“There were promises made
across this desk! You mustn’t
tell me you’ve got people to see
– I put thirty-four years into this
firm, Howard, and 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!”
“There were promises
made across this desk!
You mustn’t tell me
you’ve got people to
see – I put thirty-four
years into this firm,
Howard, and 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!”
This quote expresses Willy’s
frustration at being a “cog” in the
relentless machine that is profitdriven business. Because Willy is old,
and no longer brings in profit, he is
useless to the firm and they fire him.
The quote uses metaphor – that his
work & life is like a piece of fruit.
The firm has “eaten” him, or made
him exhausted, and now he is empty,
like “a peel”. He needs a reward from
the firm in the form of a job in New
York with a small salary. Yet the
irony is that in the eyes of the
company, he is like a small fruit, and
they can just dispose of him (“throw
the peel away”). Indeed Willy is a
“low-man”, like a tiny fruit, and the
metaphor shows his position of
helplessness. His anger is justified!
“Oh, Biff! (staring
wildly) He
cried!Cried to me!
(He is choking with
his love, and now
cries out his
promise.) That boy
– that boy is going
to be
magnificent!”
(102).
This quote shows the extreme
emotion that Willy experiences
because Biff has shown love for his
father. Hyperbole and metaphor in
“choking with love” show this
strength of feeling. Willy cries as well
in this scene and the use of
exclamation marks emphasizes the
emotion. Repetition of
“cried…cried” and “boy…that boy”
also demonstrate strong feeling. Irony
is shown in gulf between Biff’s need
for honesty between them (the reality
of Biff’s simple, working man
character) and Willy’s inability to
understand and accept that the dream
of ‘greatness’ will never come true.
Willy still has a father’s dreams for
his “boy” – even if Biff is older and
will never fulfill his father’s huge
“(rather angrily) Unless
you brighten your ideas,
you’ll never be in a
position to let anybody
stay or to tell anybody
to go. It’s about time
you learnt to face a few
responsibilities. That’s
something this publicschool-and-Varsity-life
you’ve had doesn’t seem
to teach you.”
(16).
Birling says this to Eric (his
son). Birling thinks that Eric
needs to be more serious and
successful – an authority, like
Birling himself (a powerful
factory owner). Yet Eric likes
“Varsity life”, or fun
partying at college.The father
is angry because Birling is
proud of his success and
wants his son to be more than
a party-boy. Birling hints that
the son should be like him – a
factory owner in the future.
The father is powerful and
dominates the son and tries to
give him a tip – stop fooling