Act II

The scene opens with a hopeful, well-rested Willy sitting down to breakfast. His wife Linda is sprightly too and the couple discuss their sons again—they are hopeful and dream of retiring in the countryside.

Their happy conversation soon turns to a stressful one about finances; from having to pay insurance premiums to fixing household items—they seem to be struggling to pay for anything fully. They are one last payment away from paying off the mortgage on their house and finally owning it.

As Willy leaves for work, Linda informs him that his sons want to take him out for dinner—just the men. This makes Willy so happy that he convinces himself to ask his young boss for an advance payment and to take him off the road as a travelling salesman.

Linda gets a phone call from her son Biff, who is waiting at Ben Oliver’s office, for a meeting and a job. She enthusiastically tells Biff that Willy himself removed the gas rubber pipe (which he had placed as a suicidal attempt to die from gas fumes) but Biff tells his mother it was he who did it. Linda’s high spirits are not subdued by anything though, because she has seen her husband happy and hopeful after a very long time.

As this scene fades, Howard and Willy come onto the stage. Howard is busy plugging in a wire recorder and makes cordial small talk with Willy. However, he is too excited by his new gadget to pay any attention to Willy’s interjections or conversation.

Eventually, Howard gets down to business, wondering why Willy is not in Boston on a sales trip. Willy finally talks openly to his boss about getting a more permanent posting in the city instead of having to travel at his age; Howard is not keen to consent to this.

Willy reminds the young man that he has seen him as a toddler and worked for his father. However, this has no appeal or effect on Howard who is strict in running his business. Willy is upset but controls his anger and begins to tell Howard of his dreams of going to Alaska—following in the footsteps of his father and brother. However, whilst on the road as a young man himself, he had met an aged salesman who was still working at the age of eighty-four years. He had died on the road and his funeral was attended by many in his business industry. It was this old man who had inspired young Willy to pursue a career in salesmanship.

In Willy’s youth, there are friendship, loyalty and camaraderie in one’s business which has now been replaced by cut-throat competition and a lack of personality. Willy complains that he is not recognized anymore. Howard takes his cue from this statement and tries to shrug off the old employee—much to Willy’s mounting desperation and anger.

As politely as he can, Howard fires Willy from his job. And Willy falls back into the abyss of his imaginary world—first seeing Howard’s father Frank and then his brother Ben. Ben had offered Willy work in Alaska but since the latter was doing well at the time and had hopes of becoming a partner in his firm, he had denied his brother’s offer. Willy’s wife Linda too had played a crucial role in this decision—convincing her husband to stay.

He also remembers his older son Biff’s glowing athletic career in football and how he had offers from three different universities, even before graduating from high school. At the time, the sky had seemed the limit for the Loman family.

Willy is now back in the real world and is going to meet his neighbor Charley, who is a successful man. His son Bernard has grown up to become a confident and fine young lawyer who travels for work and lives a materially rich life. He is cordial with old Willy Loman, as they wait to meet Charley. Bernard wonders why Biff never went to summer school to make up for lost grades and reminds Willy that Biff had gone to Boston to meet his father and returned, a very changed and dejected man. He seems to be alluding to finding Willy having an affair in Boston—an incident that must have devastated young Biff who hero-worshipped his father.

Willy asks Charley for more money and the latter offers him a job which Willy resolutely refuses, much to Charley’s annoyance. Willy recognizes Charley as his only and closest friend and sarcastically comments that a man is worth more dead than he is alive.

The scene now moves to Happy sitting in a restaurant with a waiter named Stanley, who is his friend. They are chatting aimlessly until a beautiful woman walks into the restaurant and Happy flirts with her. He is soon joined by his brother Biff who seems to be in low spirits. Biff tells Happy that he waited six hours to meet Ben Oliver who eventually left the office and did not even recognize Biff outside. Biff’s whole life has been a lie in believing that Ben Oliver would remember him as a salesman.

In his hurt and bewilderment, Biff stole a fountain pen from Ben Oliver’s office and ran off. He is deeply upset at his own behavior and wants to tell his father everything. Willy joins his sons and cuts Biff short to inform them that he has been fired from his job.

However, Willy is keen to hear of his son’s impending success and does not let Biff tell him the truth of how his day went. It is saddening to see the ageing father holding on to non-existent rays of hope for his sons. If they are unable to give him happy news, Willy assumes the role of a berating father. He can now only remember the time when Biff had failed in mathematics and thus had begun his downfall.

Willy is in a terrible mental state where his reality and his imagination keep colliding severely, even in the middle of the day. Biff and Happy do their best to control Willy who cannot seem to deal with his circumstances anymore.

Biff and Happy are joined by some girls again and as the young people flirt, their moods are lifted. Willy, however, is distracted by the memory of being caught by his young son, having an affair with another woman in Boston.

Biff loses his temper at Happy for only caring about having affairs and not being concerned for their father and everyone eventually leaves the restaurant.

