Death of a Salesman Quotations Explained

And when I saw that, I realized that selling was the greatest career a man could want. ’Cause what could be more satisfying than to be able to go, at the age of eighty-four, into twenty or thirty different cities, and pick up a phone, and be remembered and loved and helped by so many different people?

• Willy poses this question to Howard Wagner in Act II, in Howard’s office.
• He is discussing how he decided to become a salesman after meeting Dave Singleman, the mythic salesman who died the noble “death of a salesman” that Willy himself covets.
• His admiration of Singleman’s prolonged success illustrates his obsession with being well liked.
• He fathoms having people “remember” and “love” him as the ultimate satisfaction, because such warmth from business contacts would validate him in a way that his family’s love does not.
• In so highly esteeming Singleman and deeming his on-the-job death as dignified, respectable, and graceful, Willy fails to see the human side of Singleman, much as he fails to see his own human side.
• He envisions Singleman as a happy man but ignores the fact that Singleman was still working at age eighty-four and might likely have experienced the same financial difficulties and consequent pressures and misery as Willy

I saw the things that I love in this world. The work and the food and the time to sit and smoke. And I looked at the pen and I thought, what the hell am I grabbing this for? Why am I trying to become what I don’t want to be . . . when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am.

• Biff’s explanation to his father during the climax of their final confrontation in Act II helps him articulate the revelation of his true identity, even though Willy cannot possibly understand.
• Biff is confident and somewhat comfortable with the knowledge that he is “a dime a dozen,” as this escape from his father’s delusions allows him to follow his instincts and align his life with his own dreams.
• Whereas Willy cannot comprehend any notion of individual identity outside of the confines of the material success and “well liked”-ness promised by the American Dream, Biff realizes that he can be happy only outside these confines.
• Though his attempt to cure Willy’s delusions fails, Biff frees himself from Willy’s expectations for him.
• He sees the stupidity of stealing the pen and renounces the commercial world, content to enjoy the simple necessities of life.

A diamond is hard and rough to the touch.

• Ben’s final mantra of “The jungle is dark, but full of diamonds” in Act II turns Willy’s suicide into a moral struggle and a matter of commerce.
• As opposed to the fruitless, emotionally ruinous meetings that Willy has had with Howard Wagner and Charley, his death, Ben suggests, will actually yield something concrete for Willy and his family.
• Willy latches onto this appealing idea, relieved to be able finally to prove himself a success in business.
• Additionally, he is certain that with the $20,000 from his life insurance policy, Biff will at last fulfill the expectations that he, Willy, has long held for him.
• The diamond stands as a tangible reminder of the material success that Willy’s salesman job could not offer him and the missed opportunity of material success with Ben.
• In selling himself for the metaphorical diamond of $20,000, Willy bears out his earlier assertion to Charley that “after all the highways, and the trains, and the appointments, and the years, you end up worth more dead than alive.”

Nothing’s planted. I don’t have a thing in the ground.

• After the climax in Frank’s Chop House, in Act II, Willy, talking to Stanley, suddenly fixates on buying seeds to plant a garden in his dark backyard
• The garden functions as a last-ditch substitute for Willy’s failed career and Biff’s dissipated ambition.
• Willy realizes, at least metaphorically, that he has no tangible proof of his life’s work.
• While he is planting the seeds and conversing with Ben, he worries that “a man can’t go out the way he came in,” that he has to “add up to something.”
• His preoccupation with material evidence of success belies his very profession, which necessitates the ability to sell one’s own, intangible image.
• The seeds symbolize Willy’s failure in other ways as well.
• The fact that Willy uses gardening as a metaphor for success and failure indicates that he subconsciously acknowledges that his chosen profession is a poor choice, given his natural inclinations.
• Though his figurative roots are in sales (Ben claims that their father was a successful salesman), Willy never blossomed into the Dave Singleman figure that he idolizes.

He’s a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine . . . A salesman is got to dream, boy.

• Charley’s speech in the requiem about the nature of the salesman’s dreams eulogizes Willy as a victim of his difficult profession.
• His poetic assessment of sales defends Willy’s death, attributing to Willy’s work the sort of mythic quality that Willy himself always envisioned about it.
• Charley likens the salesman to a heroic, courageous sailor, “out there in the blue,” with nothing to guide him and powerful forces against which to contend.
• Charley also points out the great disparity between the enormity of the salesman’s task and the piddling tools with which he is equipped: Willy had only the insubstantial smile on his face and shine of his shoe with which to sell himself.
• Lacking confidence in his image and thus “finished” psychologically, Willy still had to go out and give it his best, because “a salesman is got to dream.”
• Charley’s sympathy reveals itself in this remark—he understands that Willy didn’t simply feel compelled to sell; rather, Willy failed even to recognize that he had any choice in life.