Final Post:Motif- The American Dream

All throughout the play, Willy wants one thing for his sons, The American Dream.  He wants his sons to be well-liked men who sell well enough to make a comfortable living. Of course, he feels he isn't living the American dream, which is part of the reason he fights with his sons so much. He wants them to have a better life, even though neither of them want to be salesmen. Since Willy feels he failed at the most important thing, he goes pretty crazy. He mostly has flashbacks of when the family was younger and full of promise. Now, however, his boys show no promise. It didn't help that the meeting with Oliver was a failure. His basically left Willy with no hope, so he tried killing himself with the gas from the heater, but when Biff took the rubber pipe, he had no other methods. Since he didn't have an outlet for his anger, it was a tedious task to try and communicate with him. After a fight with Biff that actually ended well, he thought he heard voices all around him, leading to his death.  

I picked up right where Willy enters the restaurant for his dinner with Biff and Happy. Biff had planned to lie to Willy about his meeting with Oliver, but he ends up telling him exactly what happened, including how he stole the pen. In the middle of Happy choking the story out of Biff, Willy has another one of his flashback hallucinations, this one about a younger Bernard running to the Loman house to tell them about Biff failing math, meaning he couldn't get his diploma until he went to summer school, and as Willy was living this memory, Biff was trying to tell him what happened with Oliver. Willy is completely in the present for a few moments but then he is fully living in a memory of Biff coming to see him while he was away on business, while his Sons leave with dates. Willy actually is cheating on Linda, and it is with The Woman. Biff's discovery of this is probably why he didn't go to summer school. When the boys get home they have a fight with Linda about leaving willy at the restaurant. They agree to leave the house permanently, so Biff goes outside to tell Willy. That is when Willy gets very angry and that leads to the big fight in the kitchen. Willy is trying to convince Biff that he can be successful and that he is going to be a very important man, while Biff is saying that they are both just one of the crowd, and that he himself is a failure. He wants Willy to accept that he doesn't want to be a salesman and he wants Willy to just let him be about his life. Biff is very angry and ready to attack Willy, but right when he is about to, he bursts out crying, and they seem to have made up. Willy's happiness about Biff not hating him doesn't stop Willy from having a very distressing hallucination. He seems to hear voices and see faces everywhere, swarming him, so he gets in his car and wrecks himself dead. Happy is determined to be successful to prove that Willy did not die in vein. Linda is in some sort of denial, even though she knows that Willy is dead, she just can't get used to the idea, and she can't cry. 

About halfway through Act 2 leaves me just before Willy enters the restaurant for his dinner with Happy and Biff. Act 2 opens with Willy and Linda eating breakfast. Biff and Happy had already left for the day. Willy is very optimistic about Biff's meeting with Oliver. Biff is meeting with Oliver to discuss getting a loan in order to start a business and move out to the country. Willy and Linda spend a very short amount of time fantasizing before they start talking about money again and Willy gets upset. He's mostly just frustrated that all of his things weren't new when he bought them and they break frequently. Willy leaves just before Biff calls Linda. This is when we learn that the rubber pipe Willy has been inhaling gas through is gone, but Linda is rather disappointed to find out Biff took it. Willy goes to see Howard. Willy tells Howard that he doesn't want to travel anymore, but Howard doesn't seem interested in listening to him. The conversation ends with Willy losing his job, and Howard lets him stay in his office to compose himself. While he is there he has less of a flashback, but more of a hallucination. In it he is taking his family and Bernard to Biff's game. Near the end he gets into a little fight with Charley. Then Jenny, the secretary brings the audience out of the memory and we know that he has been arguing out loud with Charley. Not only, but he was walking around the building while doing it, so he's only semi-conscious of where he is. Charley in real life offers Willy a job since he knows Willy just lost his, but for some reason Willy doesn't want it. Next we see Happy at the restaurant where Stanley is waiting on their table. He has a short conversation with a girl, but soon after Biff comes in. Unfortunately, things did not go well with Oliver. Oliver didn't remember Biff at all, and after an entire day of waiting, Oliver spent one uninterested minute with Biff. The boys know that they can't expect Willy to stay happy after hearing this, so they decide to tell him that Oliver is thinking it over and to let it die down. Willy enters.

Through the end of act one, a lot has unfolded. The biggest surprise was Linda revealing that Willy was suicidal. Earlier in the play, Biff and Happy believed that his driving problems were caused by Willy being too easily distracted, but Linda told the boys that investigators of one of the accidents saw that he had crashed the car on purpose. To confirm this, The Woman was a witness and saw him driving at a normal pace with plenty of control and he suddenly drove into the side of the bridge, and only the shallowness of the water saved Willy's life. (So, Willy wasn't having an affair either.) Not only, but Willy has been inhaling gas from his heater using a small length of rubber pipe. Linda was too ashamed to show she knew about it to move the tube. 
Everyone knew that Willy was stressed from his age and his money problems, but only Linda knew that he was that bad. His own sons just thought he was going crazy. Once they see how upset and worried Linda is, they decide to stay home instead of moving to the west. So clearly they are more loyal towards Linda than Willy. Even though they used to be in awe of Willy, they still have little faith in him. The act ends with Willy reminiscing about when he was younger and Happy was on a team. This is a very important confirmation, that Willy's depression came because he isn't as young, successful, and respected as he used to be. 

I just finished reading about half of Act I of Death of a Salesman, a play about a middleaged traveling salesman. When the play opens, the scene is the main charecter, Willy, coming home from another sales trip, and he is very late. His wife was worried, and he told her that he had to drife back very slowly because he was becoming so destracted while driving that he veered off the road multiple times. His wife, Linda, was scripted to love Willy even though he has a bad temper. In the next scene, the two sons, Biff and Happy are in bed but still awake. They spend the scene first taljing about Biffs frequent clashes with his father, but laterthey talk about what they want to do for a living. Biff works on a farm making $28 per week. Biff knows that he likes to work outdoors, and Happy agrees on the grounds that everybody in sales is too fake. They fall asleep, and the next scene opens with Willy in the kitchen, and he appears to be mocking his wife, and then he has a flashback. In the flashback, his sons are younger and Biff is getting ready for a football game. Willy and Linda go over the bills and income for that week, and they are $60 short. Willy is distraught and feels he is a bad salesman for many reasons. while his wife is comforting him, he has another flashback involving a similar conversation with a different woman. It seems as though Willy had an affair, but I can't be sure yet.
Biff and Happy in the flashback were almost in awe of their father, but in the present time, Biff doesn't like Willy, so something must've happened to cause the change in attitude. Also, Happy feels conflicted. On one hand, Happy is following in his fathers footsteps taking a job in sales, but he, like Biff, enjoys working outdoors. Also, Willy's affair will most likely cause a conflict later on in the play.