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Willy is much more emphatically a representative figure, than any of Miller’s other characters. Willy may be regarded as an American everyman. But it is already too late and his gestures of planting in the hope of future growth are desperate and futile.įinally it is possible to treat Willy as a symbolic character. This implies that his life is a barren thing. Willy imagines that he can make seeds grow in, but he can’t do so because of the hardness of earth. The temporary optimism at the beginning of Act II is conveyed partly by references to seeds and tools. He is always on the move while Willy remains stagnant still. Every time we see Ben, he has his watch out and keeps saying that he has only a few minutes or that he has to catch a train. This concept of time is again emphasized by Ben. He no longer has enough time to do anything. Consequently the phrase ‘the woods are burning’ suggest that time is running out on Willy. Whereas, Ben conquered the jungle of life, Willy was trapped by the burning wood. Thus when Willy says that ‘the woods are burning’ he means that life is closing in on him. But the jungle becomes the woods for Willy.
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The Jungle than Ben walks into is symbolically the jungle of life. Ben is a man who has nothing in the beginning but he ends up in riches. I can’t even drive a car.”īen becomes Willy’s ideal. Willy flares up and tells both the boys that: Happy tells his dad that he is going to retire him for life. At the same time he speaks of Ben’s having walked into a jungle and when Ben came out he was rich. Willy wishes that he had gone to Alaska with his brother Ben. Half way through the first act, the reader hears something about Willy’s brother Ben. In this way he was also a salesman but he used to sell flutes prepared by his own hands, whereas, Willy sells wares of some other person. But the use of symbol of flute becomes more important when we come to know that Willy’s father used to make and sell flutes. Thus the melody of flute opens and closes the play or it may be said to encompass the entire drama. As the play closes with Linda leaving Willy’s grave the only thing left on the stage is the sound of the flute playing a rather sad dirge. Here is a symbolism that subtly supports the meaning of the play. The play opens with a melodyof the flute. It gets me nervous.”Įven the sound of flute in the play is symbolic. “Will you stop mending stockings? At least while I am in the house. Stockings make Willy nervous and his reaction is sudden. Willy gives new stockings to the woman as a presents while his wife has mend for her old stockings. These references have a narrative and psychological function in the play. Finally when Willy appears to be at his wit’s end trying to sow seeds, the stage is flooded with “blue” simultaneously suggesting moonlight and his desperate mood. Similarly when Biff and Happy picks up two women at the restaurant callously ignoring their father, the stage directions demand “lucid red”. When Willy is lost in his memories of the past, the house is draped in a mantle of green. There is an angry glow of orange in the environment in which the apartment houses are bathed. This symbolism gets its final intensity in the climax of the play when Willy drives his car out of the house into darkness and death.Įven in the setting of the play symbolism and expressionistic technique are obvious. His exhaustion with driving symbolizes his tiredness from life. In the very beginning of the play Willy comes home exhausted with driving. But Miller uses it in a negative and ironic manner. Caris an American symbol of individual mobility, freedom and social status.
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Many of the symbols used in “Death of a Salesman” have specifically American connotations. Symbolism is a technique, employed by a large number of playwrights, in which an object or a metaphor is described having meaning and implications beyond its apparent meaning.