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.
“I don’t say he’s…………” Linda
“I don’t say he’s a great man […] But he’s a human being, and terrible thing is happening to him”
Linda - why Biff should respect Willy
“A small man can…….” Linda
“A small man can be just as exhausted as a great man.”
“Because I know he’s a……..”
“Because I know he’s a fake and he doesn’t like anyone around who knows!”
Explaining why he was kicked out by Willy
“I tell you he’s put his ………… Biff, I swear to god!……….” Linda
“I tell you he’s put his whole life into you and you’ve turned your back on him [….] Biff, I swear to god! Biff, his life is in your hands!”
Reliance Willy has on his sons
“We don’t belong……..” Biff
“We don’t belong in this nuthouse of a city! We should be mixing cement on some open plain”
“Once in my life I would like to………..” Willy
“Once in my life I would like to own something outright before it’s broken! I’m always in a race with the junkyard!”
The issues with ownership in a capitalist society, everything forever breaking.
“He’s only a little…….” Linda
“He’s only a little boat looking for a harbour”
Willy’s small needs, his need as a common man to just be loved and respected.
“What could be more satisfying than to be……..” Willy
“What could be more satisfying than to be able to go, at the age of eighty-four, into twenty or thirty different cities, and pick up a phone, and be remembered and loved and helped by so many different people”
His explanation of why selling is the greatest career a man could want
“The competition…….” Willy
“The competition is maddening”
“I get that anytime………” Happy
“I get that anytime I want, Biff. Whenever I feel disgusted.”
Using women as a pick me up to make him feel better about his own failures
“Be liked and…….” Willy
“Be liked and you will never want”
Setting the boys up for failure
“You can’t…..”
“You can’t eat the orange and throw the peel away”
Bitterly ironic last words of Linda
“ we’re free”
Ben “never fight……”
“Never fight fair with a stranger”
“Maybe it was…..”
“Maybe it was the steering again” Linda
Endorsing willys delusions
“I have such…..”
“I have such strange thoughts” Willy Loman
“Not finding yourself at the age of ……”
“Not finding yourself at the age of thirty-four is a disgrace!”
“Why am I always……”
“Why am I always being contracted” Willy loman
“The competition….”
“The competition is maddening” Willy loman
“That’s what I……”
“That’s what I dream about, Biff” happy
“Someday I’ll have my own business,…..”
“Someday I’ll have my own business, and I’ll never have to leave home anymore”
Willy
Dramatic irony
“I was sellin’…..”
I was sellin’ thousands and thousands
Willy
“I got a job,…..”
“I got a job, I told you that”
Willy to Charley
Charley: “the jails …..”
Ben: “And the ….”
Charley: “the jails are full of fearless characters”
Ben: “And the stock exchange, friend!”
“So attention must…..” Linda
“So attention must be paid”
“Don’t…..” Willy
“Don’t interrupt”
“Because you got……” Willy
“Because you got a greatness in you, Biff”
Charlie: “I am…..”
Willy: “I don’t…..”
“I am offering you a job”
“I don’t want your goddamn job!”
