Act One - Death of a Salesman

The major characters are Willy (the father), Linda (Willy’s wife), Biff and Happy (their sons). The minor characters are Charley (Willy’s brother, and neighbor), Bernard (Charley’s son), and Bill Oliver (Biff’s former boss). The protagonist of this play is obviously Willy; he is the focus of the action. The antagonist could be a few different people, but I think Biff, Willy’s son, is the character who goes against Willy the most. Willy talks about Biff a lot, sometimes in a good way, sometimes in a bad way, they both seem to butt heads equally with each other. Linda is a stereotype character, she does not really change, and she seems to be the typical housewife of the time period, stereotypically. The conflict is coincidence conflict, because Willy is constantly contradicting himself, with Biff being lazy and talking about how the car is worthless one minute and the best thing ever made the next minute. Willy is always talking to himself, and letting the audience hear him as he goes back into his fantasy’s or the past in his life, so the audience is the confidant. I’m not sure on what theme is for this story yet.

I really dislike this story/play, it is very confusing. Especially when Willy is contradicting himself, I just kept having to stop, and think “didn’t he just say the opposite?!”. I just seems like Miller jumps back and forth a lot between present and past, and not being able to visualize it makes it difficult to follow. I kind of feel bad for Biff, because he knows what he wants, but on the other hand he wants to make Willy proud of him so he stays at home instead of going out west.