Mark André ’s Reviews > Death of a Salesman > Status Update

and I can’t understand it, Willy. I made the last payment on the house today. Today, dear. And there’ll be nobody home. [A sob rises in her throat.] We’re free and clear. [Sobbing more fully, released] We’re free. [BIFF comes slowly toward her.] We’re free . . . We’re free . . .

LINDA: And Willy, don’t forget to ask for a little advance, because we’ve got the insurance premium. It’s the grace period now.
WILLY: That’s a hundred . . . ?
LINDA: A hundred and eight, sixty-eight. Because we’re a little short again.
WILLY: Why are we short?
LINDA: Well, you had the motor job on the car . . .
WILLY: That goddam Studebaker!
LINDA: And you got one more payment on the refrigerator . . .

. . . all I’d need would be a little lumber and some peace of mind.

BIFF reaches behind the heater and draws out a length of rubber tubing. He is horrified and turns his head toward WILLY’S room, still dimly lit, from which the strains of LINDA’S desperate but monotonous humming rise.]
WILLY [staring through the window into the moonlight]:
Gee, look at the moon moving between the buildings!
[BIFF wraps the tubing around his hand and quickly goes up the stairs.]

CURTAIN

WILLY: Million-dollar . . .
HAPPY: And you wouldn’t get fed up with it,
BIFF: It’d be the family again. There’d be the old honor, and comrade- ship, . . . .
WILLY: Lick the world! You guys together could abso- lutely lick the civilized world.
BIFF: I’ll see Oliver tomorrow. Hap, if we could work that out . . .
LINDA: Maybe things are beginning to—
WILLY [wildly enthused, to linda]: Stop interrupting!

WILLY: I hope we didn’t get stuck on that machine.
LINDA: They got the biggest ads of any of them!
WILLY: I know, it’s a fine machine. What else?
LINDA: Well, there’s nine-sixty for the washing machine.
And for the vacuum cleaner there’s three and a half due on the fifteenth. Then the roof, you got twenty-one dollars remaining.

You take me, for instance. I never have to wait in line to see a buyer. ‘‘Willy Loman is here!’’ That’s all they have to know, and I go right through.
BIFF: Did you knock them dead, Pop?
WILLY: Knocked ’em cold in Providence, slaughtered ’em in Boston.

BIFF is two years older than his brother, . but in these days bears a worn air and seems less self-assured. He has succeeded less, and his dreams are stronger and less acceptable . . .. HAPPY is tall, powerfully made. . . . He, like his brother, is lost, but in a different way, for he has never allowed himself to turn his face toward defeat and is thus more confused and hard-skinned, although seemingly more content.

...his wife, has stirred in her bed ... Most often jovial, she has developed an iron repression of her exceptions to Willy’s behavior—she more than loves him, she admires him, as though his mercurial nature, his temper, his massive dreams and little cruelties, served her only as sharp reminders of the turbulent longings within him, longings which she shares but lacks the temperament to utter and follow to their end.]