Willy Loman Key Quotes Flashcards
Act One
‘[Willy] is past sixty years of age, dressed quietly.’
Stage Direction
- Old, obsolete
- ‘quietly,’ unheard, unnoticed and unsuccessful. –> a failure and victim to capitalist ideologies.
Act One
‘his mercurial nature, his temper, his massive dreams and little cruelties.’
Stage Direction
- ‘mercurial’, Willy Loman is unpredictable and unstable.
“The car kept going off onto the shoulder”
- Willy can’t control the car just like he can’t control commercial expectations and societal pressures.
Act One
‘I’m tired to death.’
- Objectification of workers as machines instead of human beings.
- Personal feelings and needs are not considered by the system as long as they can contribute to the economy.
Act One
‘I have such thoughts, I have such strange thoughts.’
- Suicidal thoughts, Willy Loman cannot live in his life of failure.
‘They don’t need me in New York, I’m the New England man. I’m vital in New England.’
- Blindness, Willy cannot accept the fact that he is not ‘vital’
- Willy’s self-definition is built upon his career. –> Drives him to suicide. Self-worth and legacy is measured on his reputation.
Act One
‘But that boy of his, that Howard, he don’t appreciate.’
- Constently shifting blame for the cause of his failures. Lack of accountability.
- Expects promotion based on the relationship between him and Howard’s father instead of work ethic. –> Arrogance, assumptious.
Act One
‘Figure it out. Work a lifetime to pay off a house. You finally own it, and there’s nobody to live in it.’
- Dramatic Irony + Cataphoric reference.
- Willy commits suicide just as he pays off the morgage on his house.
‘I simply asked him if he was making any money. Is that a criticism?’
- Willy Loman is a microcosm for 1940s American society. With the rise of capitalism, consumerism and meritocracy, wealth is pioritised as it directly corresponds with an indivduals amount of power.
Act One
‘[worried and angered]: There’s such an undercurrent in him.’
- Willy has failed as a father.
Act One
‘How can he find himself on a farm?’
- Capitalist ideology: The need for profit is pioritised over an individuals actual skills and interests.
- Commentary of society, Creativity is stifled by the need to be successful.
Act One
‘But it’s more than ten years now and he has yet to make thirty-five dollars a week!’
- Importance of money.
Act One
Not finding yourself at the age of thirty-four is a disgrace!
- Social expectation to have your life sorted out when you are young. Unrealistic expectations.
- Ironic, Biff who prefers to work on a farm and in nature - primal human activities - has ‘found’ himself more than Willy who has stifiled his own creative passions (building, working with his hands) for the promise of prosperity promised by a society that values the hollow value of material success.
Act One
The trouble is he’s lazy, goddammit!
- Meritocratic ideolgies,
Act One
‘Biff is a lazy bum!’
- ‘Bum’ colloquial slang for homeless person.
Act One
‘Biff Loman is lost. In the greatest country in the world, a young man with such - personal attractiveness, gets lost. And such a hard worker. There’s one thing about Biff - he’s not lazy.’
- Display of patriotism –> ‘Greatest country’ Irony, he holds pride in the country that has failed him.
- ‘Not lazy,’ –> By denying Biff’s laziness, Willy is able to hold onto the hope that Biff will someday fulfill his expectations of him.
- Willy’s imposed dream of Biff being successful as a sportsman and then businessman conflicts with his actual strengths and his dream of working in nature.
- Although Biff does recognise the falsity in the dream, his conditioning as a child leaves him to unable to progress in life as he feels obligated to achieve dream his fathers dream.
- Also suggests Willy’s myopic outlook. Willy perceives Biff’s enlightenment as an “insult” and “spite” to him, as is said in Act 2.
- Biff’s self insight thus created a defensive reaction from his father who even failed to sell the American Dream of hope to his son, another reminder of his failure as a salesman.
Act One
‘The way they boxed us in here. Bricks and windows. windows and bricks.’
- Surplus, over-population –> 1940s American society.
- Willy feels confined by his home which represents his wealth ergo his success. Therefore, “boxed” illustrates the societal boundaries that imprison Willy as a “common man” .
- “They” , ambigious, represents capitalism and the repercussions of consumerism which cause Willy to continually feel that he is underachieving.
Act One
‘The street is lined with cars. There’s not a breath of fresh air in the neighbourhood. The grass don’t grow any more, you can’t raise a carrot in the backyard.’
- Plant, Growing, Nature imagery represents the oversaturation of consumerism & capitalism.
- Willy has no room to achieve any success anymore, he is surround by a community alike to him. Willy is ‘a dime a dozen’ where everyone is wroking to achieve the same goal.
- Miller’s comment on the futility of the American Dream.
- Alludes to Levittown and other Suburban development. Everyone has moved to the Suburbs in pursuit of reaping benefits from the post-war prosperity.
- Ironic, America represents the Land of the Free and Opportunity yet Willy is both constricted in his environment and his opportunity.
Act One
‘There’s more people! That’s what’s ruining this country! Population is getting out of control. The competition is maddening!’
- Willy shifts blame
Act One
‘You’re my foundation and my support, Linda.’
- In reality, Linda is unable to be an authoritative “foundation” to “support” Willy due to her constraints as a wife within a society.
- This is due to the ‘glass ceiling’ which prevents women from reaching men in the hierarchy.
- Therefore, Linda could not acquire the voice needed to be the support for Willy as her role as “Quintessential housewife” contradicts this.
