Success

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Ben

Willy’s tragedy is driven by the various examples of success that he tries to live up to.

Willy refers to his brother Ben as “success incarnate” - literally, the ideal of success in human form.
Willy is in awe of Ben’s fortune, almost pleading with him, “What’s the answer? How did you do it?”
However, Willy is never given a fully satisfactory answer.

As the play progresses, Ben becomes a darker and more destructive presence in Willy’s mind.
When Willy is reduced to considering suicide as a way of guaranteeing success, it is Ben’s voice that he listens to: “The jungle is dark, but full of diamonds, Willy”.

By the end of the play, Willy measures success in terms of the proceeds of his life insurance policy: this $20,000 becomes the “diamond” that will set his sons up for life.

Willy’s tragedy is driven by the various examples of success that he tries to live up to.

Willy is also inspired by the example of Dave Singleman: “... he was eighty-four years old, and he’d drummed merchandise in thirty-one states. And old Dave, he’d go up to his room, y’understand, put on his green velvet slippers—I’ll never forget—and pick up his phone and call the buyers, and without ever leaving his room, at the age of eighty-four, he made his living. And when I saw that, I realized that selling was the greatest career a man could want.”

Willy bases his philosophy of personality and charisma being the secret to success (being “liked”) on the example of Dave Singleman.
He is entranced by Singleman’s popularity, impressed by the “hundreds” of mourners at his funeral.
As Willy tells Ben, Singleman’s example proves that “a man can end with diamonds here on the basis of being liked”.

Tragically, Willy does not question this belief.
That Singleman still has to work at the age of 84 does not seem to trouble Willy.
Nor does he realise that the world of “respect, and comradeship, and gratitude” represented by Singleman is out of date in today’s business world.

The play ends with the tragic irony of Willy’s funeral being poorly attended (“Why didn’t anybody come?... where are all the people he knew”) - he is again unable to live up to Singleman’s example.

Willy’s tragedy is driven by the various examples of success that he tries to live up to.

Another of the play’s tragic ironies is that Willy has examples of successful businessmen closer to home in the figures of Charley and Bernard but he chooses not to learn from them.

Neither Willy nor Biff take young Bernard’s warnings seriously and Willy becomes argumentative when Charley brings up Biff’s tendency to steal.

Charley and Bernard may not be good with their hands or be “well-liked”, but their hard work and perseverance pays off.

Neither Bernard nor Charley need to trumpet their success.
Willy is impressed that Bernard “didn’t even mention” arguing a case in front of the Supreme Court (the ‘highest’ court in the USA).
As Charley responds, Bernard does not need to brag about his success as “he’s gonna do it”.