Name : Doni Priyadono
Nim : A.320080239
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The action takes place at Willy Loman’s house in the New York City area, as well as other New York locales, and in a hotel room in Boston. Some of the action takes place in flashbacks while Willy hallucinates.
Characters
Protagonist: Willy Loman
Antagonist: In a broad sense, competitive America society, represented in part by Howard Wagner; in a narrow sense, Willy's combative son Biff
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Willy Loman: An aging salesman haunted by a feeling that his life has been a failure. He hallucinates about past events. These hallucinations center on his dreams for a better tomorrow; on the future of his son, Biff, a star football player; and on a woman with whom he had an affair while on a sales trip. During his hallucinations, he sometimes talks to himself.
Linda: Willy’s loyal wife. She accepts her role as a devoted and subservient housewife.
Biff Willy’s older son, who has trouble holding a job and getting along with his father. After he returns home from the West, his presence and his failure to get a job exasperate Willy.
Hap: Willy’s younger son, who has a steady job but is afraid to take risks to better himself
Charley: Successful businessman who lives next door to Willy. Willy envies him because he is a constant reminder of what Willy is not. Willy snidely says Charley “is liked, but not well liked.” Nevertheless, Charley lends Willy money and even offers him a job.
Bernard: Charley’s son. He is intelligent, hard-working, and successful–everything Biff Loman is not.
Ben: Willy’s deceased older brother, who appears only in Willy’s hallucinations. He struck it rich at an early age in South African diamond mines. He symbolizes the success that has eluded Willy.
Howard Wagner: The son of Willy's former boss, Frank Wagner, whom Willy admired. Howard, who is now Willy’s boss, represents a new breed of business executive, interested more in advancing technology than people. He fires Willy because of his inability to perform satisfactorily.
Stanley: A waiter at a bar/restaurant where Willy meets his sons.
The Woman: An employee of a Boston company who has an affair with Willy. She is one of the subjects of his hallucinations.
Miss Forsythe and Letta: Attractive young women whom Hap and Biff meet in the bar/restaurant
Jenny Charley's secretary
Plot Summary
By Michael J. Cummings...© 2003
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Traveling salesman Willy Loman arrives home later than expected one evening after a car trip through New England. When his wife, Linda, greets him, he tells her that he was delayed because his car kept swerving and he had to drive slowly. Linda is deeply concerned, for he has been in a series of accidents lately. She thinks the accidents are suicide attempts, symptoms of a terrible realization that begins to gnaw at him: failure as a husband, a father, a human being.
Loman, 63, no longer receives a salary from his company, only commission. He lives in a shabby house on which he still owes money. Bills for appliance repairs are piling up. He frequently borrows money from his neighbor Charley, a successful businessman, even though he doesn’t like Charley and sometimes ridicules him. Willy’s son Biff is a 34-year-old ne’er-do-well who has recently returned home from the West after failing to make his mark. His other son, Hap, 32, has a steady job, his own apartment, and a way with women. But he lacks the push and derring-do to rise above mediocrity. Nevertheless, Hap has big ideas for business ventures that he and his brother can look into now that they are together again.
In high school, Biff was a star football player–the pride of the Loman household–earning an athletic scholarship to the University of Virginia. But he lost it after failing a high-school math.
Tired and irritable after his motor trip, Willy complains to Linda about repair bills and about Biff. Nothing seems to work, he says, slamming a fist on the kitchen table–not the refrigerator, not the car, not Biff. But although Willy ridicules Biff one moment, calling him a lazy bum, he praises him the next, saying he has what it takes to succeed in the business world.
Meanwhile upstairs, Hap–pleased that Biff has returned home–reminisces with his brother about their high-school days and proposes plans for business ventures. Biff, who has worked many jobs and says he once herded cattle, announces he may try to get a job selling sporting goods for Bill Oliver, for whom he worked years before in a local store.
