Willy Loman is the main character in this drama. He is 60 years old and has been a salesman for 35 years. He has never really been successful despite his aspirations to be. After 35 years of being a salesman Willy finds himself feeling defeated by his lack of success and his difficult home life. He is married to Linda, a dutiful wife and mother. Together they have two sons, Biff and Happy.
Willy and Linda have a good relationship despite the circumstances. Linda is supportive and docile with Willy. She listens when Willy talks about his unrealistic hopes for the future, but she knows what is really going on in their life. She knows that their life will not be any better than it currently is despite the unrealistic hopes and dreams of Willy’s.
Willy and Biff’s relationship was, to say the least, not an ideal father-son relationship. Biff was a great football player in high school with a college scholarship upon high school graduation. He, however, did not graduate high school after refusing to take a summer math class to make up for the one he flunked during school. Biff says he did this to spite his father for seeing his father with another woman in Boston. Biff is torn between staying at home and becoming a businessman like his father wants or going out west to become a farmhand. Biff is comfortable knowing that he is “a dime a dozen” as long as he can get out of the confines of his father’s delusions.
Happy (Harold) and Willy’s relationship is better than Willy’s and Biff’s as Happy is more supportive of his father and family. He earned the nickname Happy from always trying to bring happiness to things. He has followed in his brother’s footsteps for his whole life, being ignored much of the time. He has hopes that he will one day be more than the assistant to the assistant buyer as he longs for success, even if it means cheating. Always looking for attention from his parents, he sometimes makes up stories. He even told his father once “I’m getting’ married pop” just to get his father’s attention. Sadly, Happy is a womanizer and has no respect the “taken” women he is with.
In the end of the play Willy is overcome with delusions and his failures. He believes that everyone else has been handed success and wealth and he got the short end. He believes that his family would be better off if he were dead; the life insurance money would benefit them more than he does. So he decides to take his own life and crashes his vehicle into a tree leading us to believe “After all the highways, and the trains, and the appointments, and the years, you end up worth more dead than alive” (Willy, Act II).
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