Death Of A Salesman Essay

One of the most common Drama texts for Higher, 'Death of a Salesman' essays will nearly always focus on the restaurant scene and the confrontation between Willy and Biff. This essay could be written in 45-minutes for a Higher exam. I've chosen a fairly straightforward question.

Question -

Choose a play which involves a tragic theme and show how the dramatist makes the play a moving experience for the audience. You may refer to structure, characterisation, key scene(s) or any other appropriate feature.


‘Death of a Salesman’ by Arthur Miller has often been described as a modern tragedy. In this essay I will show how the playwright makes the downfall of the hapless Willy Loman a moving experience for the audience. Loman is an aging salesman at the end of his career. The first line of the play, ‘It’s alright. I came back’ is addressed to his long-suffering wife, Linda, who has always supported him despite his faults. He is too old to be driving the long distances from New York and in danger of crashing his car. The pay focuses on the last days of his life and his dysfunctional relationships with Linda and his sons.

Willy has always believed in his son Biff, thinking of him as a great sportsman and a success in life. However, the truth is that Biff is unable to keep a job or have a happy relationship with a woman. In Act I, Willy and his sons come up with a solution to the family’s problems. Biff agrees to visit a former employer to ask for a loan, so that he can set up a sporting goods company with Happy. At the same time, Willy will visit his boss in order to ask for work with less travelling. However, instead of letting Willy work from New York, the boss tells him Willy is no longer useful due to his age and health. At the same time, Biff fails to get the loan from his old boss and instead, steals his fountain pen and runs away.

The restaurant scene is where the problems of Willy’s life and relationships come to a head. At the start of the scene Biff and Happy are drinking and trying to ‘pick up’ two women. Biff has come to a crisis where he feels that he and Willy have never told the truth to one another. When Willy arrives, Biff tries to have a serious conversation with him:

Biff: Who ever said it, Pop? Who ever said I was a salesman?
Willy: Well, you were!

Biff is adamant that he was a shipping clerk rather than a salesman. However, Biff and Willy do not have the honest discussion that he wants. The father says ‘I haven’t got a story left in my head.’ Willy has spent his life trying to charm people and be ‘well liked’ so stories are important to who he is. This reminds the audience of the previous scene when Willy met his boss. He told the story of the old salesman who inspired him. However, in the play Willy is shown to be dishonest and self-deluded.

The tragedy of this situation is emphasized by the author’s use of flashbacks. As Biff begins to talk to Willy, voices from the past come from off stage. Soon, Willy’s memories take over and he relives a scene from his past. He is caught in a hotel room with a woman by Biff, who has travelled up to tell his father about why he flunked maths and was unable to graduate. This shows the audience how Biff lost respect for his father and become a failure in life. It also reveals Willy’s guilt and growing struggle with reality.

The consequences of the restaurant scene are that father and son have a confrontation, followed by Willy’s suicide. Biff admits that after he stole the fountain pen, he realized he did not want to live a city life and would be happier working on a farm. He tells his father ‘you were so busy filling my head with hot air …’. This suggests that Biff is prepared to reject his father’s values, of city living, money and ‘being liked’ in order to find some happiness when his father never did. Despite the confrontation, Biff tries to get his father to go to bed: instead Willy slips out and crashes his car. This shows that like Linda, he loves his father despite his faults and it emphasizes the tragedy of the ending.

In these ways, ‘Death of a Salesman’ is the story of an ordinary man who is unable to live up to his own fantasies, and whose relationships finally break down. The playwright uses characterization, flashbacks and the climax in order to make this a moving experience for the audience.