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Allusions
Act 1
Explanation and Analysis—You're a Pal:
As an incisive portrait of the common American, Death of Salesman explores the mid-20th-century American dialect. Characters like Happy and Willy frequently exchange easygoing, folksy expressions. Biff addresses his mother as a “pal,” for instance, and Willy calls her “kid,” as though fostering a sense of casual camaraderie. Contractions—such as “I’m tellin’ ya,” or “whattya got, Dad?”—add to the bygone charm of an outlook that is beginning to fail Willy.
Many of the characters sustain this upbeat American optimism through such language, despite their disappointing circumstances. Tired platitudes give cover to Willy and his sons’ deeper sense of angst. When Willy hears of his son’s prospective sporting goods business, he exclaims that they “could absolutely lick the civilized world.” He subsequently convinces Linda that he’s “gonna knock Howard for a loop, kid.”
The cheeriness of their dialect also cloaks a deeper sense of frustration. The dialogue between Willy and his sons struggles to conceal its more violent, deeply masculine undertones. Biff and Happy discuss “knockin’” girls over, while Willy promises Linda to “knock ’em dead next week.” Even professions of love seem to bear bruises. When Willy returns home and sees Linda in Act 1, he pours forth words of husbandly passion:
You’re the best there is, Linda, you’re a pal, you know that? On the road—on the road I want to grab you sometimes and just kiss the life outa you.
Willy’s declarations suggest a kind of love that is constrictive, suffocating. Here, as elsewhere, a disturbing, implicit violence lurks beneath the play’s homespun words, exposing—consciously or not—a pent-up disgruntlement in this new economy of displacement and replacement.
Related Themes:
