biff’s reaction to a grand funeral that would prove how well known and respected he is. He says:
Because he thinks I’m nothing, see, and so he spites me. But the funeral […] that boy will be thunderstruck, Ben, because he never realized—I am known! […] and he’ll see it with his eyes once and for all. He’ll see what I am, Ben! He’s in for a shock, that boy! (100).
Act II, Scenes 13-14 and Requiem Summary
Biff enters the garden to inform Willy that he is leaving home forever. Willy refuses to shake his hand, telling him instead to “rot in hell if you leave this house” (103). He accuses Biff of wasting his life and castigates him over his inability to keep a stable job. Biff confronts Willy with the rubber hose and tells him he won’t pity him if he commits suicide. Tired of fighting about his lack of success, Biff asks Willy to face the truth. Willy has continuously disillusioned the family about their greatness—they are nothing remarkable and are ordinary people who can easily be replaced. Biff says, “Pop! I’m a dime a dozen, and so are you! […] I am not a leader of men, Willy, and neither are you. You were never anything but a hard-working drummer who landed in the ash can like all the rest of them!” (105-06). When Biff breaks down and starts to cry in Willy’s arms, Willy’s mood suddenly lifts. He is amazed that Biff loves him, and his delusions of Biff’s success are restored.
Later, Willy urges Linda to go to bed as he lingers outside. Ben reappears to remind Willy of the $20,000 life insurance, telling him, “The jungle is dark but full of diamonds, Willy” (107). Linda calls for Willy to come to bed, but he doesn’t answer. Convinced that Biff will respect him if he commits suicide for the sake of the family, he gets in his car and speeds away.
The Requiem takes place at Willy’s burial. Having expected a large crowd to attend the funeral of her supposedly well-liked and respected husband, Linda is taken aback by how few people are there. Happy is angry with Willy, while Biff reminisces about Willy’s love of working outdoors. He states that Willy was lost and didn’t know who he was. In an attempt to maintain Willy’s image, Charley explains that a salesman’s life relies entirely on dreams of success. Happy refuses to allow his father’s death to be in vain, deciding to fulfill his father’s dreams and become a successful businessman. At Willy’s grave, Linda says that she made the last payment on the house and apologizes for her inability to cry. To her, it feels as though Willy is simply on another business trip. As Biff helps her up, she begins sobbing, “We’re free and clear. We’re free…We’re free…We’re free…” (112). She doesn’t understand his suicide, as they are finally debt free. As everyone exits the stage, the only thing left is the flute music as the apartment buildings above the Loman house come into sharp focus.
Act II, Scenes 9-14 and Requiem Analysis
As Willy’s fantasies fall apart, he comes face to face with memories of his biggest failures. While he hears the laughter and commentary of the Woman often, it is not until after he is fired and faced with Biff’s failure with Bill Oliver that he comes to terms with his betrayal. Though Willy seems to have done his best to be there for his family, particularly relative to his father’s abandonment, he instead betrays his family for an adulterous affair that seeps into his fantasies and pulls him towards reality. Only after facing Biff’s failure at the dinner does Willy immerse himself into the ill-fated day that Biff caught him with the Woman. Willy is defensive when anyone asks what happened in Boston, referring to it as the beginning of the end for Biff’s future. Biff once deemed his father the male ideal. In an effort to please his father, he dreamed of attending the University of Virginia and becoming a respectable and successful businessman. However, seeing his father’s mistakes shatters the Dream for Biff, who can no longer bring himself to graduate or to pursue a future that he realizes he has no inclination towards.
Willy converses with Ben about his suicide, looking still for his brother’s approval. Willy is so unnaturally committed to the American Dream that he is willing to commit suicide for his family to “cash in” on the Dream, both in money and in fame from the expected crowd at his funeral. Each character responds to Willy’s death in a way that reflects their own relationship with Willy and their understanding of the American Dream. Linda, unaware of her husband’s betrayal or his dreams of attaining a fortune, doesn’t understand why Willy would do such a thing when the house is finally paid off and they are debt free. Happy seems to continue the cycle, vowing to follow in his father’s footsteps and fulfill the Dream so Willy’s life hasn’t been lost in vain. Biff, however, becomes all the more certain that Willy went against his nature by committing himself to the life of a salesman. The true cause of Willy’s failure is unclear—whether it is his father’s abandonment, his own affair and betrayal, or faults in the very nature of the American Dream itself. No matter the case, his death is a testament to the Loman family’s inability to achieve the Dream.
Rather than pleasing his family with an insurance settlement and a crowded funeral, the small funeral disproves Willy’s fantasies of being well-liked and leaves the family even more incomplete after Willy’s loss. Willy fails to obtain the mythical “death of a salesman” that Dave Singleman once achieved, despite having done everything dictated by the American Dream. He completed payments on his own home, equipped it with every modern luxury, and supported his family as a businessman.
Finally, both the opening and closing of the play mirror one another. The flute music is reminiscent of Willy’s father—who played the flute—symbolizing Willy’s desire for acceptance and dedication to the American Dream. The final visual of apartment buildings towering over the Loman home highlights both the failure to achieve such a Dream and the delusion that such a Dream is possible, even in death.
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