Joseph Grippo
Comprehensive English 12 – Death of a Salesman “Problem Essay”
Mr. Mouzon
5 January 2, 2015

“And I was fine… I opened the windshield and let the warm air breathe over me. And then all of a sudden I’m going off the road!”- Willy Loman (pg 14) This doesn’t quite sound like the words of a man who is perfectly stable in life. Normally if you are fine just a moment ago and then the next thing that happens is you zoning out and driving off the road, this means that your mind is having trouble focusing and is thinking of something else. In the case of Willy, this is exactly what this means. Only moments after Willy told Linda about what happened to him, she tells him “If it’s warm Sunday we’ll drive in the Country. And we’ll open the windshield and have lunch”(pg 18) and in response Willy says “No the windshields don’t open on the new cars”(pg18). But didn’t Willy just say that he had his windshield open today while driving home? Truth is “I was thinking of the Chevy. 1928… When I had the red Chevy”(pg 19). This, truth be told, was the start of the end for Willy Loman. In fact, the last year Chevy made a truck with a windshield that opened was roughly 6 years. Now that we have the car covered, what about his tone in which he tells this to Linda? The tone from when he told her that he opened the windshield to the tone when he said the cars don’t do that anymore. Linda says concernedly “But Willy you opened it today”(pg 18), so shouldn’t this mean Willy would say that she is right? Not in the slightest. Willy denies it by saying “Me? I didn’t”(Pg 18). Willy said it only moments ago that he did, how could he forget already? He didn’t! Throughout the entire play we see spots where Willy slips in and out of reality and he doesn’t even know it. In some instances, he slips into these old memories when others are around and drags them into it. It doesn’t occur to him that he is doing this because his mind is telling him the past is occurring now, so he reenacts what is going on, word for word and action for action. It happens to him everywhere he is no matter the circumstance. But how exactly will all this foreshadow his death? On page 28, while still in his flashback, Willy tells young Biff and young Happy “No, you finish first. Never leave a job till you’re finished- remember that.” These words are what lead Willy to his death, because for Willy, when he was “finished” it meant him leaving his job and that was something he swore he would never do because he wanted to die the way the Dave Singleman died, like a king. He wanted the money that Dave had and the friends he had, so when de dies, everyone would be at his funeral just like Dave had. We already see many things wrong with Willy: he slips in and out of the past, he talks to his wife as if she has no emotions, and he wants to die the way another man did even though he has no possible chance of doing that. Willy is a mess and he is already planning out his death whether he knows it or not. As the story progresses, Willy has more and