Death of a Salesman: Pathos 3 key examples

The emotional effect of Linda’s spousal devotion is twofold: her portrait of Willy solicits the audience's compassion by revealing his deeply human ordinariness. To the play’s self-aggrandizing showman, she presents an overlooked dimension of earnestness. The sincerity of Willy’s striving only grows more tragic as she narrates his struggles. The subsequent descriptions of her husband—the “exhausted” salesman traveling hundreds of miles on his own expense, in spite of multiple suicide attempts—introduces a tenderness that the reader would not have otherwise felt.

But the pathos applies itself equally to Linda. Her unswerving faith in her husband makes herself no less of a pathetic figure. Deferent and in denial about her husband’s abilities, Linda is a case study of female subservience. Her devotion to Willy is also an example of dramatic irony, because the play reveals to the audience Willy’s extramarital affairs in earlier scenes, soliciting pity on Linda’s behalf. By furnishing this uncomfortable knowledge, Death of a Salesman forces the audience to share in Biff’s deeply conflicted emotions. Linda adores her “dearest man” with heartbreaking levels of faith, and so much that she gets duped by her own trust in his abilities.

Willy’s confession to his longtime neighbor marks a tender moment of self-awareness. After a conversation in which he realizes that a man might be “worth more dead than alive,” Willy almost seems to admit the pitifulness of his failures. Here, the salesman is shorn of his fantasies if even partly conscious of his own delusions. He is no longer the celebrity recognized by the “Mayor of Providence” or the decorated salesman with advice to share with his sons. If Willy has spun comforting fictions for much of the play, he suddenly shatters them with the heartbreaking clarity of an old man whose closest relationship may be a casual acquaintance.

The poignance of this scene complicates the audience's understanding of the protagonist, who elicits both pity and disgust.  Miller casts Willy as a frustratingly difficult character alternately deserving of pity and scorn.  Blinded by his own ego, Willy shamelessly cheats and swindles his family. He has told one tale after another, glamorizing his self-worth at the cost of others. But he is also a product of his circumstances: Willy’s admission of loneliness instead reveals a character pressured by the expectation of American success. He confides to Charley his self-doubts about the “impressive man,” yearning to matter in a country so unforgiving to his dreams. Willy’s conversation betrays the insecurities beneath his blustering front of self-assurance, creating an awareness of fragility that evokes sympathy.  Quibbling about a job and on the brink of tears, Willy clings to his stubborn pride. He is alone, exposed, and deeply vulnerable.

By presenting to the reader what Willy himself is unaware of, the play dramatizes the salesman’s ignorance and, by extension, his delusion. Willy is as oblivious to his faith in upward mobility as he is to his mental weakness. His blindness culminates in his ultimate act of delusion.  When Biff declares his separation from Willy, the salesman interprets the gesture instead as an admission of love:

BIFF: Will you take that phony dream and burn it before something happens? (Struggling to contain himself, he pulls away and moves to the stairs.) I’ll go in the morning. Put him—put him to bed. (Exhausted, Biff moves up the stairs to his room.)

Cite this Quote

WILLY (after a long pause, astonished, elevated): Isn’t that—isn’t that remarkable? Biff—he likes me!

In this scene, Willy misunderstands Biff's rejection of him and his “phony dream," instead interpreting it as an affirmation of adoration for his father. As with his mental degeneration, Willy is oblivious to his son’s estrangement and even further empowered to support Biff through suicide. Willy’s sacrifice—like his own mental faculties—takes on tragic proportions through its heart-wrenching irony.