Kalinowski 1

Taylor Kalinowski

Ms. Bleistine

World Literature, 6th

12 April 2011

Death of a Salesman Act I

1. Willy is an unstable man who is slowly starting to become crazy. He begins to have

flashbacks of past events and gets them confused with the present. Willy is trying to

achieve the American dream but he is not built or destined to do business work. Five

qualities that describe him are stubborn, relentless, insecure, sorrowful and senile. Willy

contradicts himself when he says his Chevrolet is a good car then later complains about

how the car is a piece of trash.

2. Willy does not have a realistic view of the world. He constructed elaborate fantasies

about his life goals and dreams. His sons, Happy and Biff, share many of the same

characteristics as him and that is because of Willy’s philosophy of life. He has influenced

his boys in a manner that has affected their lives. They are lost in the world and are

unsure of what their live goals are. This is because Willy tried so hard to force them to

achieve the American dream, even if that was not what they were meant to do. Willy

continuously goes into flashbacks because he is trying to rebuild his relationship with

Biff. In a way he was a bad father because he did not reprimand Biff for his illegal

actions such as stealing and that has caused him to continue to do so. On the other hand,

Happy was always fighting for the attention of his father and that has affected his life as

an adult.

3. The existence of The Women affects the overall impression of Willy because I no

longer think that Willy is committed to his family. He needs more in life and that is why
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he has an affair with another women. He is seeking an outlet to his pathetic life because

he cannot reach his unrealistic goals.

4. Biff has been trying to discover himself and has not done much with his life yet. He

continuously moves around searching for a job and he currently lives back at home with

his family. The reason why he cannot keep a steady job is because he has kleptomania,

the urge to steal things. Biff’s previous job involved doing laborious work on a farm.

5. The conversation between Biff and Happy in Act I shows their differences. Biff is

extremely unstable while Happy has a pretty steady job. Even though Happy has a job he

is unhappy and this causes him to feel lonely. As a result he sleeps around with his bosses

wives. Happy is trying to live up to Biff in Willy’s eyes because he has always been

fighting to get noticed by his family. When they were growing up Happy always had to

compete with Biff. He now feels as if he needs to be like Biff to be liked but in reality

this is causing him pain in his life. Biff is not the ideal person to view as a role model.

6. Linda is a static character. She unconditionally loves Willy and in a sense shuts down

around him. She always does what he says and is often times afraid to upset him or do

anything that he will not be pleased with. She knows that Willy has attempted to kill

himself but does not talk about it because she does not want to cause further harm. She

even leaves the gas pipe unblocked as Willy has put it even though it might result in his

death. Linda is a different character around her sons. She is not as sweet and loving as

she is toward Willy. In reality Happy and Biff deserve the most love from her because

they have been loyal to her.

7. When Linda tells Willy “few men are idolized by their children the way you are” she is

saying it in a sincere manner. They boys idolized him when they were younger but that is

not the case anymore.

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8. The sons both love Linda but they feel that she does not love them as much as she loves

Willy. They comment on her hair turning gray and how her ageing upsets them. Neither

of the boys are in stable relationships and this might be because they have commitment

issues that are caused by their relationship with Linda.

9. Happy resembles his father because they both are working to gain the attention and as a

result are left lonely. Willy cheats on his wife Linda while Happy sleep with women who

are married. Happy’s greatest character flaw is that he is stuck in the shadow of his

brother and tries to live up to him in his father’s eyes. Since he lives in the shadow of

Biff, he is unsure about his personality. He acts in ways that Biff did in high school such

as sleeping around with many women to gain popularity. He is also affected by achieving

American dream and his father’s goals for him.

10. Happy’s womanizing reveals that he does not care about the vows of marriage. This is

similar to his father who has a secret woman in Boston. He likes women that are married

and he does not have to have a commitment with. He instead has no string attached with

these women. Since often times these women are his boss’s wives, he is in a sense

competing with them.

11. Bernard and Charley’s dramatic functions are in the play are to further display the lack of

success of the Loman family. Charley has to loan Willy money ever month and Willy is

jealous of all his success at achieving the American Dream. Bernard is a prime example

of how Willy wanted his sons to turn out and seeing his achievements is hard for Willy.

Ideally Arthur Miller uses these two characters to contrast with Willy and his sons and to

further show their lack of success.