Death of a Salesman: Motifs 2 key examples

Cars, in this first instance, articulate his own directionless aspirations. Like his driving, Willy can’t steer himself toward any meaningful future. He has been consigned to commission-based sales, traveling hundreds of miles at his own loss and even losing his job. Amid promises of economic mobility and success, Willy instead finds himself slipping behind and chronically veering off course. In this exchange with Linda, he quite literally cuts his trip short because he “couldn’t drive any more.” Even his memory unspools in loops and tangles, and the play meanders through his memories past in nearly the same way Willy loses control over the wheel. Willy’s cars foreground the frustration of destinations deferred.

As the play develops, cars capture Willy’s deeply conflicted relationship with the American Dream.  Cars are the objects of his love and hate, figurative vehicles of his fissuring faith. One point, Willy proclaims the Chevrolet to be the “greatest car ever built.” At the very next, he bursts out—“that goddam Chevrolet, they ought to prohibit the manufacture of that car!” This extreme polarity in his attitudes tracks with his alternating faith and second doubts in the American Dream. “The man who makes an appearance in the business world, the man who creates personal interest, is the man who gets ahead,” he lectures to Biff, only to swivel moments later. “I get the feeling that I’ll never sell anything again,” he says. He is both desperate to believe in the prospect of prosperity but also beginning to question it. Willy’s alternating ambivalence and devotion reflect his shaky commitment to the myth that effort always begets success.

Just as cars embody Willy’s failure to find purpose, they offer the only ways he can make meaning out of his life. Realizing that life insurance will offer a $20,000 payment, Willy chooses to kill himself in hopes of financially supporting Biff.  In a screech of wheels foretold by his very first exchange, Willy all too fittingly drives to his death.

In a scene from Willy’s memory, the repair of a broken fan belt deducts $16 from his already disappointing commission.  The streak of faulty fridges continues to haunt him: years (if not decades) later, he finds out in the beginning of Act 2 that his Hastings refrigerator has broken yet again. After comparing it to Charley’s 20-year-old General Electric fridge, he exclaims:

Once in my life I would like to own something outright before it’s broken! I’m always in a race with the junkyard!

Cite this Quote

The outburst is more than the mere cry of a disgruntled appliance owner. Rather, the chronically crippled fridge operates as a stand-in for his failure to attain the American Dream. What should work ends up failing, what has promised to function does not, and none of his possessions ever last. Drawing lightly veiled parallels to Willy’s own career, the fridge reminds the reader that Willy struggles to preserve his dreams as much as he does his own food. Miller plays on the light irony of a salesman—someone who makes a living selling shiny new objects—who is stuck with damaged goods.

At the time of the play’s writing (the mid-20th century), household appliances would have represented the cutting edge of technological innovation. Devices such as wash machines were feats of engineering and symbols of American affluence. During the rise of mass consumerism, they became daily necessities that doubled as markers of wealth. Elsewhere in the play, Willy’s everyday appliances speak to this impulse for acquisition. A confident Willy of memory stretches his commission thin across vacuums and washing machines. Though appliances often serve as outlet for his frustrations, they also point towards a need to metaphorically keep up with the Joneses.

More broadly, the play’s interest in consumer devices dramatizes Willy’s failure to keep pace with progress.  When Howard demos his latest wire recorder at the meeting in his office, Willy’s response to it is a mixture of bewilderment and terror. Punning on the idea of a “broken record,” Willy quite literally begins to reminisce about the “comradeship” and “gratitude” of the former sales industry. After accidentally switching on the recorder, he even recoils from the machine and cries out for his boss. The embarrassing incident with the recording machine reveals just how far Willy has fallen behind the times as both consumer and employee.