Willy remembers a conversation with Linda in which he inflates his earnings but is then forced to admit he exaggerated when Linda calculates his commission. In this last scene, Willy listens but dismisses the important news because Biff is 'well-liked,' and Bernard is not. Finally in his reverie, he relives the time that Bernard, son of the next-door neighbor Charley, informs Willy that Biff is failing math and will not graduate unless his scores improve. Willy also remembers his old dream of the boys visiting him in Boston during a road trip. They contemplate buying a ranch and working together.Īt this point, Willy relives several scenes from his past, including the time when, during high school, Biff admits to stealing a football and promises to throw a pass for Willy during the game. Both are dissatisfied with their jobs: Biff is discontent working for someone else, and Happy cannot be promoted until the merchandise manager dies. Biff and Happy discuss women and the future. Biff learns that Willy is usually talking to him (Biff) during these private reveries. Linda and Willy argue about their oldest son Biff.īiff and his brother, Happy, overhear Willy talking to himself. His wife, Linda, suggests that he request a job in New York rather than travel each week. Willy is having difficulty remembering events, as well as distinguishing the present from his memories of the past. The action begins in the home of Willy Loman, an aging salesman who has just returned from a road trip. Miller continued to write until his death in 2005.Death of a Salesman takes place in New York and Boston. His third wife was the photographer Inge Morath. In 1956 he married the film actress Marilyn Monroe. Miller testified before this committee, but refused to implicate any of his friends as Communists, which resulted in his blacklisting. In 1952, Miller wrote The Crucible, a play about the 1692 Salem witch trials that functioned as an allegory for the purges among entertainers and media figures by the House Un-American Activities Committee. He wrote Death of a Salesman in 1948, which won a Tony Award as well as the Pulitzer Prize, and made him a star. His first play, The Man Who Had All the Luck opened in 1944, but Miller had his first real success with All My Sons (1947). He married his college sweetheart, Mary Slattery, in 1940, with whom he had two children. After college, he worked for the government's Federal Theater Project, which was soon closed for fear of possible Communist infiltration.

There, he received awards for his playwriting. Miller was unintellectual as a boy, but decided to become a writer and attended the University of Michigan to study journalism. In the stock crash of 1929, his father's clothing business failed and the family moved to more affordable housing in Brooklyn. Arthur Miller was born into a middle-class Jewish family in Manhattan.

Script odb death of a salesman