In Willy’s imaginary world, he remembers consistent knocking on his hotel room door at night. He is with another woman who hides in the bathroom as Willy answers the door to find his young son Biff. Biff informs him that he has failed in mathematics and was probably failed because he made fun of his teacher. Willy promises to speak to the teacher to help Biff graduate. Young Biff is ecstatic but is distracted by sounds from the bathroom and is horrified to see a semi-naked woman emerge. The woman does little to hide her relationship from the young boy even though Willy tries to make excuses desperately. The woman demands her stockings, as had been promised to her, and Willy hands them to her, wanting her to leave immediately.

It is after this gesture that Biff freezes, tears streaming down his face. Although his father is urging him to help him pack his suitcases, Biff finds himself unable to move. He yells at his father for giving the stockings meant for his mother, to another woman. Biff is acutely aware that his mother Linda is always mending her stockings to support her husband and not waste money. He calls his father a liar and this brings the man to his knees.

In the real world, Willy is kneeling in the restaurant, calling after his son. He is shaken out of his reverie by Stanley the waiter who informs him that his sons have left and he should go home too. Willy asks for directions to a seed store, muttering that he needs to start planting a garden soon.

The scene now moves to the Lomans’ home where Linda is awake, late in the night, caressing her husband’s coat. As her sons return, drunk and with a bouquet of flowers for her, Linda loses her temper at them for not caring if Willy lives or dies. She cannot believe that her sons would leave their own father, in his mental state, alone in a restaurant just to have a good time with some young women.

She refuses to let her sons see Willy but does tell them that he is busy planting his garden, even in the middle of the night. As Willy works in his garden, he is conversing with his deceased brother Ben, about his own funeral and the twenty-thousand dollars his family will receive as insurance, when he dies. Even in his imagination, his brother Ben warns Willy to not consider it as his sons will brand him a coward and a fool.

Biff enters the garden to help his father back inside whilst Happy just retires to his bedroom. Willy is unwilling to go inside and meet Linda; Biff informs Willy that he will leave the house for good and never return. He is exhausted of the lies he has lived since he was a teenager and wants a fresh start in life. The father-son duo fight again whilst Happy and Linda watch, helplessly.

Biff confronts his father on his suicidal tendencies which the latter denies vehemently. Biff is in a rage over being a part of a family that never tells the truth and in the pursuit of success is always lying. He calls Happy out as a “phony” and asks his mother to stop crying. He also admits to having been in prison for theft and accuses his father of having made him too proud to take orders in any job.

Biff tries to make his father understand that they—the Lomans are not special but, very ordinary men with ordinary lives; they are not meant for greatness. With this, Biff crumbles and begins to cry, much to his father’s bewilderment.

His deceased brother Ben’s ominous voice rings in Willy’s ears again and Linda is painfully aware of it. Willy is considering suicide so that he can leave behind twenty-thousand dollars to his son Biff. Happy, in an effort to lighten the mood, also vows to work harder and also get married.

Willy, however, returns to morbid thoughts of suicide in the hopes of leaving an inheritance to his son that will, presumably, skyrocket him towards fulfilling the grand American dream of financial success. He takes off in his car, at full speed. The play is now nearing its end with a scene of mourning in the Loman household.

Analysis

In this act, Willy and Linda continue to worry about their depleting finances and the futures of their sons, Happy and Biff.

Willy is laid off at work, when he goes to ask for a favor to be taken off the road as a salesman. Typical corporate behavior is apparent in how he is dealt with—there is no respect for his decades of service, only a need to get rid of him as he is not useful to his company anymore.

Willy suffers from intense guilt—of having let down his family and for having had an affair in his younger days. It was Willy’s affair in Boston that scarred his son Biff, to the extent that Biff became a permanent wanderer and could never stick to a job.

Happy, the younger son, was a fat child and did not receive the same accolades or attention from his father, as his older brother did. Consequentially, Happy is not emotionally invested in his family, in his adulthood. He has a stable job and only cares about getting physically intimate with as many women as he possibly can.

Linda comes across as the stressed out yet deeply empathetic wife who understands every mood of her husband and is fully devoted to him. She is constantly trying to play mediator between her husband Willy and her older son, Biff. Linda, however, is not aware that Willy had had an affair in their younger days, behind her back. This is a secret that Biff too carries and the burden of it crushes him into ignominy and hatred towards his father, who he views as a “phony.”

In pushing the great American dream of success onto his sons, he has failed them. He cannot see Biff or Happy as individual personalities—only as young Loman lineage destined for fame, success and respect if they would merely pursue these tenets of life.

It is not failures and frustrations alone that push Willy Loman towards suicide. By making the dream for financial success the epicenter of his life, Willy has already failed in being happy or satisfied. In wanting and dreaming big for himself and then his sons, he has diminished his own understanding of what it means to be alive, to have a family and to have a humble home.

Willy cannot deal with rejection—for either himself or his sons. Hence, when Biff does not land a meeting with a big business tycoon, Ben Oliver, Willy is thrown into reveries of imagination and mental degradation. He lives in lies and imagined memories—of Biff being popular and automatically successful; of assuming his own importance in a company, based on very small incidents of intangible success, that eventually meant nothing.

It is abundantly clear that Willy only cares for Biff—perhaps because he is the older son and also because Biff harbors the secret of his father’s romantic affair in Boston.

The act ends with Willy’s suicide and a somber funeral which leaves his wife Linda terribly alone and devastated. It also deeply impacts his sons, Happy and Biff.