Death of a Salesman: Key Scenes and the American Dream
This paper analyzes two key scenes from Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. The first examines the exchange between Willy's mistress and Biff, exploring how women are treated as objects by the Loman men. The second analyzes Charley's graveside eulogy and the contrasting responses of Biff and Happy, using these moments to explore Miller's critique of the American Dream, the cost of self-deception, and the tension between authenticity and social success in postwar American capitalism.
- The Woman and Biff: Objectification in the Hotel Room Scene: Women treated as objects by Loman men
- The American Dream and the Salesman's Burden: Willy embodies the American Dream's false promise
- Happy's Delusion and the Cycle of Failure: Happy repeats Willy's self-deceptive pattern
- Biff's Authenticity and the Cost of Truth: Biff's honesty brings authenticity but no happiness
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper grounds every analytical claim in specific dialogue, quoting passages directly before unpacking their significance — a strong model of textual evidence integration.
- It moves from close reading (the football metaphor, the silk stockings) to broader thematic argument (the American Dream, authenticity), demonstrating how small details carry symbolic weight.
- The contrast drawn between Biff and Happy is concrete and well-supported, using their divergent reactions at Willy's grave to illustrate different responses to inherited illusion.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates symbolic close reading: it takes a single word ("football") and traces its implications outward — from gendered objectification to the Loman men's broader transactional view of human relationships. This technique — anchoring thematic argument in a specific textual detail — is a transferable literary analysis skill.
Structure breakdown
The paper is organized around two discrete scene analyses, each introduced by a block quotation from the play. The first scene focuses on gender and objectification; the second on the American Dream and the divergence between Biff and Happy. Each section moves from textual observation to thematic generalization, ending with a claim about Miller's larger critique of American capitalism and identity.
The Woman and Biff: Objectification in the Hotel Room Scene
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 deeply careless attitude toward women. They treat women like conquests rather than as human beings. In a flashback sequence, Linda complains that other mothers have told her they are worried Biff is rough with girls. Happy, meanwhile, has slept with a number of the girlfriends and fiancées of his workplace superiors — not out of love, but as a passive-aggressive way of retaliating against the men who hold authority over him at work.
In this exchange, the Woman slyly takes a dig at Biff, implying that she is just a football in the relationships she finds herself in — something to be batted back and forth between men. The scene takes place when Biff surprises Willy after discovering that he has failed math and must attend summer school. Willy tries to conceal the Woman from Biff, but she refuses to be treated as someone simply to be shoved into the bathroom.
A football is an object tossed between men, something with no intrinsic value of its own. The Woman is thus suggesting that she is like that object — something Willy uses for his own pleasure and amusement, not something he respects. In the dialogue, she implies that she literally is a football, rather than merely playing the game as Biff does. By the end of the scene, she demands the silk stockings Willy had promised her and prepares to leave — a gesture of insisting that Willy regard her as more than a sexual plaything.
The American Dream and the Salesman's Burden
CHARLEY (stopping Happy's movement and reply. 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 a 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 that arises throughout Death of a Salesman concerns the play's attitude toward hard work. On one hand, Willy Loman is implicitly criticized for failing to push his sons to work hard in school and for allowing Biff to simply enjoy himself playing football. On the other hand, the hard work Willy puts in as a salesman ultimately does not earn him any secure financial or professional footing, because it is built on nothing more than the selling of his own personality — not on anything concrete or lasting. Yet, according to Charley's graveside speech, this is also the essence of the American Dream: the belief that anyone, no matter how imperfect — even someone like Willy — can become number one. Although this belief is not borne out by reality, Charley suggests it is something people must hold onto in order to have hope. Crucially, Willy should not be morally blamed for subscribing to a dream that was created long before he ever lived.
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