Character list:

Willy Loman
A sixty year old salesman living in Brooklyn, Willy Loman is a mercurial (Mercurial describes
someone whose mood or behavior is changeable and unpredictable) man with powerful
aspirations to success. However, after thirty-five years working as a traveling salesman throughout
New England, Willy Loman feels defeated by his lack of success and difficult family life.
Biff Loman
The thirty-four year old son of Willy Loman, Biff was once a star high school athlete with a
scholarship to UVA. But he never attended college nor graduated from high school, after refusing
to attend summer school to make up a flunked math class. He did this out of spite after finding out
that his father was having an affair with a woman in Boston. Since then, Biff has been a continual
failure, stealing at every job and even spending time in jail. Despite his failures and anger toward
his father, Biff still has great concern for what his father thinks of him, and the conflict between the
two characters drives the narrative of the play.
Linda Loman
The dutiful, obedient wife to Willy and mother of Biff and Happy, Linda Loman is the one person
who supports Willy Loman, despite his often bad treatment towards her. She is a woman who has
aged greatly because of her difficult life with her husband, whose hallucinations and erratic
behavior she faces alone. She is the moral center of the play, occasionally stern and not afraid to
confront her sons about their poor treatment of their father.
Happy Loman
The younger of the two Loman sons, Happy Loman seems content and successful, with a steady
career and none of the obvious marks of failure that his older brother displays. Happy, however, is
not content with his more stable life, because he has never risked failure . Happy is a compulsive
womanizer who treats women purely as sex objects and has little respect for the many women
whom he seduces.
Charley
The Lomans' next door neighbor , father of Bernard, Charley is a good businessman, exemplifying
the success that Willy is unable to achieve. -owns his own succesful business. He and Willy have a
contentious relationship, Charley being Willy's only friend.
Bernard
Bernard is Charley's only son. He is intelligent but lacks the personality that the Loman sons have.
This absence of spirit makes Willy believe that Bernard will never be a true success , but Bernard
proves himself to be far more successful than Willy imagined. As a grown-up, he is a lawyer
preparing to argue a case in front of the Supreme Court.

The theme of madness

The reader quickly realizes, that this is based on Willy's confused perspective. Willy's madness
and reliability as a narrator become more and more of an issue as his hallucinations grow stronger.
The reader must decide for himself how concrete of a character Ben is, or even how reliable the
plot and narrative structure are, when told from the perspective of someone as on the edge as
Willy Loman.
Nostalgia / regret
The dominant emotion throughout this play is nostalgia combined with regret. All of the Lomans
feel that they have made mistakes or wrong choices. The play induces this feeling by numerous
transitions back and forth from happier, earlier times in the play. Willy's business ideas do not
seem as sad or as bankrupt when he has an entire lifetime ahead of him ; Biff looks back at a high
school athletic hero, and, more importantly, at a time when he did not know that his father was a
fake and a cheat, and still idolized him.
Gender Relations
In Death of a Salesman, woman are sharply divided into two categories: Linda and other. The men
display a distinct Madonna/whore complex, as they are only able to classify their nurturing and
virtuous mother against the other, easier women available (Miss Forthsite si gagica cu aventura). I
In an Oedipal moment, Happy is sorry for not being able to find a woman like his mother. Women
themselves are two-dimensional characters in this play. They remain firmly outside the male
sphere of business, and seem to have no thoughts or desires other than those beloging to men.
Even Linda, the strongest female character, is only fixated on a reconciliation between her
husband and her sons, selflessly subordinating herself to serve to assist them in their problems.
Willy's most common line is that businessmen must be well-liked, rather than merely liked, and
Willy does not recognize that his business principles
Questions
1. Willy's bussiness principle:
a. Look past the messenger and focus on the message.
b. Businessmen must be well-liked, rather than merely liked.
(his business strategy is based entirely on the idea of a cult of personality, knowing the right
person)He sustains this idea in front of his sons, desconsidering Bernard,Charleys son; that laks
personality but is a good student)
c.Eat as many of your words as you can.
2. Pinpoint the moment in wich Biff begins his ongoing trail of failures
a.His visit to his father in New England
b.His dificulties with mathemathics that year.
c.The Ebbets Field game.
3. How does ben affect Willy? How does he influence the events?
Ben is the person Willy holds up as an example of success. He calls his brother a genius, and he
looks to him for advice. In fact, it's after the imaginary conversation he holds with his brother that
finalizes his decision to commit suicide.

Ben affects Willy because he represents everything Willy is not. Ben was wealthy and offered Willy
opportunities to enjoy some of that wealthy by working with him. However, Willy declined; now Ben
has died and Willy only seems him in retrospect or in conversations that he imagines.
4.What do you think of the American Dream in relation to Death of a salesman?Is it a good
example?
Death of a Salesman is certainly symbolic of the American Dream or rather the illusion of the
American dream . THe American Dream seemed almost tangible to the middle class bent on
achieving it. Two perfect kids (ideally one of each gender) a perfect home with a perfect domestic
mother waiting for her husband to return home from his perfect high paying job. Willy Loman
desperately wants this but the illusion of happiness is exactly that, and illusion.