Downstairs again, Willy begins hallucinating. He sees himself in the back yard of the Loman house, years ago, with his sons. Willy laughs when Biff tells him that he stole a football from a locker room. It was all good fun; it was what spirited young men do. The future is as bright as the sun that shines down on them as they play catch and Willy tells Biff that he will be a successful businessman someday, more successful than their neighbor, Charley, who owns his own business and enjoys respect even though, as Willy says, he is “liked, but not well liked.” Willy boasts about his own success: On the road selling his products, he says, everybody recognizes and esteems him; he has even met the mayor of Providence, Rhode Island.
During the hallucination, Charley’s son, Bernard, comes by and reminds Willy that Biff should be studying for his math test. Passing it will assure his entry into the University of Virginia on a scholarship. Willy dismisses Bernard as a pest; Willy’s son, a star athlete, cannot be bothered with such trivialities as math. Being able to throw a football–being able to meet the mayor of Providence–those are the things that count. Like his father, Willy says, Bernard is “liked, but not well liked.”
Willy also hallucinates from time to time throughout the play about his late older brother Ben, who made a fortune in African diamond mines. Ben is the man Willy has always wanted to be.
Willy returns to reality momentarily, bemoaning his present state of affairs, and Linda–ever a supporting pillar–comforts him, saying people esteem him and his sons respect him. He then slips back into an illusion, seeing himself in a Boston hotel room with a woman with whom he is having an affair. (These lapses enable playwright Miller to reveal not only Willy’s disturbed state of mind but also the secrets of his past.) He also sees Bernard again, who warns Willy that Biff is breaking the law by driving without a license and that he is jeopardizing his future by not studying for his math test. The woman in the hotel room then speaks to Willy, and he again returns to reality and shouts at Linda, this time defending Biff.
When they hear their father ranting, Biff and Hap go downstairs. Willy and Biff argue, make up, then argue some more. Linda does her best to pacify them. Every time she interrupts the conversation to promote an armistice, Willy scolds her. Eventually, everyone makes peace and goes to bed.
Willy’s problems continue to worsen. After Linda pleads with him to ask his boss, Howard Wagner, to station him in New York so he no longer has to go on tiring road trips, Willy broaches the idea to Wagner, saying that he’s too old to travel anymore and that he’s willing to accept a modest salary. Wagner not only refuses to grant the request, but he also fires Willy.
Meanwhile, Biff, who has agreed to ask Bill Oliver for a job, fails even to get an interview with Oliver. In a bar where Biff, Hap, and Willy are to have dinner, Biff first lies to his father about his latest failure, then admits he did not see Bill Oliver. They argue. To pacify Willy, Biff says he has an appointment with Oliver the next day.
Biff and Hap then leave with women they met before Willy arrived–Miss Forsythe and Letta. Willy goes to the restroom and hallucinates again about the woman in the hotel room. Here is the scene he relives:
A persistent knock at the door of the hotel room unnerves Willy, and he orders the woman into the bathroom to hide. The door opens and Biff presents himself, informing his dad that he has traveled all the way to Boston to tell him that he failed math with a 61 and his teacher won’t give him the extra four points needed to pass and to graduate. He begs his father to talk to the teacher.
“You’re on,” Willy says. “We’ll drive right back.”
Biff says the teacher doesn’t like him because one day Biff imitated him in class by speaking with a lisp and crossing his eyes. They both laugh raucously. Unfortunately for Willy, the woman in the bathroom laughs too, and she comes out. Biff, shocked, begins to weep. Willy says, “She’s nothing to me, Biff. I was lonely, I was terribly lonely.”
Deeply disappointed in his father, Biff calls him a liar and a fake.
The scene shifts back to the bar. When a waiter named Stanley calls out to Willy, Willy awakens from his hallucination and comes out of the restroom assisted by Stanley, who tells him that his sons have left with the two women. Willy gives Stanley dollar, saying, “You’re a good boy.” Stanley refuses the money, but Willy throws out more bills.
“I don’t need it any more,” he says.
Willy asks directions to a store that sells gardens seeds. After Stanley gives directions to a hardware store, he stuffs the money in Willy’s coat pocket after Willy turns around to leave.
