Willy Flashcards
“Because he’s only a little…
boat looking for a harbour..” - Linda
Act 2, pg.59
AO2: Metaphor - Willy needs security
“You can’t eat the orange…
and throw the peel away - a man is not a piece of fruit!”
Act2, pg.64
AO2: Metaphor, Willy is talking about Howard firing him. Compares man to fruit. Reference to the class system - the system has used Willy. They used him and then they ‘throw the peel away’, implying that they don’t need him anymore because he is old
AO3: He desperately tries to sell himself - social comment: consumerism, cannot pick and choose human workers when needed, can’t pick best bits. Negative impact of consumerism is that it can lead to overconsumption and waste. When people consume more than they need, it can result in excess waste and pollution. Willy is being treated like a used and no longer useful object.
“You end up worth more…
dead than alive.” Act 2, pg.77
After losing his job, Willy is speaking to his old Charley, from whom he has just borrowed the money to make his insurance payments.
Willy is bemoaning the worthlessness of all his years of work. He never earned enough to save anything, and he didn’t build, and he didn’t grow, and now that his job is done he has nothing left except from his life insurance money.
AO3: Social comment from Miller on the capitalistic American society and the distortion of the America dream. People, like Willy, are convinced that if they work hard enough they can achieve the dream, but Will did just that and he achieved nothing. In this society money is valued over life.
“the woods are burning, boys.”
Act 2, pg. 84
AO2: Recurring motif and metaphor, running out of time.
AO3: Reference to industrialisation and the damage of the natural world. During the twentieth century, America has became an industrial leader and contributed to the expansion of the American economy. Industrialization resulted in urbanization by generating economic development and job possibilities, which attract people to cities. Miller is criticising the rise of consumerism. The negative effects of consumerism include the depletion of natural resources and pollution of the Earth. People are becoming careless.
‘Nothing’s planted. I don’t have a thing in the ground’
Willy realizes, at least metaphorically, that he has no tangible proof of his life’s work. The motif of growing things acts as a microcosm for Willy’s legacy.
The fact that Willy uses gardening as a metaphor for success and failure indicates that he subconsciously acknowledges that his chosen profession is a poor choice
“The world is an oyster…
but you don’t crack it open on a mattress!”
AO2: Metaphor: Willy recognizes that hard work is essential to success. However, Willy’s lifetime of hard work has left him exhausted and mentally fragile, without the fortune he sought.
AO3: Miller is pointing out the distortion of The American Dream. It gives a false sense of hope and security.
“Why? Why? Bernard, that question has been trailing me like a ghost for the last fifteen…
years. He flunked the subject, and laid down and died like a hammer hit him!” - Willy (2, 73)
AO2: Simile ‘like a ghost’ Willy’s tragic mistake (his affair) is haunting him, because he knows that this is why Biff flunked maths. The hammer is metaphor for Willy’s affair, it killed all of Willy’s dreams he had for Biff.
Biff: “I am not a leader of men, Willy, and neither are you. You were never…
anything but a hard-working drummer who landed in the ash-can like the rest of them!”
AO2: Metaphor, Willy = industrial waste, thrown out by the system.
AO3: Ash-can, meaning Industrial waste.
AO4: Biff’s anagnorisis
Willy’s funeral
AO2: is metatheatrical as the audience are the important people and via theatre, millions of people have been to Willy Loman’s funeral.
Willy’s hubris/perceived megalopsychia
“And they know me, boys, they know me up and down New England.” (Act 1, p.g. 24)
“I’m vital in New England” pg10 - repeated phrase, hubris
Willy: Lick the world! You guys…
together could absolutely lick the civilised world.”
AO2: Metaphor
Willy: “I suddenly couldn’t…
drive anymore.” (1,9)
AO2: Foreshadowing Willy’s death, a metaphor for the journey that is his life. The car = symbolic of the American dream.
AO3: This is how the American dream leaves Willy feeling, drained of energy. The pace of the dream and capitalised society is too fast for Willy he doesn’t feel he can keep going.
Irving Jacobson
Willy does not have the strength and intelligence to scrutinize and come to an understanding of his condition
Christopher Bigsby
It is not the truth, but Willy’s commitment to illusion that kills him
Eleanor Clarke
It is of course the brutal capitalist system that has done Willy
