Key Events 7&8
English Lit: AQA A Level Death of a Salesman, topic 3.1.4
Act Two: Key Event Seven
We see the turning-point in Willy’s and Biff’s relationship, which is what the play has been building to.
Key event seven
- Willy relives the moment Biff discovers he is having an affair.
Significance
- This is the memory which Willy has been trying to suppress and the memory which the play has steadily built up to:
- The moment where we see the turning-point in Willy’s and Biff’s relationship.
Significance cont.
- Miller later said that, on beginning to write this play, he only knew that if he could make Willy remember enough “he would kill himself”.
- Willy has now reached that terrible moment.
Quotation
- “You fake! You phony little fake! You fake!”
Explanation
- These short exclamations see Biff almost spitting out these lines in disgust.
- That Biff sees Willy as a “fake” and “phony” immediately connects this scene to the one moments earlier, where Biff had discovered his adult life had been based on a “lie”.
Explanation cont.
- Biff sees through his father, and through his father’s dreams.
- The adjective “little” in Biff’s outburst often goes unnoticed, but helps to convey how diminished Willy has become to him, as if he has shrunk before his eyes.
Act Two: Key Event Eight
Willy's mental health continues to worsen and the inevitability of his suicide becomes increasingly clear.
Key event eight
- Willy, crushed by the events of the day, returns home.
- He begins “planting the garden” by torchlight.
Significance
- The spectacle of Willy performing such a futile act in the middle of the night horrifies Biff, who cries out “Oh, my God!” when he sees it.
- While planting, Willy speaks to Ben, asking his advice over the “guaranteed twenty-thousand-dollar proposition” he now sees as the only way he can leave something for his family.
Quotation
- “Oh, Ben, that’s the whole beauty of it! I see it like a diamond, shining in the dark, hard and rough, that I can pick up and touch in my hand.”
Explanation
- Willy’s words are full of dark symbolism.
- The “diamond” is the $20,000 from his life insurance policy, the prospect of which entrances Willy with its “beauty”.
- It is so close that Willy can almost reach out and “touch” it, but in order to do this, Willy has to enter “the dark”.
Explanation cont.
- Willy sees his death as something precious and magnificent (“he’ll see what I am, Ben!”), dreaming of his funeral, like Dave Singleman’s, being “massive”.
Test yourself on Key Events 7&8
What was the turning point in Willy and Biff's relationship?
Act Two: Key Event Eight
Who does Willy talk to while planting the garden?