Death of A Salesman: Key Quotes

• An air of the dream clings to the place, a dream rising up out of reality


  A1 P1 - Opening Description - The dream within the setting
• His exhaustion is apparent


  A1 P2 - Opening Description - Willy's exhaustion
• She more than loves him, she admires him


  A1 P2 - Opening Description - Linda's love for Willy (megalopsychia?)
• His mercurial nature, his temper, his massive dreams and little cruelties


  A1 P2 - Opening Description - Willy's nature (megalopsychia?)
• I'm tired to death. (The flute has faded away...


  A1 P2 - Willy - Physical struggle with long journeys
• They don't need me in New York. I'm the New England man. I'm vital in New England.


  A1 P4 - Willy - Delusion/denial about his job
• If old man Wagner was alive I'd a been in charge of New York now!


  A1 P4 - Willy - The change in attitude to work, caring/personal to ruthless
• Work a lifetime to pay off a house. You finally own it, and there's nobody to live in it


  A1 P4 - Willy - Frustration with life/capitalism
• How can he find himself on a farm? Is that a life?


  A1 P5 - Willy - Lack of understanding about Biff's choice to do a job he enjoys over making (lots of) money
• Biff is a lazy bum!

  ...

  There's one thing about Biff - he's not lazy.


  A1 P5 - Willy - Contradictions about Biff
• Remember those two beautiful elm trees out there? ... They should've arrested the builder for cutting down those down. They massacred the neighbourhood. (lost) More and more I think of those days, Linda.


  A1 P6 - Willy - His love for the natural world (highlights his confusion about his dream/what he wants to do/where he wants to be - contrasts sentiment of quote 10)
• You're my foundation and my support, Linda.


  A1 P7 - Willy - His reliance on Linda
• I don't know - what I'm supposed to want ... To suffer fifty weeks of the year for the sake of a two-week vacation, when all you really desire is to be outdoors, with your shirt off. And always to have to get ahead of the next fella.


  A1 P10 - Biff - Moaning about how he's expected to buy into the capitalist dream despite it's falsity when all he wants is to live the old American dream
• every time I come back here, I know all I've done is to waste my life


  A1 P11 - Biff - Wasting his life (acknowledgment that he's not 'building anything' like Willy wrongly believes he is)
• maybe we could buy a ranch. Raise cattle, use of muscles. Men built like we are should be working out in the open


  A1 P12 - Biff - His American dream (that was earlier deemed unacceptable; quote 14)
• (enthralled) That's what I dream about, Biff. Sometimes I just want to rip my clothes off in the middle of the store and outbox that goddam merchandise manager.


  A1 P12 - Happy - He shares Biff's American dream (in response to quote 1)
• You know, the trouble is, Linda, people don't seem to take to me.

  ... They seem to laugh at me.

  ... I'm not noticed.


  A1 P22/3 - Willy - On the truth of his issues as a salesman (3 comments)
• To me you are. (slight pause.) The handsomest. From the darkness can be heard the laughter of a woman. WILLY doesn't turn to it, but it continues through LINDA'S lines.


  A1 P23 - Linda/Stage Directions - Contrast of Linda's love for Willy with his unfaithfulness
• Just mending my stockings. They're so expensive -


  A1 P25 - Linda - As she mends her stockings mentions their price (following W's memory of giving the Woman stockings):
• The woods are burning!


  A1 P27 - Willy - A summary phrase for all of the problems he's just listed to Happy (failing sons, struggle to drive long distances, not going with Ben)
• He is utterly certain of his destiny, and there is an aura of far places about him.


  A1 P29 - Stage Directions - The mythical entrance of Ben as a pioneer/adventurer
• That's just the way I'm bringing them up, Ben - rugged, well liked, all-round.


  A1 P33 - Willy - The all-round nature of Willy's boys may have worked in his fathers generation, but caught between two historical forces pulling in different directions, it actually leaves Willy's boys torn between two lifestyles
• I still feel - kind of temporary about myself.


  A1 P35 - Willy - Desire for parenting that he missed out on, resulting insecurities:
• I don't say he's a great man. Willy Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper. He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him.


  A1 P38 - Linda - Why Biff should respect Willy - because he is human (his megalopsychia?)
• A small man can be just as exhausted as a great man.


  A1 P39 - Linda - Willy's class doesn't affect the tragedy of his life
• Because I know he's a fake and he doesn't like anyone around who knows!


  A1 P40 - Biff - Explaining why he was kicked out by Willy
• I tell you he put his whole life into you and you've turned your backs on him. ... Biff, I swear to god! Biff, his life is in your hands!


  A1 P42 - Linda - The reliance Willy has on his sons (was losing them/Biff his hamartia)
• Screw the business world! ... They've laughed at Dad for years, and you know why? Because we don't belong in this nuthouse of a city! We should be mixing cement on some open plain


  A1 P43 - Biff - Appreciation that Willy is not equipped for the capitalist dreams he aspires to
• Like a young god. Hercules... The sun all around him


  A1 P49 - Willy - Remembering Biff's football game while Linda hums to him (does his personal greatness only come from his children's? - hence the timing of his fall)
• Once in my life I would like to own something outright before it's broken! I'm always in a race with the junkyard!


  A2 P52 - Willy - The issues with ownership in a capitalist society, everything forever breaking
• he's only a little boat looking for a harbour


  A2 P54 - Linda - Willy's small needs, his need as a common man to just be loved and respected
• what could be more satisfying than to be able to go, at the age of eighty-four, into twenty or thirty different cities, and pick up a phone, and be remembered and loved and helped by so many different people?


  A2 P58 - Willy - His explanation of why selling is the greatest career a man could want (Dave Singleman example)
• I put thirty-four years into this firm, Howard, and now I can't pay my insurance! You can't eat the orange and throw the peel away - a man is not a piece of fruit!


  A2 P59 - Willy - The cruelty of the way in which Howard discards Willy/ruthless capitalism functions
• In 1928 ... I averaged a hundred and seventy dollars a week in commissions.


  A2 P59 - Willy - Not remaining passive in the face of a challenge to his dignity
• This is no time for false pride, Willy.


  A2 P61 - Howard - Telling Willy to be real with himself after he has fired him
• Get out of these cities, they're full of talk and time payments


  A2 P62 - Ben - Highlighting the falseness of promises made by firms in the city
• Why must everybody conquer the world? You're well liked, and the boys love you, and some day -


  A2 P62 - Linda - Holding Willy back from his dream on the land, is she to some extent to blame for Willy's fall?
• What are you building? Lay your hand on it.


  A2 P62 - Ben - Highlighting that what Willy is building with the firm may never come (poignant at this moment in the play)
• you end up worth more dead than alive

  
  

  nobody's worth nothin' dead


  A2 P73 - Willy/Charley - Worth more dead than alive
• Miss Forsythe, you've just seen a prince walk by. A fine, troubled prince. A hard-working, unappreciated Prince


  A2 P86 - Biff - Willy's megalopsychia recognised by Biff