Summary and Analysis: Death of A Salesman

THE BASICS
-The author of Death of A Salesman is Arthur Miller, who was born in 1915 New York, New York.  He was Jewish, though his wife was an firm believer in Christianity.  He was known for testifying before HUAC during the Red Scare.
-The play is set in New York, going between the city proper and a tenement-housing development in Brooklyn, which is where the Lomans and Charley & Bernard live.  The time period is generally considered around the 1950s, which is when Miller wrote the play although this is not often explicitly stated in the play.
Plot:
The play opens with Willy Loman returning home after another long trip.  His son, Biff, has just returned from his travels out west and is trying to settle down, but for reasons unknown for the moment, Willy is deeply bothered by Biff's presence.  When he arrives home, Linda receives him warmly, even as he starts to rant on over Biff advising him to relax his mind, and she tells him to make a sandwich before coming up to bed.  In this moment, we see Willy slip into a flashback, which is the first time we notice his "overactive" mind.  He slips into memories of his past, specifically episodes with Biff and Happy, his two sons, whom he loves and idolizes.  While he is ranting throughout this memory, his sons are in their rooms at the house, discussing their memories of their childhod and youth as well as their father's bizarre behavior and their concerns over his mental state. As Willy's daydream continues, he goes outside for a walk, during which Linda and the sons meet in the kitchen, where Linda explains Willy's suicidal tendencies.  As she explains the sons' their responsibility to their father, Willy returns, and Biff and Happy leave him in the night with the proposition that Biff is finally going to settle down and pursue a business opportunity with Bill Oliver, an old acquaintance. The next morning, everyone leaves the house optimistic, but as the day unfolds, all of their plans fail. Oliver doesn't even recognize Biff, and Biff impulsively steals a pen from him. Willy's attempt at gaining an office position in New York fails miserably and he leaves the office depressed and in another flashback moment. He ends up going to see Charlie, and sees a successful Bernard there, who is going to the Supreme Court in DC. This leaves Willy pondering the methods of success and revealing a suicidal urge. The three Loman men converge at a restaurant and everything is laid bare, which ultimately leads to a flashback revealing the origin of the rift between Biff and Willy: Biff witnessed Willy cheating on Linda. Willy is left alone at the restaurant and returns home with some seed to start planting in the garden. Biff and Happy return to an indignant Linda, who demands that they leave, but Biff decides to make it his final departure and hopes to leave on good terms with Willy. In trying to connect, he ends up arguing with Willy then crying in his arms. Willy takes this as a sign that Biff has forgiven him and loves him, and from that he finally decides upon taking his own life, so Biff can start a new life and business. In the final scene, the Lomans and Charlie are at Willy's funeral, where Biff denounces his father and decides to head out West while Happy announces that he will take the money and fulfill his father's dream (doubtful, though). In the end, Linda announces that she just finished the last payment on the house, but ironically no one is left to live in it but her.
Major Characters:
-Willy: An aged salesman and family man, who is beginning to lose his grip on reality.  He tries to deny his failures and inadequacies to both himself and others, especially his family, but he is definitely "tired," and this fatigue grows throughout the play.
-Biff: Willy's eldest son, who has lost pretty much all self-esteem. After witnessing his father's infidelity to his mother, he lost faith in all of his beliefs, as he had grown up idolizing his father.  This ultimately led him to drop out of school, and head out west to try and explore life as a free man.  He has a fantasy of living out in nature with cattle, as opposed to staying confined in an office and the regularity of a structured life.
-Ben: Willy's deceased elder brother. He often served as a father figure for Willy, since his father passed on when they were young and he was the man of the house.  He eventually hit it big through the diamond industry in Africa.  He offered Willy a position in Alaska to work for him, and Willy often regrets passing up this opportunity,
-Happy: Willy's youngest son, who comes off as rather dumb for most of the play, settling with the status quo of his life as a blue-collar worker.  He sort of fills in gaps in the family but has no substantial relationship with anyone, as he is often disregarded by others, especially his parents who tend to focus on Biff alone, which causes him to try and capture others' attention
-Charley: Willy's close friend; he is basically considered family.  He is actually a rather successful businessman, and he provides Willy assistance in order to maintain his pride, even though everyone knows that Willy asks for his money.  Willy continually tries to differentiate himself from Charley.
Tone/Style--
tone:
Since this is a play, there is not much of a tone since the author uses dialogue. However, Miller does tend to take on a more frustrated and conflicted persona through Willy Loman. As Willy is the main protagonist, his conflicts speak to Miller's views on the changing values in American society, where such things as age and wisdom are not valued in the face of commercial or monetary success.
symbols:
-The Phonograph from Howard's office: This represents the unalterable nature of the past.  In recording the actual sounds, Howard can remember the moments with his children.  However, this almost frightens Willy because it threatens to ruin his delusional memories of the past.
-Rain/umbrella: This might represent misfortune, as it begins raining right before Willy meets with Howard.  In addition, Ben always carries an umbrella, which might "protect" his fortune.
-Stockings: They represent Willy's guilt in two ways: one for cheating on Linda and another for not providing Linda as her husband
-Seeds: These represent Willy's hope for the future, which he believes will be a lot better with the help of his death and the insurance money.
point-of-view:
The play is definitely in the third person. However, there is plenty of first-person, as we experience Willy's flashbacks from the way he tells a lot of the story. There is really no reason to believe that Willy is unreliable, though since his memories do not shut out any of the bad details, such as his capture by Biff.
imagery:
A lot of the setting has a sort of drab, gray feeling that is typically associated with urban areas, where there is just a lot of people. A lot of the imagery is emotional, especially for Willy, whose actions and words tend to reveal much about his state of mind. The reader is able to feel and almost understand his deterioration. In the flashbacks there also seems to be nicer weather or a happier mood, which contributes to the overall feeling of hope that Miller tries to give that time period.

