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¶ … Exchange at the End of Act Two:
THE WOMAN: I just hope there's nobody in the hall. That's all I hope. To Biff: Are you football or baseball?
BIFF: Football
THE WOMAN: (angry, humiliated) That's me too. G'night.
Both Biff and Happy are shown throughout the course of Death of a Salesman to have a very careless attitude in regards to how they treat women. They treat women like conquests, not as human beings. In a flashback sequence, Linda complains that mothers have informed her that they are worried that Biff is rough with girls; Happy has slept with a number of the girlfriends and fiancees of the superiors at his place of employment. He does so not because he is in love with these women but as a passive-aggressive way of getting back at the people who tell him what to do on a daily basis at work.
In this exchange, the woman slyly takes a dig at Biff that she is just a football in the relationships she is in, something to be batted back and forth. This exchange takes place when Biff surprises Willy after he learns that he has failed math and needs to go to summer school. Willy tries to conceal the woman from Biff but she refuses to be treated as someone just to be shoved into the bathroom. A football is an object tossed between men, not something which has value in and of itself. The woman is thus suggesting that she is like a football or an object that Willy is using for his own pleasure and fun, not because he has any respect for it. In the dialogue she implies that she literally 'is' a football, versus merely is playing football like Biff. By the end of the scene she decides to demand the silk stockings promised to her by Willy and to leave, as a way of demanding that Willy regard her as more than a sexual plaything.
Q2. An analysis of this scene from the end of the play:
CHARLEY...
To Biff): Nobody dast blame this man. You don't understand: Willy was a salesman. And for a salesman, there is no rock bottom to the life. He don't put a bolt to a nut, he don't tell you the law or give you medicine. He's man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a Shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back -- that's an earthquake. And then you get yourself a couple of spots on your hat, and you're finished. Nobody dast blame this man. A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory.
BIFF: Charley, the man didn't know who he was.
HAPPY (infuriated): Don't say that!
BIFF: Why don't you come with me, Happy?
HAPPY: I'm not licked that easily. I'm staying right in this city, and I'm gonna beat this racket! (He looks at Biff, his chin set.) The Loman Brothers!
BIFF: I know who I am, kid.
HAPPY: All right, boy. I'm gonna show you and everybody else that Willy Loman did not die in vain. He had a good dream. It's the only dream you can have -- to come out number-one man. He fought it out here, and this is where I'm gonna win it for him.
BIFF (with a hopeless glance at Happy, bends toward his mother): Let's go, Mom
One of the questions which arises over the course of Death of a Salesman is the attitude towards hard work displayed by the playwright. On one hand, Willy Loman is implicitly criticized for not forcing his sons to work hard in school and allowing Biff to merely enjoy himself playing football. On the other hand, the hard work Willy puts in as a salesman ultimately does not get him a secure financial or professional footing because it is based on nothing but selling his personality, not on anything real. However, it is, according to Charley, also the American Dream. The American dream is that…
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