Death of a Salesman
1. Read the play, Death of a Saleman by Arthur Miller.
2. Answer 4 of the following questions completely. Each answer should be at least 2-3
paragraphs in length. Use specific references from the play to support your answers.
(10 marks each)
a. How and where in the play do you come to know and understand Willy Loman?
How does he reveal his character? At times, Willy will say in the same breath the
opposite of what he just said. What are striking contradictions in the way he
talks about himself, others, business, life? How can you explain some of these
contradictions?
b. Who or what is to blame for Willy’s disastrous relationship with Biff, his oldest
son? How central is Biff’s traumatic discovery of the father’s infidelity? How are
we supposed to feel about Happy, the younger brother?
c. Is Uncle Ben, who went to Alaska and came back rich, just another vehicle for
one or Willy’s pipe dreams? Or is he meant to be a symbol of predatory business
practices destroying the environment?
d. How does Uncle Charley serve as a foil for Willy? How do you react to his
sayings? How do you react to Bernoard, who serves as a foil to Biff?
e. Linda, Willy’s downtrodden wife, is loyal to Willy to the end and is one of the last
people to speak up in his defense. What does she say? Why do you think some
critics have taken the comments she makes on Willy Loman toward the end as
the theme of play? At the same time, however, Linda has been blamed for
encouraging or at least tolerating Willy’s “self-deceit and lies” or, alternatively,
for prodding and nagging him to his destruction. What is her role in Willy’s life
and in the play as a whole?
f. As feminist critics point out, in this play from the fifties women serve in
stereotypically subordinate roles. What are striking examples? How much do
the men in the play conform to familiar patterns: idolizing the mother but
bragging about their conquests of the other sex, using sports for male bonding,
thinking of business as an arena in which males compete?
g. Freud and his disciples popularized the Oedipus situation, in which the son
competes with the father for the love of the mother and –actually or
symbolically—destroys his rival. Many critics have seen the relationship
between Biff and his father as the core of the play. For Biff, the father who was
to serve him as the role model has failed him. What were Willy’s dreams and
hopes for his son? What defeated them? What do we learn from the flashbacks,
from the mutual accusations and recriminations?
h. What do you think is the verdict of the play as a whole on Willy Loman? Is Willy
simply a creature of his time and of his circumstances? Was he the wrong man
for his job? Was he a product and a victim of the system? Did he ever have a
real chance to make his life take a different turn? How?
i.
In this play, do you sympathize with the younger or with the older generation?
Explain fully.
j.
Are Willy’s dreams any more or less realistic than Biff’s dreams? What is the
nature of Willy and Biff’s relationship and how does it shape the course of the
play?
k. Is Happy nothing more than a flaky womanizer, or do his peacemaking instincts
show he cares more for the family than Biff? He may only have given his parents
fifty dollars at Christmas, but that was more than they got from Biff.
l.
Ben is of both symbolic and emotional importance to Willy. To what extent does
this relationship shape Willy’s life and aspirations?
m. In what ways is nature symbolic in the play? Compare the “green world” of
Willy’s childhood and Biff’s wanderings out west with the “city” and the business
world.
n. Compare how manual labour is portrayed in the play and what is symbolizes with
the work of a salesman.
o. There are numerous references to money in the play. What does it symbolize to
the characters?
3. Watch the video Death of a Salesman, starring Dustin Hoffman.
4. Write a critique of the movie.