Theme Statement:
In Death of A Salesman, Arthur Miller comments on the eventual self-destruction that results from deluding one's self by placing faith in words and ideas rather than taking responsibility for/charge of these goals, all in the name of achieving conventional success and maintaining personal dignity.
-The title, alongside the few instances where it occurs in the play, especially when it basically happens in Howard's office, support this as Willy's optimism is the root of his downfall. He continuously fails to take true responsibility for his actions or embrace his guilt, and his failure to escape his delusion destroys him as a person.
-I think the setting offers a contrast between the industrious life of the city folk and the somewhat lazy life that the Loman children lead as semi-suburbanites and in their fantasies of life out west in nature. There is a recurring theme of the freedom of the open landscapes of the seemingly untouched west. However, in the end, these ideas display the characters lack of responsibility. Rather than face their problems, they simply hope to escape them and start afresh, which Biff has already done when he went out to explore his options before the action of the plot.
-Miller's style supports this theme because he uses Willy to reflect the frustration that every person feels when they have nothing truly genuine of their own. He continually juxtaposes different ideas and objects to show how Willy's firm clutch on a useless dream is both unrealistic and unhealthy. There is also a promotion of self-dependence and the people who take it upon themselves to achieve success like Bernard and Ben.

Quotes:
"Will you let me go, for Christ's sake?" - Biff
Throughout this scene, there is a mounting sense of dramatic irony. Biff keeps talking about moving on, and how he is ready to give up on Willy's romanticized vision of his future. Yet Willy cannot accept reality and let Biff go in peace; he has to leave some mark in his mind, something that will bring him back in the future. Everything that Biff says implies that he is going to leave and never plans on coming back, but Willy cannot leave the delusion and misinterprets Biff's words as an approval for his suicide.
"Nobody dast blame this man. A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory." - Charley
I think that this quote serves to put some closure to the question of Charley's friendship with Willy, while acting as a sort of simple summary of the problems and hopes that Willy faced. As his life was spent trying to please others enough to buy products from his company, Willy was all but forced to dream of the day when he would have something of his own to sell or brag about to his customers. I think the first part also shows how Charley never really gave up on Willy, as reflected by his immediate condemning of Willy's first suicide thought in his office.