Act One
‘Certain men just don’t get started till later in life. Like Thomas…
Edison, I think. Or B. F. Goodrich. One of them was deaf.’
Act One
‘The way Biff used to simonize that car? The dealer refused to believe there was eighty thousand miles on it.’
- Exaggeration in his families personal achievements to deflect from his personal failures as father and a business man.
Act One
‘Too young entirely, Biff. You want to watch your schooling first.’
- Willy does not enforce the importance of school on his son beyond these words and arguably encourages Biff’s poor behaviour.
Act One
[Light rises on the kitchen.]
- Time shift from the present to the past.
- Light rising on the kitchen signifies the hope still held by the Loman household in the past.
Act One
[Willy is gradually addressing - physically - a point off stage, speaking through…
the wall of the kitchen, and his voice has been rising in volume to that of a normal conversation.]
Act One
‘Never leave a job till you’re finished.’
- Irony
Act One
‘I saw a beautiful hammock. I think I’ll buy it…
next trip, we’ll hang it right between those two elms.’
Act One
‘It’s got Gene…
Tunney’s signature on it!’
- Gene Tunney: Famous boxer who held the world heavyweight title from 1926 to 1928, and the American light heavyweight title twice between 1922 and 1923.
Act One
‘That’s because he likes you. If somebody else took that ball there’d be an uproar.’
- Willy teaches his sons about life and society poorly.
Act One
‘Someday I’ll have my own business, and I’ll never have to leave home again.’
- Irony, audience know Willy is still working away from home in the present day.
- Pathos, Willy is still working and struggling.
Act One
Bigger than Uncle Charley! Because Charley is not - liked. He’s liked, but he’s not - well liked.
- Reputation takes precedence
Act One
‘America is full of beautiful towns and fine, upstanding people. And they know me, boys, they know me up and down New England. The finest people.’
- Display of patrotism
Act One
‘I can park my car in any street in New England, and the cops protect it like their own.’
- Arrogant.
Act One
‘What do they say about you in school, now that they made you captain?’
- Leadership, power, status and success are important to Willy.
Act One
‘Oh, wait’ll tell this in Boston!’
- Only cares for how his sons will make him look. Not the sons themselves.
- Nuclear family, another thing which was expected from Willy and another thing he failed at.
Act One
‘Hey, looka Bernard. What’re you lookin’ so anaemic about, Bernard?’
- ‘Amaemic’: pale, faint, stressed
- Willy does not recognise the importance of education on Biff’s future which perpetutates his later mental state when Biff inevitably fails.
Act One
‘Don’t be a pest, Bernard! [To his boys] What an anaemic!’
Willy does not recognise the importance of education on Biff’s future which perpetutates his later mental state when Biff inevitably fails.
Act One
‘Bernard is not well liked, is he?’
- Idolisation of reputation
Act One
‘That’s why I thank Almighty God what you’re both built like Adonises. Because the man who makes an appearance in the business world, the man who creates personal interest, is the man who gets ahead.’
- ‘Adonises,’ reference to Greek Mythology.
Act One
Chevrolet, Linda, is the greatest car ever built.
- ## Mirrors capitalist ideologies.
Act One
‘[in reference to the broken refrigerator] But it’s brand new.’
- Miller is criticising how big conglomerates pioritise profit and mass consumption over quality and
Act One
‘I’m very well liked in Hartford. You know, the
trouble is, Linda, people don’t seem to take to me.’
- Conflicting dialogue. Willy is well-liked but people don’t seem to like him?
- Reflects Willy’s inner turmoil and insecurity.
Act One
‘They seem to laugh at me.’
- Willy’s insecurity
Act One
[Willy moves to the edge of the stage.]
- Front of stage, closest to the audience and where Willy is more vunerable
Act One
‘I don’t know the reason for it, but they just pass me by. I’m not noticed.’
- anaphora; ‘Dressed quietly’
- ## Willy is a microcosm for the common man.
Act One
‘A man oughta come in with a few words. One thing about…
Charley. He’s a man of few words, and they respect him.’
Act One
‘I’m fat. I’m very - foolish to look at, Linda.’
- Willy’s insecurity at his own image and success.
Act One
‘… as I was going in to see the buyer I heard him say something about - walrus. →> And I - I cracked him right across the face.’
- Mercurial nature.
- Insecurity
Act One
‘You’re the best there is, Linda, you’re a pal, you know that? On the road I want…
to grab you sometimes and just kiss the life outa you.’
Act One
‘[slapping her…
bottom]’
Act One
‘[He suddenly grabs…
her and kisses her roughly.]’
Act One
‘[moving to the forestage, with great…
agitation]: You’ll give him the answers!’
Act One
“Where is he? I’ll whip him, I’ll whip him.”
- Resortion to violence and aggression.
Act One
“Why is he taking…
everything?”
Act One
‘What is he stealing? Hes giving it back, isn’t he? Why is he stealing? What did I tell him? I never in my life told him anything but decent things.’
- Ironic, Willy has taught him all the wrong lessons.
Act One
‘Why did she have to wax the floors herself? Every time she waxes the floor she keels over. She knows that!’
- Willy’s guilt at not being able to financially provide for his family and pay for such menial tasks to be done for them.
Act One
‘Why didn’t I go to Alaska with my brother Ben that time! Ben! That man was a genius, that man was success incarnate! What a mistake! He begged me to go.’
- Past regrets.
