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

(very carefully, delicately)

A1 P2 - Stage Directions - Linda's care for Willy

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

well built, but in these days bears worn air and seems less self-assured, and his dreams are stronger and less acceptable than Happy's

A1 P8 - Second Description - Biff's old/dated dreams of working on the land are viewed as unacceptable

Something's - happened to him. He - talks to himself

A1 P10 - Happy - Fear about Willy's breakdown

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)

Yeah, but when he walks into the store the waves part in front of him. That's fifty-two thousand dollars a year coming through the revolving door. ... I want to walk into the store the way he walks in. Then I'll go with you, Biff.

A1 P12/13 - Happy - His commodification of the merchandise manager and yet desire to be him

I just keep knocking 'em over and it doesn't mean anything

I'd like to find a girl - steady, somebody with substance.

A1 P13 - Happy/Biff - The brother's search for a meaning/substance in their life/jobs is reflected in their experience of women

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

What purpose? Some stranger'll come along, move in, and that's that. If only Biff would take this house and raise a family ...

A2 P52 - Willy - The lack of purpose in owning anything (without having his boys to give it purpose)

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

Why don't you do something for him?

...

he doesn't mean anything to you. You could help him - I can't.

A2 P86/7 - Biff - Angry at Biff not helping/caring about Willy when he can

I'm sure he'll change it for you!

A2 P86/7 - Biff - Believing Willy can change his maths teachers mind before he finds him cheating, an admiration in his father that he soon looses

Never mind ... He wouldn't listen to you.

A2 P91 - Biff - Immediate loss of faith in his father after he finds out he's been cheating

You - you gave her Mama's stockings!

A2 P92 - Biff - Upset about Willy giving The Woman stockings and what it means

You fake! You phoney little fake! You fake!

A2 P92 - Biff - Seeing his father for what he is (in a way)

I've got to get some seeds, right away. Nothing's planted. I don't have a thing in the ground.

A2 P93 - Willy - The symbolic desire to plant seeds before he dies, his sons are not things in the ground

There is a long pause

A2 P93 - Stage Directions - The long pause that signifies the end of narrative that can be changed, it shows that Willy's is now sealed

Why, why can't I give him something and not have him hate me?

A2 P97 - Willy - A possible reason for suicide, the ultimate sacrifice for his boys (/family)

You can't see nothing out here! They boxed in the whole goddam neighbourhood!

A2 P97 - Willy - Ruthless capitalist landscape that has built up around them, crushing the final air of the dream the house held at the start of the play

(frozen, immobile, with guilt in his voice) No, I don't want to see her.

A2 P98 - Willy - Clear guilt about his impending suicide, he knows it will be hard on Linda (so is he taking the easy way out?)

I stopped in the middle of that building and I saw - the sky. I saw the things that I love in this world. The work and the food and time to sit and smoke. .... Why am I trying to become what I don't want to be? What am I doing in an office, making a contemptuous, begging fool of myself, when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say who I am!

A2 P101 - Biff -Ultimately understanding where they are going wrong, emphasised by the contrast of being trapped in the office, yet wanting to be out in the open air

(crying, broken) ... Will you take that phoney dream and burn it before something happens?

A2 P102 - Biff - Totally understanding the situation and Willy's delusion about it

Loves me. (wonderingly) Always loved me ... Ben, he'll worship me for it! ... Imagine? When the main comes he'll be ahead of Bernhard again!

A2 P104 - Willy - Taking Biff's love a justification for commodifying himself

There's more of him in that front stoop than in all the sales he ever made ... He had the wrong dreams. All, all wrong.

A2 P106/7 - Biff - Pointing out how Willy was caught between two dreams and could never bring himself to follow the one he loved

I made the last payment on the house today. Today, dear. And there'll be nobody home. ... We're free and clear. We're free.

A2 P108 - Linda - The lasting words of the play, highlighting how they didn't have freedom before

(Only the music of the flute is left on the darkening stage as over the house the hard towers of the apartment buildings rise into sharp focus.)

A2 P108 - Stage Directions - The final image the play leaves highlights how the air of the dream that once was has been crushed by a new dream, a greedy, ruthless dream