UNIT 80 PLAY

Lesson 159 Death Of A Salesman (Ⅰ)

Arthur Miller (1915 -- ) is one of the most widely discussed American playwrights since the Second World War. His masterpiece, Death of A Salesman (1949), is the story of an ordinary American destroyed by hollow values.

Main Characters in the play:
Willy Loman A salesman
Linda Willy's wife
Biff elder son
Happy younger son

The following scene is taken from Act One.
Light has risen on the boys' room. Biff gets out of bed, comes downstage a bit, and stands attentively. Biff is two years older than his brother Happy, well built, but in these days bears a worn air and seems less-assured. He has succeeded less, and his dreams are stronger and less acceptable than Happy's. 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.

Biff: Why does Dad mock me all the time?
Happy: He's not mocking you, he
Biff: Everything I say there's a twist of mockery on his face. I can't get near him.
Happy: He just wants you to make good, that's all. I wanted to talk to you about Dad for a long time, Biff. Something's -- happening to him. He -- talks to himself.
Biff: I notice that this morning. But he always mumbled.
Happy: But not so noticeable. It got so embarrassing I had to send him to Florida. And you know something? Most of the time he's talking to you.
Biff: What's he say about me?
Happy: I can't make it out.
Biff: What does he say about me?
Happy: I think the fact that you're not settled, that you're still kind of up in the air ...
Biff: There's one or two other things depressing him, Happy.
Happy: What do you mean?
Biff: Never mind. Just don't lay it all to me.
Happy: But I think if you just got started -- I mean -- is there any future for you out there?
Biff: I tell ya, Hap, I don't know what the future is. I don't know -- what I'm supposed to want.
Happy: What do you mean?
Biff: Well, I spent six or seven years after high school trying to work myself up. Shipping clerk, salesman, business of one kind or another. And it's a measly manner of existence. To get on that subway on the hot mornings in summer. To devote your whole life to keeping stock, or making phone calls, or buying or selling. To suffer fifty weeks out of the year for the sake of a two-week vacation, when all you really desire is to be outdoors, with your shirt off. And always to have to get ahead of the next fella. And still -- that's how you build a future.
Happy: Well, you really enjoy it on a farm? Are you content out there?
Biff: [with rising agitation:] Hap, I've had twenty or thirty different kinds of jobs since I left home before the war, and it always turns out the same. I just realized it lately. In Nebraska when I herded cattle, and in Dakotas, and Arizona, and now in Texas. It's why I came home now, I guess, because I realized it. This farm I work on, it's spring there now, see? And they've got about fifteen new colts. There's nothing more inspiring or -- beautiful than the sight of a mare and a new colt. And it's cool there now, see? Texas is cool now, and it's spring. And whenever spring comes to where I am, I suddenly get the feeling, my God, I'm not getting anywhere! What the hell am I doing, playing around with horses, twenty-eight dollars a week! I'm thirty-four years old, I oughta be makin' my future. That's why I come running home. And now, I get here, and I don't know what to do with myself. [After a pause:] I've always made a point of not wasting my life, and everytime I come back here I know that all I've done is to waste my life.
Happy: You're a poet, you know that, Biff? You're a -- you're an idealist!
Biff: No, no, no, I'm mixed up very bad. Maybe I oughta get married. Maybe I oughta get stuck into something. Maybe that's my trouble. I'm like a boy. I'm not married. I'm not in business, I just -- I'm like a boy. Are you content, Hap? You're a success, aren't you? Are you content?
Happy: Hell, no!
Biff: Why? You're making money, aren't you?
Happy: [moving about with energy, expressiveness:] All I can do now is wait for the merchandise manager to die. And suppose I become merchandise manager? He's a good friend of mine, and he just built a terrific estate on Long Island. And he lived there about two months and he sold it, and now he's building another one. He can't enjoy it once it's finished. And I know that's just what I would do. I don't know what the hell I'm workin' for. Sometimes I sit in my apartment -- all alone. And I thing of the rent I'm paying. And it's crazy. But then, it's what I always wanted. My own apartment, a car, and plenty of women. And still, goddammit, I'm lonely.
Biff: [with enthusiasm:] Listen, why don't you come out West with me?
Happy: You and me, heh?
Biff: Sure, we, we could buy a ranch maybe. Raise cattle, use our muscles. Men built like we are should be working out in the open.
Happy: [avidly:] The Loman Brothers, heh?
Biff: [with vast affection:] Sure, we'd be known all over the countries!
Happy: [enthralled:] That's what I dream about, Biff. Sometimes I want to walk into the middle of that store and just rip off my clothes and outbox that goddam merchandise manager, I mean I can outbox, outrun, and outlift anybody in that store, and I have to take orders from those common, petty son-of-bitches till I can't stand it any more.
Biff: I'm tellin' you, kid, if you were with me I'd happy out there.
Happy: [enthused:] See, Biff, everybody around me is so false that I'm constantly lowering my ideas ...
Biff: Baby, together we'd stand up for one another, we'd have someone to trust.
Happy: If I were around you --
Biff: Hap, the trouble is we weren't brought up to grub for money. I don't know how to do it.
Happy: Neither do I!
Biff: Then let's go!