Quotes Flashcards
“I’m a dime…….” Biff
“I’m a dime a dozen, and so are you”
Both common, ordinary people
“An air…….”
“An air of the dream clings to the place, a dream rising up out of reality.” (Opening description)
“His exhaustion………”
“His exhaustion is apparent” (opening description of Willy)
“His mercurial nature……..”
“His mercurial nature his temper, his massive dreams and little cruelties.”
Opening description - Willy’s nature (megalopsychia?)
“I’m tired…….” Willy
“I’m tired to death. (The flute has faded away….”
Physical struggle with long journeys
(Very carefully, ….)
(Very carefully, delicately)
Stage directions
Linda’s care for Willy
“I’m vital……..” Willy
“I’m vital in New England”
Willy’s delusion / denial about his job
“Work a lifetime to……….”
“Work a lifetime to pay off a house. You finally own it, and there’s nobody to live in it”
Willy’s frustration with life/ capitalism
“How can he……” Willy
“How can he find himself on a farm? Is that a life?”
Willy
Lack of understanding about Biff’s choice to do a job he enjoys over making money.
“Biff is a……..”
“There’s one thing……..”
Willy
“Biff is a lazy bum!”
“There’s one thing about Biff - he’s not lazy”
Contradicts himself
“Something’s - happened……..” Happy
“Something’s - happened to him. He - talks to himself”
Fear about Willy’s breakdown
“I don’t know -……….” Biff
“I don’t know - what I’m supposed to want….. to suffer fifty weeks of the year for a two-week vacation, when all you really desire is to be outdoors”
Moaning about how he’s expected to buy into the capitalist dream despite its falsity when all he wants is to be outside.
“Every time I come……..” Biff
“every time I come back here, I know all I’ve done is to waste my life”
Acknowledgement that he’s not ‘building anything’ like Willy wrongly believes he is.
“You know,…….” Willy
“they seem to…..”
“I’m not…..”
“You know, the trouble is, Linda, people don’t seem to take to me”
“They seem to laugh at me”
“I’m not noticed”
Willy on the truth of his issues as a salesman
“To me you are…….” Linda
“To me you are. (Slight pause.) The handsomest (From the darkness can be heard the laughter of a woman)”
Contrast of Linda’s love for Willy with his unfaithfulness.
“Just mending……..” Linda
“Just mending my stockings. They’re so expensive -“
As she mends her stockings mentioning their price - following Willy’s memory of giving the Woman stockings.
“The woods…….”
“The woods are burning!”
A summary phrase for all of the problems he’s just listed to Happy (failing sons, struggle to drive long distances, not going with Ben)
“That’s just the way………….”
“That’s just the way I’m bringing them up, Ben - rugged, well liked, all-round”
The all-round nature of Willy’s boys may have worked in his father’s generation, but caught between two historical forces pulling in different directions, it actually leaves Willy’s boys torn between two lifestyles.
