Death Of A Salesman

With close attention to language, dramatic technique and structure, examine the presentation of Willy and his situation here.

The extract begins with Willy's line: 'I'm getting awfully tired, Ben', just as the memory of Ben himself enters. This portrays Willy's deteriorating mental health, as he is talking to a person he is imagining. This might sound acceptable for a child with an imaginary friend, but for a man of sixty years old with company at that point, is not quite normal. At that point he is playing a card game with Charley, his neighbour. The game of cards reflects the luck and chance that made Ben his fortune. He took a wrong turning through poor geography and ended up in the jungle: 'when I was seventeen I walked into the jungle, and when I was twenty-one I walked out. And by God I was rich.' There is no specific structure to a card game - anything can happen. Willy has taken the opposite road via his dream of becoming rich like Ben. He thinks there is a direct path to fortune, and is constantly trying to get Ben to tell him what to do, when, in Ben's experience, there isn't a way, as he stumbled across it by chance.

During this card game begins a three-way conversation between Willy, Charley and Ben. Willy is answering the imaginary Ben, while Charley doesn't know what he's talking about. 'BEN: Is Mother living with you? WILLY: No, she died...CHARLEY: Who? ... WILLY: Heh?' This portrays the confusion in Willy's mind at this point, and once again shows deterioration in Willy's mental health. Also, Ben seems to be louder than Charley, as Willy answers Ben rather than Charley. This shows that, to Willy, the past is more real than the present. Willy relishes in his past, when he was well known and well liked, and his sons admired him. He keeps going back to it throughout the play to show how important it was to him.

Willy admires and thinks the world of Ben: 'What a memory,